This is a unit of work which focuses on writing letters of complaint. To start the lesson, the teacher can ask the students to think about and share with their classmates whether or not they have had any experience of being treated poorly or badly. To bring out the theme/topic of the lessons, the teacher can then ask the students to share with their partner what they usually do if they are not happy with the service they receive.
Instead of telling the students straight away the format and structure of a letter of complaint, the teacher may adopt an inductive approach to allow the learners to consciously notice and discover the generic structure on their own. To do so, the teacher can show the students with a scenario to stimulate their thinking. Then, the teacher can show the students a sample letter so thaty they can compare it with what they have thought of and identify the essential feature of this type of genre. To give the students some hands-on practice with sufficient scaffolding in writing a letter of complaint, the teacher might employ the technique of text-reconstruction to consolidate the students' learning, focusing on the content as well as the language. |
