This teaching idea may be a good way to introduce or revise the infinitive of purpose. You will need to have online access (an IT room, for example).

Write the following on the board:

Life’s too short to …

Ask your learners if they can think of any way in which this sentence can be completed. If they are able to make any suggestions, write these on the board. If not, don’t worry.

You are now going to demonstrate to your learners how they can use the internet to complete the sentence: Go to your favourite search engine (Yahoo, Google, Altavista, MSN, etc) and type the phrase into the search window. Make you sure you type it between inverted commas:

Click search and you will then be given a page full of partially contextualised examples of this phrase.

Bring a few of these to your learners’ attention. For example:

• Life’s too short to fold your underwear.
• Life’s too short to drink cheap wine.
• Life’s too short to worry about love handles.

Demonstrate that at any time, you can find out more about the specific sentences that are obtained by clicking on the link. For example, the first of these (Life’s too short to fold your underwear) is the title of a book which seems to have a flavour of self-help.

Once demonstrated, your learners can then be given the task of using this procedure for finding 10 more examples of this phrase on their own. This can be done in an IT room or at home. Try adding a competitive element - the person who finds the most interesting examples wins.

Finally, put a few of the best sentences up on the classroom wall and get your students to draw accompanying pictures.

Other pieces of language that can be used for this game:

• The older I get …
• If I had a pound/dollar for every time someone …
• If I was president/prime minister for the day …
• If I won the lottery …

This lesson plan can be downloaded as a pdf:
using-search-engines-to-complete-sentences.pdf