Just been listening to the most recent podcast of this BBC radio programme. I really love the language that some of these correspondents use in their reporting. Mike Sergeant for example tells us that:

Everyone here seems to be waiting for something. The owner of the empty restaurant is waiting for customers to enjoy his fried fish. Over-friendly hotel managers are waiting for visitors to arrive and swipe in their credit cards. Some people, I’m told, are buying weapons and waiting for a war. Others wait hopefully for a new president to be elected and the current vacuum to be filled.

The centre of the city is still sealed off by a ring of barbed wire, tanks and soldiers. Tents pitched by opposition protesters over a year ago are flapping in the wind: reminders of a political crisis which began but didn’t seem to end. It’s as if the whole place has been frozen. There’s no clear sense of the present. Everyone you speak to is living in the shadow of some unknown and ominous future.

Can you guess where the correspondent is? I’ll give you a clue: The restaurant in which he is sitting has a view of the Mediterranean Sea (answer is given below).

This piece of narrative jumped out to me as I was listening because it contains three good examples of a structure that was dealt with in a lesson plan that I posted a couple of weeks ago: “Wait for something to happen“. The lesson plan can be downloaded here: grammar-flashcards-2.pdf. I did this activity with a one-to-one student of mine last week and in order to recap the grammar, I am going to use the above text with her tomorrow. Here is what I’m intending to do:

1. Tell her about the BBC radio programme “From our own correspondent”. Show her the webpage.
2. Tell her that I am going to read an excerpt from last Friday’s podcast.
3. Pre-teach a few pieces of vocabulary (swipe credit cards, barbed wire, pitch tents, flap in the wind, etc).
4. Read her the passage, go over any additional problematic language and ask if she can guess where Mike Sergeant is. Give her the same clue that I have already given here (i.e. the restaurant has a Mediterranean view) .
5. Give her the answer if she doesn’t work it out (Beirut, Lebanon).
6. Show here how she can download podcasts and get her to transcribe the passage in question for homework.

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NB I made a couple of tiny changes to Mike’s report so that this would work as a lesson. He actually says:

• “Everyone in Lebanon seems to be waiting for something.”
• “The centre of Beirut is still sealed off by a ring of barbed wire, tanks and soldiers.”