I came across a funny article about ridiculous complaints by spoiled holidaymakers. That inspired me to create this little worksheet/activity. I used it as a warm-up activity for my students the next lesson in which we covered writing complaints – holiday edition 🙂
Teacher tip: If they can’t come up with any own ideas in the second task, let them use some ideas from the list.
In pairs read the ridiculous complaints holidaymakers made to their travel agent.
Which is the craziest one? How would you have answered if you were in the place of the travel agent?
Why do you think people complain about these things?
Astonishing holiday complaints
1. “I think it should be explained in the brochure that the local store does not sell proper biscuits like custard creams or ginger nuts.”
2. “We booked an excursion to a water park but no-one told us we had to bring our swimming costumes and towels.”
3. “The beach was too sandy.”
4. “On my holiday to Goa in India, I was disgusted to find that almost every restaurant served curry. I don’t like spicy food at all.”
5. “It’s lazy of the local shopkeepers to close in the afternoons. I often needed to buy things during ‘siesta’ time – this should be banned.”
6. A woman threatened to call police after claiming that she’d been locked in by staff. When in fact, she had mistaken the “do not disturb” sign on the back of the door as a warning to remain in the room.
7. “We found the sand was not like the sand in the brochure. Your brochure shows the sand as yellow but it was white.”
8. A guest at a Novotel in Australia complained his soup was too thick and strong. He was inadvertently slurping the gravy at the time.
9. “We bought ‘Ray-Ban’ sunglasses for five Euros from a street trader, only to find out they were fake.”
10. “Topless sunbathing on the beach should be banned. The holiday was ruined, as my husband spent all day looking at other women.”
11. “No-one told us there would be fish in the sea. The children were startled.”
12. “It took us nine hours to fly home from Jamaica to England. It only took the Americans three hours to get home.”
13. “I compared the size of our one-bedroom apartment to our friends’ three-bedroom apartment and ours was significantly smaller.”
14. “I was bitten by a mosquito. No one said they could bite.”
15. “The brochure stated: ‘No hairdressers at the accommodation’. We’re trainee hairdressers – will we be OK staying there?”
16. “There are too many Spanish people. The receptionist speaks Spanish. The food is Spanish. Too many foreigners now live abroad.”
17. “My fiancé and I booked a twin-bedded room but we were placed in a double-bedded room. We now hold you responsible for the fact that I find myself pregnant. This would not have happened if you had put us in the room that we booked.”
18. “We had to queue outside with no air conditioning.”
These complaints are all taken from a survey from Thomas Cook and ABTA, revealing the most ridiculous complaints holidaymakers made to their travel agent.
Task 2
Think of two similar ridiculous complaints.
Role-play the dialogue with a classmate.
Student A You are an unsatisfied holiday maker and you are going to complain!
Student B You are a holiday representative and you try to be as polite as possible and explain the misunderstanding.
This speaking activity deals with the everyday teenager issues.
Warm-up (10-15m)
Put the students in pairs and let them brainstorm the problems and conflicts young people might have. When they are finished, put them into groups of four and let them discuss the problems in more detail. What causes these problems? What advice would you give to people struggling with them? Do they have any personal experience that they are willing to share? Circle and monitor.
Activity (15m)
After that, tell the original pair to chose two conflict situations from their brainstorming sessions. They are going to role-play the first conflict and try to find a solution. Then they swap roles and play out the second conflict. Circle and monitor.
Problems: failing a subject, alcohol abuse, no money for new mobile phone/sneakers, etc.
Conflicts: with my dad because he grounded me for nothing, with my mom because she forces me to play the piano but I hate it, with my math teacher because….., etc.
Debrief (5m)
What advice did the students come up with?
Was it easier to play the role of a child or of a parent? Why?
This activity is great for practising fluency and improvising.
1) Tell each student to chose a topic they know a lot about, are passionate about and can talk about it for hours. Give them 5minutes to prepare a short lecture/presentation in their NATIVE language. They can only write brief notes/bullet points. Don’t tell them more at this stage.
2) When they are ready, tell them that they are going to present their lecture/presentation at an international conference, but unfortunately, they don’t speak English so they will need an interpreter. (Explain that they will interpret consecutively.)
3) Put Ss in pairs and explain that they will interpret each other’s presentations. Give them 5-10minutes so they can familiarize themselves with the topic and important vocabulary that will be used in the presentation. At this stage, they can use the notes they previously prepared.
4) The conference starts! The first pair of students gets on stage ( in front of their classmates). The speaker starts their presentation and after every couple of sentences pauses so the interpreter can repeat what was said in the target language. At this stage don’t correct the Ss, let them speak and write notes so you can provide feedback later.
5) Don’t let them speak longer than 5 minutes. If time allows, you can let the audience ask follow-up questions which will need to be translated from L2 into L1 and then the answer back from L1 to L2.
6) After everyone had their turn, provide feedback on the mistakes they made and don’t forget to praise them!
My students loved this speaking activity. It is fun, it is competitive and it kept the students engaged for a loooong time. It is easy to use, just print the worksheet and you are ready to go.
Not everyone can cook, but we all love food. It is a perfect conversation topic and even the shy students usually come out of their shells (seafood pun) when you ask them about their favourite food.
Food is everywhere now, popular TV shows made home cooking fashionable, food blogs with amazing photos will make you drool, social networks such as Instagram are filled with snaps of people’s breakfasts and tasting menus from five-star restaurants, artisan ice-cream and hipster baristas are everywhere, I’m starting to feel hungry just writing about it! Make sure to use this worksheet before lunch; otherwise, your students will eat you alive!
I used this activity many times with different age groups and levels. It works great with teenagers and adults, pre-intermediate, intermediate and upper intermediate levels. Just make sure to pre-teach the relevant vocabulary and some basic at the restaurant phrases. Your students will create their own restaurant menus and practice waiter/customer dialogues.
