Levels: pre-intermediate to advanced. Ages: teens; adults. Type:
reading and replying to agony aunt letters. Skills: listening;
speaking; reading; writing. Language focus: revising/teaching
grammar, register and vocab structures of informal letters. some
“doctored” agony aunt letters (pre-intermediate examples are
here, upper-intermediate examples are here and advanced examples
are here); the original letters (examples here); some blank
paper for students to write replies; and some blu-tack. You may
also like to use the original agony aunt replies (examples
here). Board “Agony Aunt column,” explain that this is a column
in some British newspapers, and ask students if they can guess
what an agony aunt is. Board their ideas. Sit your students in
groups of three or four, preferably around a table, and explain
that you will show them some examples from an agony aunt column,
and they can check to see if they are right. Hand out the gapped
texts – a different one for each group (see above) – and give
students two m