High-Stakes Cue Cards

B2 · Upper-intermediate50 minIELTS Test PreparationLesson 5 of 8 · Outline

Aims

Goal: handle emotionally heavy cue cards - difficult decisions, failures, setbacks - with authentic, controlled language that shows maturity rather than melodrama.

The lesson, stage by stage

  1. Warm up5 min

    Warm-up: The heavy cards

    2 warm-up questions

  1. Reading10 min

    Reading: Handling Emotionally Complex Topics

    Read a 220-word text about Handling Emotionally Complex Topics

  2. Vocabulary8 min

    Vocabulary: Emotional Complexity Vocabulary

    6 items

  3. Practice7 min

    Practice: Expressing Complexity

    Error-correction exercise, 5 items

  4. Dialogue10 min

    Dialogue: High-Stakes Practice

    Role-play: Practice a emotionally complex Part 2 topic (4 lines)

  5. Discussion10 min

    Discussion: Your high-stakes mission

    3 discussion questions

Open the full lesson

The remaining 5 stages of this lesson, with the procedure, the examples and the exercises, are included with Starter, along with the interactive version you can teach from. Lesson 1 of this course is free: the full plan is on this site, and a free account opens it in the interactive player.

Target vocabulary

In a Tuton account these words become your student's vocabulary deck, so they come back in practice between lessons.

grapple withweigh heavily onformativecome to terms within retrospectdefining moment

This plan comes from the Part 2: Challenging Cue Cards course in the Tuton library. Browse all free lesson plans.