Unit 4 (Wild animals)

Activities 1: how do you name and describe wild animals?

Use a before a consonant sound and an before a vowel sound: a tiger, a zebra, an elephant and an eagle. General plural descriptions take no a or an: Zebras have stripes. Adjectives come before nouns and do not take a plural s: two long tails. Spots are separate marks; stripes are long bands. Fur covers many mammals, feathers cover birds, and scales cover snakes and crocodiles.

Which verb describes a body or an ability?

Practice 1: how do comparatives work?

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Use tall for height and long for length: a tall giraffe, a long snake. Big describes general size; heavy describes weight. If a picture shows only height, do not invent a weight comparison. Compare matching features and use information provided by the picture or table. More bigger and more taller are incorrect because er already makes these forms comparative.

When do you use a superlative?

A superlative identifies an extreme member of a group: C is the tallest giraffe in the picture. Use the + adjective-est for many short adjectives and the most + adjective for longer ones: the biggest, the heaviest, the most dangerous. Good becomes the best; bad becomes the worst. State the comparison group when it matters. The biggest animal in these three pictures is a limited claim; it does not mean the biggest animal in the world.

Activities 2: where do animals live and what do they eat?

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These examples introduce useful English words. Not every member of a broad animal group has the same habitat or diet. Different bear and monkey species eat different foods. Use some or many when a statement is not true for every species. For this lesson, learn leaves, grass, fruit, fish, meat and insects. Leaf has the irregular plural leaves; fish is commonly unchanged in the plural when referring to animals.

How do you ask Where, What and When questions?

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Put the question word first, then do or does, then the subject and the base verb. Does already carries the third-person ending, so Where does it lives? is incorrect. In the answer, the main verb takes s with it: It lives in a forest. For a yes/no question, say Does it eat fish? Yes, it does. With be, have got and can, use their own question patterns: Is it tall? Has it got wings? Can it fly?

During the day and at night describe different times: Many bats rest during the day and look for food at night. The word nocturnal describes an animal active mainly at night. This is a useful vocabulary extension. Read the particular animal card before answering a sleeping-time question; do not assume all animals in a habitat follow the same routine.

Practice 2: build an animal interview

Reading: Yassine’s wildlife notebook

Yassine is making animal cards for his English club. His first card is about a giraffe. It has got a long neck and brown spots. It lives in African grassland and eats leaves. His second card shows a zebra. It has got black and white stripes and eats grass. In his drawing, the giraffe is taller than the zebra. His third card is about a dolphin. It lives in the sea and eats fish. It can swim. Yassine puts a blue border around the dolphin card and a green border around the two land-animal cards. He does not write about sleeping times.

Listen and speak: two new animal cards

Ask a partner to read this original script slowly while you look away: Card A shows a desert fox. It has got large ears. It lives in the desert and eats insects. Card B shows a dolphin. It has got fins. It lives in the sea and eats fish. First listen for the two animal names. Listen again and record one feature, one habitat and one food for each. Then check against the script. This is a partner-read listening activity.

Review: how do you write an animal description in 50–75 words?

Plan five points: name, appearance, habitat, food and ability. Write 50–75 words and add one comparison supported by a picture or a fact card. Join ideas with and, but or because when the connection is clear. Write about one animal with it, or a species in the plural with they, and keep that choice consistent.

Before finishing, check a/an, is versus has got, it eats versus they eat, does + base verb, and comparative + than. Say your paragraph aloud. If one sentence is difficult to follow, split it into two shorter sentences. Exit task: name a habitat, ask one food question and compare two animals from a picture.