1. Steven Spielberg
This week’s lesson focuses on probably the most famous film director in the world,
Steven Spielberg. He was born on 18th December 1946.
Level
Pre-intermediate and above (equivalent to CEF level A2-B1 and above)
How to use the lesson
1. Ask your students what they know about Steven Spielberg, and which of his films
they have seen. Which are their favourites, and why?
2. Give each student in the class a copy of Worksheet A and give them five to ten
minutes to read through it, encouraging them to look up new vocabulary. Tell the
students it is important that they try to remember as much of the information as
possible.
3. Tell the students they are going to prepare a test for each other. Then divide the
class into two teams, A and B.
4. Cut Worksheet B in half and give each member of each team the corresponding
half. Explain that each team has to work together in order to formulate the questions
that produce the answers given, based on the text on Worksheet A. Note that it is
possible for there to be slight variations of each question.
5. When both teams have finished preparing their questions, ask them to turn over
Worksheet A and the glossary so that they can’t see them.
6. The two teams now take it in turns to ask and answer the questions. Encourage the
teams to confer before answering, but make it clear that once they have given their
answer they cannot change it. You should only accept answers given in correct
English. Keep the score on the board: the team with the most correct answers at the
end of the quiz wins.
7. Before the next exercise you need to cut Worksheet C into two halves. Divide the
students into pairs, Student A and Student B, and hand out the halves of the worksheet
so that Student A’s grid has the words that Student B’s grid is missing, and vice versa.
The idea is for the students to describe the words they have in their grids so that their
partners can guess what they are, and then fill them in. It is therefore vital that they
don’t show their grids to their partners.
Tell the students to describe the words one by one, and to take it in turns to speak.
You could let the students carry on describing the words for as long as it takes for
their partners to identify them, or as a fun alternative you could impose a time limit
(perhaps 15 or 20 seconds) for the description of each word.
Before the students begin, point out that all the missing words feature in the text on
Worksheet A.
8. Check answers in open class.

Steven Spielberg WORKSHEET A
Steven Spielberg is probably the most famous film director in the world, and has
worked on a large number of very popular and well-known films during his long
career.
Born in 1946, he grew up in the state of Arizona in the western United States and
showed a passion for film-making from a very young age. He made a nine-minute
film about cowboys when he was only eleven, and at sixteen persuaded his local
cinema to show a 140-minute science fiction adventure that he had written and
directed.
In his early twenties he worked mostly on TV programmes and short films, before
moving on to longer productions. The film that made him famous was Jaws (1975), in
which a man-eating shark terrorises the population of a small coastal town in the
United States. One of the most memorable things about the film was the way the
camera-work and music created almost unbearable tension whenever the shark was
about to attack. People also remember it for the life-size model shark, which perhaps
looked quite impressive thirty years ago but doesn’t look quite so scary nowadays.
A couple of years later Spielberg directed Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977),
in which UFOs appear in the sky over the United States and then friendly aliens arrive
in a huge spaceship. He continued with the subject of friendly aliens in ET (1982),
which was particularly popular with children and teenagers. Both these productions
were influential in their use of special effects.
The first of his major successes in the 1990s was Jurassic Park (1993), in which
dinosaurs return to Earth. Soon after came Schindler’s List (1993), a moving film
about the Holocaust, and a few years later he directed another film about events
during the Second World War, Saving Private Ryan (1998), famous for its realistic
recreation of battles involving American soldiers in France in 1944.
The many awards Spielberg has received during his career include two Oscars for best
director. Now aged 60, he still seems to have a knack for making films that are
popular with the public, such as War of the Worlds (2005) starring Tom Cruise. You
might think there is nothing more he can achieve in the world of cinema, and yet he
shows no sign of slowing down.

Steven Spielberg WORKSHEET B
Part A
Team A
Here are the answers to some questions about the text on Worksheet A, but what are
the questions? When you have prepared the questions, Team B will have to answer
them as part of a quiz.
1. The small town in Jaws is in the United States.
2. Tom Cruise.
3. The subject was cowboys.
4. One of the memorable things was the camera-work / music / model shark.
5. It is about dinosaurs.
6. In 1982.
7. A man-eating shark.
8. They were influential in their use of special effects.
9. It is in the western United States.
…………………………………………………………………………………………..
Team B
Here are the answers to some questions about the text on Worksheet A, but what are
the questions? When you have prepared the questions, Team A will have to answer
them as part of a quiz.
1. He has won two Oscars for best director.
2. He was born in 1946.
3. Jaws.
4. It is about battles in the Second World War.
5. Friendly aliens.
6. In 1975.
7. It was particularly popular with children and teenagers.
8. Another of the memorable things was the camera-work / music / model shark.
9. He was sixteen.