Take a Bowl of Fruit
How can a bowl of fruit be turned into a language lesson? (one that you can also eat!)

To name the individual fruit is one activity but you have missed a wonderful opportunity to use language if you leave it at that.

You could:

• Associate fruit and colour a banana is yellow
a pear is green/yellow
an apple is red/green
strawberries are red
grapes are green/purple
But this simple activity has brought in a range of grammar points: the use of the article-a/an/no article
is singular/are plural
Activity : Make a list of common words than have an as the article
eg ice-cream, umbrella, elephant, egg
Do not labour the use of the article as it has very difficult grammar rules. It will be revisited over and over in a variety of contexts.

• Plurals For beginners even something as basic as adding “s” for plurals needs to be practised. 1 banana 2 bananas
1 orange 2 oranges
• Adjectives soft, hard, ripe, over ripe, unripe, sweet, sour, juicy, crunchy, fresh

• Structure with like and don’t like
Do you like ………….? Yes I do
No I don’t

Then change the subject to other members of the family.

What does your husband/son/daughter/mother etc like?
Does he like………….? Yes he does
No he doesn’t

• Junk Mail Use supermarket advertisements to talk about fruit and prices
Respond to How much are……………?

• Shopping lists
What fruit did you buy last week? (past tense)
I bought ………, …….., ………. and ………..

What fruit are you going to buy this week? (future tense)
I’m going to buy …………, …………….., ………………. and ……………..

What do you buy every week? (simple present tense)
Every week I buy …………….., ……………….., …………… and ………………

Extend to: I sometimes buy………, I never buy ………….
Change the subject to another person
• Do it all again with vegetables!

Take a Bowl of Fruit Survey-Conversation activity for the class
Answer for yourself, then ask your tutor and two others.

Record their answers with a √ or a x.

Do you like….?
√ Yes I do x No I don’t

apples

bananas

oranges

pears

grapes

strawberries

Write a sentence for each person e.g.

Mary likes bananas but she doesn’t like oranges.

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