Your Brain on Culture Shock
Grammar: Past Simple
A Level 3 English lesson exploring travel.
What's in this lesson
A Level 3 (intermediate) ESL lesson on travel, practising past simple. The worksheet has a reading, target vocabulary, a grammar reference with practice and discussion questions.
From the reading: Your Brain on Culture Shock
Here is a strange fact. Your brain is lazy. Not unintelligent — lazy. Most of the time, it runs on shortcuts. Psychologist Daniel Kahneman called this System 1 thinking: fast, automatic, and almost invisible. You walk into a café and you already know what to do. You pick up a menu. You order. You sit down. No effort required. Your brain had already seen this a thousand times before.
Vocabulary
- adapt to
- familiar patterns
- feel overwhelmed
- go through phases
Grammar: Past Simple
- Past simple — events
- She walked into the market and stopped. — completed actions in sequence
- Past continuous
- People were moving in patterns she didn't recognise. — scene in progress
Discussion questions
- Imagine you wake up tomorrow in a country where you speak none of the language — what is the first thing you do?
- Would you rather spend a month somewhere linguistically familiar, or a week somewhere completely unknown?
- If you could switch off your sense of disorientation abroad, would you?
Your Brain on Culture Shock
Grammar: Past Simple
What's in this lesson:
Full lesson plan with reading, grammar, vocabulary, and discussion.
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