How can students in first-year language courses learn about the complex systems behind everyday consumption?
Target level: A1-A2
Description
Most introductory language courses require students to learn and practice vocabulary and phrases used to describe their daily routines. After learning phrases for daily routines, a whole lesson can be planned around the daily practice of drinking coffee, starting with the simple question “Woher kommt der Kaffee?” Students should already be familiar with questions about origins and should be able to answer with the “kommen + aus” phrase.
Methods and Approaches
To start this lesson, students respond to a picture of coffee plants. They describe the image and then are prompted to write a short story about the person in the image. Students may not guess that the image shows a coffee plant, demonstrating the disconnect between product origins and consumption. Next, students analyze a map with coffee production locations and a table that lists the largest importing countries. Through this infographic, students learn names of countries that might not have been included in earlier lessons.
Students then discuss the different climates of these regions. Following this, students read a short text on a fair trade organization in Germany and will analyze the organization’s logo. As a follow-up activity, students then design their own logo that takes into account all of the complexities of coffee consumption. As homework, students synthesize what they learn by writing a short text from the perspective of a coffee bean and describing the life cycle of coffee.