Lesson plan

World Wide Web at 30

Topic
The World Wide Web and internet

Age group
Adults/Teens

Level
B1

Time
90 minutes

Materials
• World Wide Web at 30 student worksheet
• World Wide Web at 30 worksheet from LearnEnglish

Introduction
The World Wide Web was 'born' in March 1989 and is celebrating its 30th birthday. In this
lesson, students will talk about the World Wide Web, read an article about its history, learn how
to give web and email addresses, and finally describe and present a website to their
classmates.

Procedure
1. Lead-in • Write on the board, What am I? Tell students that you are going to read
(10–15 minutes) them a brief description. When they think they know what you are, they
should put up their hand (but not say anything).
• Read the following text: I was born 30 years ago. Millions of people all
around the world use me every day, at work, at home and even in the
street. I can tell you what the weather will be like, what's happening in the
news, or send a message to someone living thousands of miles away. To
use me you need to have access to a computer or a mobile phone. I
contain millions of pages.
• Ask one of the students who first put their hand up what they think you
are. (Answer: The World Wide Web). If students say 'the internet', tell

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 Lesson plan
them that they are going to find out the difference between the internet
and the World Wide Web in this class.
• Now put students in small groups or pairs and ask them to look at Activity
1 on the worksheet (mini quiz). You can either ask them to work through
the questions in their groups or do this like a pub quiz, where you read out
the questions and the options and ask the groups just to write down the
answers.
• Check answers and tell teams to give themselves a point for each correct
answer.
Answers: 1. b, 2. c (this was sent by Ray Tomlinson and was a test
message to himself), 3. b, 4. a, 5. c.

2. Task 1 – • Print out the worksheet from LearnEnglish and ask students to do the pre-
pre-reading task reading vocabulary task. Alternatively, you could ask students to do this
(5 minutes) task online if you have internet access
(https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/magazine/web-30).
• Check answers and drill pronunciation.

3. Task 2 – • Write these two questions on the board:

reading task What is the difference between the World Wide Web and the internet?
(15 minutes) What is the digital divide and who does it affect?
• Give students a printout of the text and ask them to read the text quickly to
answer those two questions. Ask them to check their answers in pairs and
then compare answers together.
Answers: The World Wide Web is a network of information in the form of
webpages; the internet is a large network of smaller networks of
computers. The digital divide is the difference between some groups'
access to the internet – more people in the USA and Europe have access
than people in African and Asian countries, and more men have access
than women.
• Now ask students to read the text for more detail, and ask them to answer
the questions in Tasks 1 and 2 on the worksheet (or online) together.
• Check answers together.

4. Task 3 – • Write an email address up on the board (you could write your own
Activity 2: address or invent one!). Ask students if they know how to say the address.
Learning how to • Ask them to work in pairs and to look at the table in Activity 2. Ask them to
say Web words match the symbols from column A with how they are said in column B.
(10 minutes) • Check answers:
@ – at .com – dot com .co.uk – dot co dot uk .org – dot org
a_b – underscore a-b – hyphen or dash / – forward slash
\ – back slash ABC – upper case abc – lower case
abccommunications – abc communications all one word

5. Task 4 – • Divide students into pairs and ask them to dictate the email and webpage
Activity 3: addresses to each other. Encourage students here to ask for clarification
Dictation or spelling. You might need to drill how to say letters in English, focusing
(10 minutes)

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 Lesson plan
on minimal pairs or letters that are difficult for your students to remember
in English. Write phrases like Can you spell that for me please? or Can
you repeat that? or Can I just check, is that ...? on the board. To make this
more challenging, you could ask students to sit with their backs to each
other.

6. Task 5 – • Put students into pairs and ask them to discuss the questions in Activity 4.
Activity 4: Monitor and get feedback. These questions should help them with the
Discussion next activity.
(10–15 minutes)

7. Task 6 – • Tell students to work individually. Ask them to imagine that someone who
Activity 5: Mini has just got access to the internet would like to know what it's all about
presentation of and would like some recommendations for how they can best use it.
a website • Students are going to choose a website that they use regularly and make
(15 minutes) some notes. Go through the questions in Activity 5. If possible, students
should choose different webpages.
• When students have finished, put them in small groups. They should
present their webpage to the group. Encourage them to give the URL to
practise using the language from Activity 2.
• The groups can then vote for which website they think is the best one to
recommend for someone who is new to the internet, giving reasons for
their vote.
• Get feedback.

8. Optional • As an optional homework activity, you could ask students to write up their
homework/ notes from Activity 5 into a short descriptive paragraph or as an email to
extension task the person who is new to the internet. For more information on writing
emails in English you could direct them to:
https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/es/english-emails

Contributed by
Cath McLellan

www.teachingenglish.org.uk
© The British Council, 2019 The United Kingdom’s international organisation for educational opportunities and cultural relations. We are registered in England as a charity.