Saturday 28 January 2012

The Costa Concordia disaster

At least 16 people died in the unfortunate incident of a luxurious cruise ship in Italy on Friday, 13th January 2012. The news has been full of stories about the captain, the circumstances of the accident, the rescue operation and the survivors. It can be a good topic for English lessons because everybody heard something about it. 
I also discussed it with my students and I prepared some tasks for them.


After clarifying the basic vocabulary related to the topic, we listened to a text describing the events:
 Costa Concordia disaster mp3

You can see the script here: Listening script in PDF



Topic related vocabulary: 
nouns: lifeboat, manslaughter, house arrest, cruise, crew, passenger, evacuation, island, fuel, hull
verbs: to tilt, to hit, to blame, to rescue, to survive, to flee

We also analyzed some illustrations:

The route of the ship after the collision

The Island of Giglio and the ship at the bottom of the picture taken from a sattelite

Italian people wear T-shirts with a quote from the coast guard talking to the captain: "Get back on board! Damn it!"



The previous routes





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