ESL lesson plan | B2 | The true story behind Black Friday

Summary

This ESL lesson for B2 English students explores Shopping, history, etymology. Using a real video as the basis for discussion, students develop reading and listening comprehension, vocabulary, and grammar skills across a 90-minute class.

The grammar focus is Language of Origin and Causation. Key vocabulary includes retailers (noun), manic (adjective), derives from (phrasal verb) and more, all drawn directly from the source material. The practical English section gives students useful phrases for real-life situations: You are shopping with a friend during a big sale. You need to decide if a 'deal' is really a good value and persuade your friend to either buy or not buy something..

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Activities

A warm-up discussion to activate prior knowledge and get students thinking about the topic before watching or reading.
Comprehension exercises based on the video to check understanding of the main ideas and key details.
A grammar focus on Language of Origin and Causation. When discussing history and etymology, we often use specific verbs and phrases to explain where something comes from or what caused it. Verbs like 'derive from', 'originate in', and 'come from' are used to trace origins.
Vocabulary expansion with advanced expressions related to Shopping, history, etymology not found in the source material.
Practical English phrases for You are shopping with a friend during a big sale. You need to decide if a 'deal' is really a good value and persuade your friend to either buy or not buy something., with exercises to practise using them naturally.
A speaking task where students role-play a real-world scenario, applying vocabulary and phrases from the lesson.

00:04 Black Friday is the day after the American Thanksgiving holiday and the first day of the traditional Christmas shopping season.

00:10 Retailers in the US offer reduced prices and things tend to get manic with crowds of consumers flooding stores.

00:17 The term Black Friday has been around since the 1960s, but where does it come from?

00:22 A popular theory is that the name derives from retailers' balance sheets going from being in the red to being in the black. In other words, it's when retailers finally begin to turn a profit for the year.

00:35 The use of those colors comes from the fact that historically red and black inks were used for debit and credit respectively in keeping accounts.

00:43 But like many of the most tidy and amusing etymological stories, this one is too good to be true.

00:51 In fact, the black in Black Friday is the more common use of the word black to refer to a day associated with disaster, like Black Thursday for the devastating 1929 stock market crash that precipitated the Great Depression.

01:04 The use of Black Friday for the shopping day after Thanksgiving seems to have originated in the city of Philadelphia as a joke among police officers and bus drivers who dreaded working that day due to the intense traffic congestion.

01:15 The Oxford English Dictionary includes several earlier uses of Black Friday referring to distinct events, including the 6th of December 1745 when the landing of Charles Stewart, the Young Pretender, was announced in London.

01:27 And the 24th of September 1869, when government attempts to stop speculators cornering the US gold market led to financial panic.

01:37 It was even used in 17th century school slang to refer to a Friday when an examination was held.

01:44 The shopping frenzy is certainly the most common use now, and it's also becoming increasingly popular outside of America.

01:51 The custom of Black Friday sales and the word itself have recently begun to make inroads in the United Kingdom.

01:56 This is a rather surprising development because the holiday of Thanksgiving is not celebrated there, so British people don't have a long weekend on the fourth Friday of November or leftover turkey and pumpkin pie to look forward to when they return home from shopping.

02:10 Black Friday indeed.

Vocabulary focus

The vocabulary section introduces B2-level words and phrases related to Shopping, history, etymology. Key terms include retailers (noun), manic (adjective), derives from (phrasal verb), balance sheets (noun), turn a profit (idiom). Students practise using these terms in context through exercises drawn from the source material.

Grammar focus

This lesson focuses on Language of Origin and Causation. When discussing history and etymology, we often use specific verbs and phrases to explain where something comes from or what caused it. Verbs like 'derive from', 'originate in', and 'come from' are used to trace origins.

The true story behind black friday

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Black Friday: understanding historical origins and etymology

Summary

Activities

Vocabulary focus

Grammar focus

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