1303 plane crash survivors debate 2 preintermediate

Scenario
An airplane flying to the UK crashlanded (=fell) in the South Pacific
Ocean. Now the airplane is floating on top of the water. There are nine
survivors (=people still alive) out of the sixteen passengers
(=travellers) on the airplane. The crash site (=the place of the
accident) is about one and a half days of rowing (=moving the boat
with human power) from the nearest land. The survivors can use a life
raft (=a little boat) with room (=big enough) for four persons.
Your group must make a decision about who those four persons will
be. You have about 30 minutes to decide before the aircraft sinks.

The brief bios of the nine survivors
Tanja McFly (25). Tanja is divorced from (=opposite of
“married to”) her husband with a 5-year-old son. She is a
waitress in a night club. Because she works at night, her
mother has to look after (=take care of) her son. She wanted
to become a doctor but his son’s unplanned birth and his
divorce ruined (=killed) her plans. She has some internal
(=inside) injuries and her stomach hurts badly (=very much).
Andy Kiss (34). Andy is your pilot. She did a great job and the
airplane could land all right and did not break apart (=into little
pieces). She is single (=no husband) and has no children. She
started her career (=working) in the US Navy. She received
training in survival techniques (=tricks about how to survive)
while there. She has serious (=bad) injuries on her left arm,
which she can’t feel or move.

Bekele Hagos (21). Bekele is a sophomore (=2nd year student) at
SOTE Medical University in Budapest. He wants to move back to
his birthplace, Ethiopia after he finished medical university. He
speaks perfect English thanks to his English language education.

He has very poor (=bad) eye sight, but his glasses got broken in
the crash (=accident). He has no children. He was flying to the US
to meet his American girlfriend in San Diego.


Tulugaq Irniq (15). Tulugaq was born into a tiny Inuit tribe
(=group of natives) that speaks Inuqa, a language very different
than the rest of the (=the other) Inuit tribes. There are only 30
people who speak this language. The tribe gets smaller every
year, so the language may soon die out (=be dead). Tulugaq,
whose name means ‘raven’ (=a black bird), was flying to
California after marrying a linguist (=a language scientist) who
was doing field work in her tribe. She speaks no English.
Frank Smith (59) Frank became a hippy in the late sixties (=1965-69),
because he loved the new ideals of less shopping and free love. He
still lives (=didn’t leave) in a hippy community to this day (=today).
He owns (=has) only a tiny mobile home, an old chopper (=motorbike)
and a small piece of land. He and his wife sell organic vegetables and
make pottery (=plates and mugs). He has one grown-up (=adult)
child. They haven’t spoken for 5 years. He was flying to San Diego to
meet him again to mend (=repair) their broken relationship.

Meg Polanski (10). Meg is an only child and very hard to
control (=she’s a bad girl). She lives with her mother
only. She has a full-time babysitter, who she hates. She is
bullying (=hurting) her classmates in school, but they are
too scared (=afraid) to tell the teachers. She wants her
mother to buy her anything she wants. She loves to watch
TV.

Agent Malcolm (32). Agent Malcolm has two children and
works for the CIA’s anti- terrorism arm. His job is to listen to
private phone calls secretly to find terrorists. He is a
psychologist and nowhe is in Iraq interrogating (=talking to)
US terror suspects (people who may be criminals) in a secret
prison. The public (=everyone in a country) or their relatives
(=mother, father, etc.) don’t know that the suspects are there.

Marianne Polanski (38). Marianne is Meg Polanski’s mother. She
left her boyfriend, the father of her child, three years ago. She has
had more than one boyfriend since then (=after that). She is the
boss (=the director) of the marketing department of a multinational
company. She’s a chain smoker (=always smokes) and works all
the time. She often gets home late, and the babysitter takes care of
Meg until she’s not home. Marianne can’t discipline (=control)
Meg.

Thomas Waldorf-Astoria (59). Born into the rich Waldorf-Astoria
family, he owns fifteen large factories (=companies) on many
continents with more than 55 thousand employees (=people working
for the company). In the crisis (=bad times) today he wants to
modernize his company instead of firing (=kicking out) people. If he
dies, the oldest of his 8 children will be the new boss. The son wants
to fire 30 thousand employees to save money and pay less in
salaries (=the money you get) to the rest of the employees.


TEACHER’S NOTES

Aim:

This exercise may enable student groups to discover how they work together; their strengths and
how they need to improve.

Time required:
Thirty minutes as an icebreaker, one to one and a half hours with debriefing, depending on the
number of groups.

Resources:
A room where small groups can form; flip chart or overhead projector plus pens.

Procedure:
1 Give the students the handout of the scenario and the brief bio of the nine survivors and make
clear the 30 minute time limit imposed.
2 Explain that each group will have five minutes in which to report back and justify their decision.
Reporting back is not essential but gives the students the opportunity to explain their decisions. If
there is a large number of groups, an alternative would be to record their choices on paper for
display.
3 Carry out a debriefing of how the group had functioned. The questions you ask will depend
upon the learning you want the students to achieve from the exercise but should encourage
reflection on their experience.
Examples - How did they reach their decision?
What roles did group members adopt?
Did they listen to each other?
What have they learned about the functions of a group?
What would they do next time?