Living in Amsterdam
This intermediate ESL lesson explores life in Amsterdam, based on a five-minute YouTube video where a student shares their experience of growing up in the city. The lesson is designed to be highly conversational, with a focus on video comprehension, vocabulary practice, and engaging speaking activities related to travel, culture, and lifestyle.
| Level | Vocabulary | Video length | Lesson time |
| B1 / Intermediate | 10 words | 5:08 min | 60 min |
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Vocabulary
- hot spot
- work out
- grab a bite
- immune
- fluent
- get around the city
- abbreviation
- head to
- comfort zone
- cozy
Contents
- Lead-in
- Vocabulary match
- Video preview
- Video
- Questions
- Comprehension
- Discussion
- Speaking
- Writing
Lead-in
This B1 ESL lesson starts with a lead-in section featuring several questions about Amsterdam. Students will discuss whether they’ve ever visited the city, what they think life is like there, their stereotypes about the Netherlands, and the languages spoken in the country. They will also look at pictures of things commonly associated with Amsterdam and share their thoughts on them.
Vocabulary match, Video Preview
This ESL lesson is based on a five-minute YouTube video about what it’s like to grow up in Amsterdam. First, students will move on to the vocabulary section, where they will match words with their definitions. Then, there will be a video preview section, where students will examine several screenshots from the video and try to predict what the video will be about and which topics will be mentioned.
Video, Questions, Comprehension
The video for the class is five minutes long. Students will watch it and focus on the main idea. Afterward, they will move on to the comprehension section, where they will answer questions and fill in the blanks with the missing words.
Discussion, Speaking
The next part focuses on practicing speaking. There will be a discussion section with questions based on the video. Additionally, there will be a fun speaking activity where students will consider various aspects from the slide and compare life in a random city of their choice to life in Amsterdam. Their classmates will listen and try to guess the city. Students will also have the opportunity to practice writing sentences for their comparison.
Writing
The final activity is a writing task, which can be done in class or assigned as homework. The topic is an Amsterdam city guide. Students will need to write a brief travel guide for someone visiting Amsterdam for the first time, including information discussed in class and vocabulary from the video for further practice.
