The Metaverse

LESSON OVERVIEW

This free ESL lesson plan on the metaverse has been designed for adults and young adults at an intermediate (B1/B2) to advanced (C1/C2) level and should last around 45 to 60 minutes for one student.

Leaders in the tech industry have been championing idea of the metaverse for years. For them, it is the next stage in the technological revolution where humans will come together to interact with each other in cyberspace. This belief was so strong in Mark Zuckerberg that he changed the name of Facebook to Meta (an abbreviation of ‘metaverse’) to make it clear that he considers his social networking site to be at the centre of this virtual universe. Some fear that the metaverse will replace face-to-face human interaction in the future; others believe we are already there considering how communication via social media has already become the norm. In this ESL lesson plan on the metaverse, students will have the opportunity to discuss and express their opinions on issues such as the benefits of the metaverse, the potential downsides, and how it will affect our perception of reality.

This lesson plan could also be used with your students to debate these issues for Virtual Reality Day, which takes place in November. For more lesson plans on international days and important holidays, see the calendar of world days to plan your classes for these special occasions.

For advice on how to use this English lesson plan and other lesson plans on this site, see the guide for ESL teachers.

PRE-CLASS ACTIVITIES

Reading activity
Before the English class, send the following article to the students and ask them to read it while making a list of any new vocabulary or phrases they find (explain any the students don’t understand in the class):

Stack Overflow | You’re living in the Metaverse, you just don’t know it yet.

The article takes a look at what the metaverse is, and suggests that, thanks to the effect of the pandemic and the current trend for trading in unique digital assets, many of us are already living in the metaverse. At the start of the class, hold a brief discussion about what the students thought about the article. What do they think about the issues raised in the article? Do they agree with what was said? Can they think of any ways they might disagree with the content of the article?

Video activity
To save time in class for the conversation activities, the English teacher can ask the students to watch the video below and answer the listening questions in Section 3 of the lesson plan at home. There are intermediate listening questions and advanced listening questions so teachers can decide which would be more appropriate for their students. Check the answers in the class.

The video for this class is called “What is the ‘metaverse’?” by Reuters which explains what the metaverse is and how it might look in the future.

IN-CLASS ACTIVITIES

The focus in the class is on conversation in order to help improve students’ fluency and confidence when speaking in English as well as boosting their vocabulary.

This lesson opens with a short discussion about the article the students read before the class. Next, the students can give their opinion on the quote at the beginning of the lesson plan – what they think the quote means and if they agree with it. This is followed by an initial discussion on the topic including how the metaverse will change our lives, how the metaverse should be regulated and how the metaverse might be considered dangerous.

After this, students will learn some vocabulary connected with the metaverse such as augmented reality, avatar and virtual world. This vocabulary has been chosen to boost the students’ knowledge of less common vocabulary that could be useful for preparing for English exams like IELTS or TOEFL. The vocabulary is accompanied by a cloze activity and a speaking activity to test the students’ comprehension of these words.

If the students didn’t watch the video before the class, they can watch it after the vocabulary section and answer the listening questions. Before checking the answers, ask the students to give a brief summary of the video and what they thought about the content.

Finally, there is a more in-depth conversation about the metaverse and reality. In this speaking activity, students will talk about issues such as how humans might interact differently with each other in a virtual world, how perceptions of reality differ amongst different people, and whether or not we might already be living in a computer simulation.

HOMEWORK

After the class, students will write about their opinion of the metaverse. This could be a short paragraph or a longer piece of writing depending on what level the student is at. The writing activity is designed to allow students to practise and improve their grammar with the feedback from their teacher. For students who intend to take an international English exam such as IELTS or TOEFL, there is an alternative essay question to practise their essay-writing skills.