ELON MUSK

Warm-Up Questions
Ask your teacher and classmates the following questions.

1. What do you know about Elon Musk?

2. Do you drive or are you interested in electric vehicles?

3. Would you like to travel to space someday?

4. What would you buy with a billion dollars?

MATCHING PART 1
Match the words on the left with the meanings on the right.

1 net worth (n) A to make someone leave a job or stop being involved in an
activity

2 economics (n) B attract and hold the interest and attention of

3 foresight (n) C to get or buy something

4 push out (phr.v) D extremely large

5 acquire (v) E concerned with the production, distribution, and

consumption of goods and services

6 physics (n) F something that is usual, typical, or standard

7 captivate (v) G a science that deals with matter and energy and their
interactions

8 norm (n) H to combine or join together

9 merge (v) I the grand total of all your assets minus all your liabilities

10 whopping (adj) J the ability to predict what will happen or be needed in the
future

100,000 - One hundred thousand

1,000,000 - One million
1,000,000,000 - One billion

Watch the video and answer the questions.

https://youtu.be/Cz4hcECBnqk

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Missing Words Part 1
Watch the video again and complete the sentences. Part 1 is up to the 2:48 mark.

Elon Musk - CEO & Chief Engineer at SpaceX, CEO & Product Architect at Tesla, Inc, new
owner of Twitter, previous co-founder of Paypal, and wealthiest person on the planet with an
estimated ………………………..1 of around $274billion…not bad going for a guy who
recently turned 50!

Born to a Canadian mother and a South African father, Musk grew up in South Africa and
moved to Canada when he was 17, then later to the United States where he studied
economics and ………………………2 at university.

He started up and co-founded his first business aged just 24, Zip2, a web software company
that was later …………….………3 by Compaq, the American IT company for a
………………………..4 307million US dollars (cash, no less….wowzers!). Prior to this
success, Musk could hardly afford an apartment and was sleeping in his office, showering at
the YMCA, and working a second job at night.

Always searching for his next project, Musk then co-founded X.com in 1999, an online
financial service. He had the excellent …………………………5 to realize that online banking
would become the norm and he wasn’t wrong. However, not unlike Steve Jobs, Musk was
pushed out, not once, but twice before the company ……………………..6 with PayPal and
then was later bought by eBay three years later for $1.5billion (in stock). As part of this deal,
Musk himself received around $176million….safe to say, he could …………………..7 his
own apartment by this time!

Following Musk’s first two massive business successes, he moved into ‘space’ territory
when he became heavily involved with the Mars Society, focusing on the importance of
………………………………...8 Musk was immediately captivated and keen to invest so he
started up and co-founded SpaceX, in 2002 with his own savings.

Get the full lesson plan with 12 pages of activities, transcripts, and answer key when
you sign up as a TeacherPro: www.pocketpassport.com

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Missing Words Part 2

Watch the video again and complete the sentences. Part 2 is from the 2:48 mark.

He is passionate about life on Mars; he truly believes he can ……………………..1 the planet
and that interplanetary and orbital spaceflight is the next logical step. To date, the company
has an impressive list of firsts, amongst them the first private company to send humans into
orbit and the first private company to send a spacecraft to the International Space Station.

Having ……………………………..2 transportation in space, Musk also set about doing the
same on Earth through Tesla. Since the company was created in 2003, its mission has
been to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy. Musk led much of the
……………………….3 investment and took an active role, first as a chairman on the board
and later as CEO and product architect in 2008. In 2020, Tesla became the most valuable
carmaker in history and its famous Model 3 has become the world’s best-selling
……………………………………………4

Musk doesn’t seem to know when to stop as far as business ventures go. In April 2022, he
took over the ……………………….5 social media platform, Twitter, for an estimated
$44billion…mere ……………………………………6 for Elon! He has long expressed his wish
that Twitter exercises more free speech and less moderation. He, himself, has been
involved in multiple lawsuits as a result of tweets he put out, yet he keeps on
tweeting….after all, he does have an enormous audience of 83million to entertain! It will be
interesting to see if he allows Mr. Trump to hop …………………………….7 as a regular
tweeter!

What does the future hold for Mr. Musk? Who could possibly predict? But you can bet if
there’s a ………………………..8 to be made, he’ll be right at the front of the line. Love him or
hate him (and there are a lot of people who lean either way), he has an eye for success and
will keep on going until there is life in space, apparently! To infinity and beyond…

Get the full lesson plan with 12 pages of activities, transcripts, and answer key when
you sign up as a TeacherPro: www.pocketpassport.com

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