The Best and Worst Holiday

1. Warm up
Look at the images below and match them to the types of holidays.
adventure holiday beach holiday camping holiday
city break cruise theme park holiday

1 ____________________ 2 ___________________ 3 ____________________

4 ____________________ 5 ____________________ 6 ____________________

Answer the following questions.

1. What are the good things and bad things about each holiday?
2. What type of holiday do you prefer? Why?

2. Focus on vocabulary
A. Match each word or phrase to its correct definition.
Group 1
excel (v) cabin (n) stimulate (v) unbeatable (adj.) unique (adj.)
1. ______________ a small house, usually made of wood
2. ______________ impossible to defeat
3. ______________ make someone interested or excited about something
4. ______________ be very good at something
5. ______________ being the only one of its kind
 Group 2

horizontal (adj.) literally (adv.) sandy (adj.) tropical (adj.) vertical (adj.)

1. ______________ covered with sand

2. ______________ coming from, found in or typical of a hot, sunny place
3. ______________ going straight up or down
4. ______________ flat and level and going across
5. ______________ in the most exact, obvious way

B. Write the correct word or phrase from Part A in each sentence.

1. This place is a _______________ paradise. I‟d love to stay forever.
2. There are _______________ millions of people on Facebook right now.
3. Young children should be given toys that _______________ their senses.
4. He was laid _______________ on the floor. I asked him what he was doing,
and he said, „sleeping‟!
5. You will be given a _______________ code. Don‟t share it with anyone.
6. We stayed in a little _______________ in the mountains when we went skiing
last winter.
7. The team look _______________ at the moment. They haven‟t lost all year.
8. All children _______________ at something whether it is maths, science,
sports or music.
9. There was a _______________ drop from the top of the cliff to the beach
below.
10. I much prefer _______________ beaches to those with lots of stones.

Answer these questions

1. What do you excel at?
2. Would you like to go to a tropical island for your holidays? Why/Why not?
3. Listening: holiday disasters
What holiday disasters are these?

1 __________ 2 _________

3 _________ 4 _________

5 __________ 6 __________

Write down three things that can go wrong on a holiday.

1. ____________________
2. ____________________
3. ____________________
Watch the video ‘Are These the Worst Vacation Disasters?’ and then choose the
best answers to complete the table.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rx_uLg3Fs_Q

Holiday Where What went wrong Vocabulary

Bedbug fight The Bahamas bite, …..

Lava bombs Hawaii lava, …..

Plane tantrum Germany to USA behaviour problem,

…..
Squatters Oklahoma trash, …..

Fire fest The Bahamas exclusive, …..

What went wrong

- people living in their house
- insects in their bed
- child screaming for 8 hours on plane
- festival on island cancelled after guests arrived
- volcano erupted

Vocabulary
- refugee camp
- mattress
- ailes
- strangers
- erupted
4. Speaking
After Summer Vacation

 Did you enjoy your last vacation? (How was your vacation?) Where did you go?
How long did you stay? How did you get there?
 Where is your favorite place to go on vacation?
 What interesting people did you meet? Tell me about them. What souvenirs did
you buy?
 What was the best food you ate during your vacation?
 What was the most enjoyable thing that you did during your vacation?
 What was the most interesting thing that you did during the vacation?
 Did you spend time with your friends? What did you do? Who did you spend most
of the time with?
 Did you go to the seaside? What did you do there? What interesting places did
you visit?
 Did you read any books? Tell about them.
 Did you watch any interesting films?
 Did you study during the vacation? If so, what did you study?
Transcripts
Are These the Worst Vacation Disasters?
Narrator: Vacations are supposed to be fun and relaxing, but these tripswere anything
but enjoyable.

Bedbug fight
Cindy: ‟ve never been in so much pain in my life.
Narrator: This woman went to bed at a popular resort and woke up covered in bedbug
bites. Cindy Avila of Miami was staying at the Atlantis on Paradise Island in
the Bahamas. She was shocked when her husband lifted the mattress. Avila
filed a lawsuit against the resort. A representative for Atlantis said an offer
was made to pay for Avila‟s medical bills which she refused.

Lava bombs
Narrator: Tourists in Hawaii got a little too close to an active volcano and were in
striking distance of flying lava bombs.
Aaron: It was so scary. It was like a firework was shooting at my face.
Narrator: Aaron and Bryan Welsh were on a boat with about 50 people near the
Kilauea volcano when it erupted sending hot lava into the air, some of which
hit nearby tourists.
Bryan: You see a rocket and it‟s blowing charcoal coming right at you. There‟s no
time to react.
Narrator: Four boats were later told to keep a safer distance from the volcano.

Plane tantrum
Narrator: Passengers on this flight were treated to eight hours of this child‟s high-
pitched screaming tantrum.
Shane: Everybody was just kind of looking at each other like oh this is gonna be a
long flight.
Narrator: Shane Townley shot the video and says this went on the whole time from
Frankfurt, Germany to Newark, NewJersey. He says he heard the child‟s
mother tell flight attendants that he had behavioural problems and asked
them to turn on the Wi-Fi so she could pull up a video for him to watch on her
tablet, but nothing seemed to satisfy the kid.
Shane: She kind of looked like she was used to it. He was climbing all over the
chairs he was just screaming and he would not let up. He was running up
and down the aisles there was nothing she could do.

Squatters
Narrator: This woman‟s nightmare started when she got home from vacation and
found as many as 10 strangers living in her house.
Crystal: It was a shock I mean it was I didn‟t understand how people could do that.
Narrator: The squatters were in the Oklahoma house for a week and a half before
police came and gave them the boot. But Taylor says that was plenty of time
for them to trash her home.
Crystal: You‟ll notice their stains everywhere there were litter boxes in every room. I
just never imagined the house looking this. It‟s sad.

Fire fest
Narrator: And who could forget the Fyre Fest that went up in smoke. Promotional
videos that featured some of the most famous models in the world promised
a luxury music festival on an exclusive island in the Bahamas.
Accommodation sold out within 48 hours but when people arrived, they
couldn‟t believe what they saw.
Tourist: It looked like a refugee camp!
Narrator: Disaster relief tents and rain-soaked mattresses were not what these guests
were expecting after some of them paid up to $12,000 for five-star
accommodations. After many people arrived organizers cancelled the festival
claiming there were “circumstances out of our control”.