Let’s talk about fast fashion.
Fast fashion is a term for cheap and low quality clothing that is rapidly produced and cycled in and out the market quickly to meet new trends.
1.) How important is your attire and clothing to you?
2.) What are the current styles?
3.) What do you consider out of style, tacky, or weird, in terms of clothing style?
4.) Of all the styles of dress, from all time, and from all a round the world, which do you like best?
WARM UP
INTERMEDIATE/ADVANCED
Start-Stop Video – How Fast Fashion Harms the Environment
Stop at 10 seconds – What do fast fashion and over-consumption have to do with one another?
Stop at 1:05 – Why is fast fashion so popular? What do consumers like about it?
Stop at 1:40 – What four problems are mentioned?
Stop at 1:52 – Estimate the cost of gathering your own materials and sewing yourself a T-shirt.
Stop at 2:28 – What does the professor want people to do differently?
Stop at 3:23 – What did the professor and her students discover?
End – Summaries the main ideas of the video in three sentences. What are your thoughts?
VOCABULARY AND READING
ALL LEVELS
Memory Game – Match the clothing vocabulary game
When a player makes a match, they gain points by making sentences in targeted grammar.
INTERMEDIATE/ADVANCED
Vocabulary
a bit worn
frayed at the edges
torn along the seam
missing a button
stuck zipper
READING
Short Explainer: Fast Fashion, Britannica (A2-C2)
Explainer: What is Fast Fashion? (B2-C2)
GRAMMAR
INTERMEDIATE
Review the Perfect Tenses
Present Perfect
Past Perfect
Future Perfect
Present Perfect Continuous
Past Perfect Continuous
Future Perfect Continuous
HIGH INTERMEDIATE/ADVANCED
All Perfect and Perfect Continuous tenses together – A grammar lesson
SPEAKING AND CONVERSATION
Conversation Questions – Option for Present/Past or Future Tenses questions
What has happened to me? – Present Tenses Conversation Activity
Invent a first person account of the clothing’s history. Take turns adding to the story.
1.) The first person imagines any piece of clothing.
2.) The next person describes how it was ‘born’, or how it was sold to its first customer.
3.) The next person describes how it came to be in another person’s possession.
4.) The next person carries on the story. Go around until the story is finished.
Further Reading
ADVANCED
The History of Sweatshops – Reading from the Smithsonian (C1- C2)
