Welcome to a unit about the issues involved in the release of captured marine mammals. I hope you enjoy working through the activities here. Please contact me if you have any trouble.

In this unit, your will become familiar with a number of issues associated with the release of captured marine animals back into the wild. You should follow these steps:

1. Become familiar with some useful vocabulary and idioms


2. Test your understanding of the vocabulary and idioms from activity #1 by doing this cloze test.


3. Read this article. It will give you some background information on the issue that you will be studying in this unit. Write 10 questions about the article and email them to your partner to answer to check their understanding of the article and to challenge them to provide some opinions about the article. Print your partner's reply for your clear file.Don't forget to send feedback to your partner about their answers!


4. Answer the questions about the article in the email from your partner. This will check your understanding and elicit some of your opinions about the contents of the article. Print a copy of your reply for your clear file. Don't forget to print a copy of the feedback from your partner about your responses to their questions! You should put this into your clear file as well.


5. You will be assigned a group by your teacher. Go to this site and follow directions for your group.You will be asked to do some research about a specific area of the unit, and to present on it. You will also be asked to prepare a vocabulary activity and a discussion activity to support your presentation.
   The format for your presentation should be negotiated with the members of your group.You can be as creative as you like, as long as the presentation communicates the essential information you have researched in your topic area.
   You may like to use this vocabulary profiling webpage to find if the vocabulary that you decide to teach comes from a)the 2000 most commonly occuring words in English, b)the list of 570 academic headwords, or c)other ... this would include names of people and places, as well as words relating specifically to this field, or area of study. Please indicate to your audience which list each vocabulary item comes from.


6. Give your presentation on the date specified by your teacher. Please participate actively in these presentations, since the information you learn from each group will be useful in the following week. Don't forget to complete the feedback forms for each group after they conclude their presentations.


7. In the class following the presentations, there will be a debate class. Topics will be posted one week prior to the debate. Check back here for more details at that time.


8. Finally, please submit your self- and unit- evaluations and your clear file to allow for the evaluation and assessment of this unit by the teacher.