Why you sometimes have trouble opening doors

Advanced lesson plan (B2 and above): Why you sometimes have trouble opening doors - BUY ME A COFFEE if you like my FREE ESL content

Have you ever pushed on a pull door, even when it was clearly marked as such? Or pulled at a push door? According to Don Norman, a distinguished professor of technology, you shouldn't feel bad about it: it's actually the designer's fault. 

In this B2+ worksheet, students will 

• Study a video about "human-centred design";
• Learn door-related idioms; 
• Match phrasal verbs based on "SHUT" to pictures;
• Practise the definite article (and exceptions to the rule: "go to town" and "go to the town");
• Find the correct punchlines for pun-ny jokes about doors.

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Lesson objectives:

1) To match six phrasal verbs based on "SHUT" to pictures (to shut up, to shut away, to shut down, to shut off, etc.)

2) To complete a short exercise about the definite article (to go to the bed vs. to go to bed).

3) To understand nuance and puns with three door-related jokes about a gripping movie, a door with romantic problems and "ajar" vs. "a jar".

4) To explain "human-centred design" and why so many doors are unintuitive, using a video from Vox.

5) To expand the students' repertoire of idioms, matching six door-related idioms/phrasal verbs with their definitions. 

6) To improve reading comprehension by studying a short article about EpiPens and cinema fire doors. Their designs have caused befuddlement and even death in extreme cases.