Expressing certainty and uncertainty is one of the language functions that are used in everyday English. In this post, EFL Collective shares with you a free practical worksheet that you can use to teach these functions to your pre-intermediate learners.
The worksheet includes well-thought of activities at every step of the lesson. To familiarize your students with the context of the start-up conversation before they are set to listen, they can read the guiding note:
"Fouad is a second-year baccalaureate student and an active member in a local association for cooperation and development. He chats with Lynn, the president of a foreign association that promotes sustainable projects worldwide"
Likewise, to help your students fully understand the start-up conversation, you can pre-teach vocabulary items like sustainability, bike lanes, pedestrian walks, and any word you think they may not be familiar with.
True/false statements are there to help your students focus while listening. Do not forget to urge them to justify their answers during the correction of the task.
True/False statements Correction:
a. False. "....I can't say for certain...."
b. True. "We’ll help you make more bike lanes."
By correcting the first statement, you can introduce your students to the meaning of "certainty" and "uncertainty".
Once your students are familiar with the meaning of the two functions, you can have them read the conversation and copy related expressions in the table. They can be encouraged to add more expressions.
Exercise 2 Correction
| Expressing Certainty | Expressing Uncertainty |
| - Definitely/Certainly. - I can safely say that...... - Of course - I'm absolutely sure that.... - I'm positive. - I'm certain about.... - etc | - I can't say for certain; - You never know; - I have my doubts; - I'm doubtful about..... - I'm uncertain about..... - No one can say for certain; - Perhaps; - etc |
To make use of the expressions they just learned, the learners are asked to do exercise 3 where they respond to meaningful questions. By the way, there are no right or wrong answers as long as they are grammatically correct and the students use expressions of certainty and uncertainty.
Exercise 3 Suggested Correction:
a. No one can say for certain, but I hope we will all make it.
b. I am quite sure they will go farther in the competition, but to win it, I can't say for certain. Football is all about details sometimes.
c. I have my doubts because it was developed in a very short period of time.
For production, the students are asked to prepare conversations in which they ask about and express certainty or uncertainty about recent controversial topics like working women, family roles, genetically modified food, inflation and soaring prices, brain migration, etc. The task can be done in pairs or groups in a form of TV shows.
Your feedback is highly appreciated. Good luck 🙂
