Life On Mars - An EFL/ESL lesson idea

I few weeks back I blogged (see here) about the BBC series Life on Mars. In it a police officer is involved in a serious traffic accident an weeks up, not in 2006 but rather in 1973. Is he mad? Dead? It's not clear. However, it did give me the germ of an idea for a lesson plan which I used with some of my older students (who remember 1973). The idea is that you go back to some point in the student's past and ask;

A - What were you doing in say, Spring 1999?
B - Think of three ways in which you have changed since then.
C - Three ways in which you are the same.
D - If you had to go back and live in that time again what would you miss about the present?

As you can see the list of possible questions is enormous. Also it's a great way to practice present perfect and past tenses in a natural way. This is especially important for Greek speakers as the way these tenses are used in Greek differs from the way they are used in English.

Also you could use the Peggy Sue Got Married variation and ask students would they done differently. A good way to practice those tricky third conditionals.

Here is a clip from the series;