Viruses and Vaccines Vocabulary and Speaking Lessons
The news around the recent coronavirus includes a lot of vocabulary commonly used in discussions of epidemics. Viruses and vaccines is a good teaching topic for students studying in the fields of health and the medical sciences. Of course, it is such an important public health topic that it’s good for all students.
1 Expressing opinions about viruses and vaccines
This is a vocabulary and discussion exercise. It worked well in classes.
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2 Inventing a Vaccine to Save the World
Katalin Kariko and the story of mRNA
This is a reading comprehension exercise about the people who invented a vaccine for the coronavirus.
Inventing a Vaccine to Save the World (PDF)
3 Coronavirus vaccine vocabulary and questions
This is similar to the earlier exercises (below) but focuses on the vaccines for the coronavirus.
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4 Coronavirus: effects, testing and statistics
This exercise deals with some of the impacts and issues surrounding the coronavirus. It expands into vocabulary for dealing with a pandemic (a public health crisis) and an economic crisis.
Coronavirus: effects, testing and statistics (PDF)
5 Parts of speech for infectious diseases/coronavirus
This is a bit more challenging and advanced. It gets deeper into the grammar and language used to talk about a pandemic.
Parts of speech for infectious diseases/coronavirus (PDF)
6 Coronavirus lesson
I have been teaching the English language to medical technology students for many years so I have accumulated a lot of medical sciences related materials. In particular, I have a good library of images relating to medical topics. I realized that it would be quite easy to create a worksheet for the coronavirus.
7 Coronavirus reading comprehension
This is another exercise that focuses on the language of public health issues and the coronavirus.
Coronavirus reading comprehension (PDF)
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