Using AI to create a Breaking News English-style Lesson Materials

Prompt 1

I’m using Claude AI. It’s free and you can upload files to it.

I uploaded the PDF below and wrote this prompt:

Here’s an EFL lesson based on this article about Japan tourism. I want you to analyze the article and the lesson materials because I’m going to give you a different article and I will ask you to produce similar materials based on it.

Japan will reopen to overseas tourists and end its two-year pandemic closure. The government has decided to allow tourists from 98 countries from June the 10th. However, the opening will be tightly controlled. Initially, only package tour groups will be allowed in. A daily cap of 20,000 arrivals has been set. Authorities will monitor their movements to track any spread of Covid-19. All visitors have to test negative for Covid before they travel to Japan. Some may have to undergo an additional test and quarantine for three days. Japan has among the strictest border controls of any country. Its self-imposed isolation has played a part in its relatively low number of coronavirus cases.

Japan’s change of stance is welcome news for its tourism industry, which has suffered heavily over the past two years. The number of overseas visitors has fallen by over 99 per cent since pre-pandemic days. Japan saw a record 32 million foreign visitors in 2019. It was on track to achieve its goal of 40 million in 2020. However, Covid caused the number of inbound tourists to plummet to just 250,000 in 2021. The president of the Japanese airline ANA said: “I hope the border controls are loosened at the same pace as in other G7 countries to revitalize the local economy.” Japan’s loosening of its entry restrictions is timely. Last week, the World Economic Forum ranked Japan highest on its list of global travel destinations.

The PDF contains material I got from this Breaking News English lesson:

https://breakingnewsenglish.com/2205/220530-japan-tourism-m.html

Claude AI’s response

The article provides an overview of Japan’s plans to reopen to foreign tourism after about two years of strict border controls due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Here’s an analysis of the article and lesson materials:

1. The article covers key details like the date of reopening (June 10), the initial cap on arrivals (20,000 per day), restrictions on only allowing package tours initially, testing/quarantine requirements, and the rationale behind Japan’s strict stance.
2. Vocabulary matching and gap-fill exercises reinforce understanding of key words/phrases like “closure”, “tightly controlled”, “undergo quarantine”, “plummet”, “stance”, “revitalize”, etc.
3. The before reading activity gets students engaged by having them guess true/false statements based on the headline.
4. The synonym matching helps build vocabulary around travel/tourism.
5. The phrase matching tests understanding of common collocations and phrases from the article.
6. The discussion questions encourage higher-order thinking, allow sharing of personal views, and provide opportunities for further exploration of the topic. Questions cover reopening timing, concerns, travel policies, the pandemic’s future course, personal travel plans, public behavior regarding masks, long COVID, and COVID misinformation.

Overall, the materials cover the key content from the article through vocabulary work and comprehension exercises, while also providing opportunities for discussion, critical thinking, and personal response. The vocabulary levels seem appropriate for upper-intermediate to advanced students.

To produce similar materials for a different article, I would:

1. Closely read the new article to identify key vocabulary, phrases, facts, and discussion points.
2. Create vocabulary matching and gap-fill exercises focusing on the important terms and phrases.
3. Write true/false statements related to the main idea/topic to use as a pre-reading task.
4. Find synonyms for key words to use in a matching exercise.
5. Identify common collocations and sentence chunks for a phrase matching task.
6. Develop discussion questions that allow students to share views, make personal connections, and explore implications or related issues.

The goal would be to design integrated exercises and activities that build understanding of the article content while also providing speaking practice and opportunities for deeper exploration of the topic. Let me know if you need any clarification or have additional instructions!

Prompt 2

Here’s the new article. First, I want you to shorten it to approximately 250 words and simplify the vocabulary to a level appropriate to CEFR B1/B2 level adult students.

I copy pasted the text from here: https://news.ku.edu/news/article/2018/03/06/study-reveals-number-hours-it-takes-make-friend

(Fair use, don’t @ me bro.)

Claude AI’s response

Here is a shortened and simplified 250 word version with B1/B2 level vocabulary:

A recent study looked at how long it takes to make friends at different levels. The study was done by Professor Jeffrey Hall from the University of Kansas.

The study found that it takes around 50 hours of time together to become casual friends from being strangers. It takes 90 hours to become simple friends. And it takes over 200 hours before you can consider someone a close friend.

This means time spent hanging out, joking around, playing games and doing similar fun activities together. Just working together doesn’t really count as bonding time.

Hall said we have to put in that quality time together. You can’t become friends immediately. He said maintaining close friendships is one of the most important things we do in life.

For the study, Hall surveyed over 450 adults who had recently moved house or started university. He asked them about new people they met and how those friendships developed over time.

He found that when people start a new friendship, they quickly try to spend more and more time together. Some new university students spent one-third of their waking hours with a new close friend.

However, both people need to want the friendship. Hall said you can invite someone to spend time together, but you can’t force it. He suggests making friendship a priority by doing activities outside of work/school to show you want to be friends.

Previous research has linked having good friends early in life to being happier later on. So investing effort into making new friends can be very valuable.

Prompt 3

The prompt partially consists of a previous response Claude AI gave me. I figure it’s worded in the best way for it to understand what I want from it.

Based on the 250 word version of the article, I want you to do the following:

• Closely read the new article to identify key vocabulary, phrases, facts, and discussion points.
• Create vocabulary matching and gap-fill exercises focusing on the important terms and phrases.
• Write true/false statements related to the main idea/topic to use as a pre-reading task.
• Find synonyms for key words to use in a matching exercise.
• Identify common collocations and sentence chunks for a phrase matching task.
• Develop discussion questions that allow students to share views, make personal connections, and explore implications or related issues.

The final result

Claude AI gave me plain text, not this fully-formatted, ready-to-go PDF. I formatted it in Apple Pages.

Conclusion & Tips

Often times the AI doesn’t give perfectly usable as-is responses. If you want five discussion questions, ask for 20 and pick the best five. Use your God-given critical thinking skills to decide what use and want to discard.

One of the nice things about using Large Language Models (LLMs) for brainstorming is that they don’t get offended if you don’t use their ideas, so take advantage of it by asking for lots of ideas and choose the best ones.

Note that I fed it an example of what I wanted by uploading previously made material that fit my needs. This works better than trying to describe it and it’s also faster.

If you can get the AI to paraphrase your instructions, it’s pretty likely that’s the wording you should use in subsequent prompts. So after it analyzed the PDF, I used its own words to tell it what I wanted it to do.

It’s absolutely necessary to check for accuracy. For example, if you give it the transcript for a video and ask it to create comprehension questions, you have to make sure the questions and answers are factually correct. Which isn’t that much of a problem: If you had a meat-and-bones human being do the same work for you, you’d proofread and fact check it, right?