How to teach and give the current political overview of the UK?

Question

I'm an English teacher (from the UK), who is normally required to teach Business English or just regular English classes. Being the only English teacher my school has; I've been asked to teach a group of Taiwanese politicians about the UK and more specifically to give them an overview of the current political situation.

Unfortunately politics has never really interested me much so my basic knowledge regarding politics and even a general overview of politics in the UK is serverely lacking (shame on me).

Can anyone point me in the right direction - where I might find a concise explanation of the current political overview or perhaps give me any tips on how to approach this problem? I only need to teach them 4 times (each class being 2 hours). I plan to dedicate one whole class to politics alone.

Any help or advice would highly be appreciated!

Answer 1

It depends, are you talking about the current situation or something that's more of the past?

Let's take it that your talking about the present day so you could do a few bits on;

1. Who are the major Party leaders (Brown, Cameron and Clegg) and whats the state of the parties (Labour divisions between New and Old Labour, Thatcherite vs Pro-Europe divisions within the Tory Party and The Orange Liberals vs the more left wing ones)

2. A case study? You could look at recent local elections or even the by-elections in Crewe and Nantwich which is a source of contraversy due to the Labour Parties attempt to label the Tories as "Toffs". How about Boris vs Ken in London?

3. Contraversy, the gaffes of Brown - the 10p tax rate and the mess over him not signing the Treaty of Lisbon with all of the other EU leaders

4. Britain and other countries - look at the role of the UK in the European Union, NATO and the UN. Also the "special relationship" with the USA?

- Maybe you could get the kids involved and select three of them as leaders of the major parties and get them to build up a manifesto as the lessons go on; then you can hold an election at the end of the 4th lesson and see who wins?

Answer 2

WA!

When I hear My neighbour talking about politic of Australia, I get dude.

Because I do not know how to say.

Sometimes, I could understand each word, but could not understand the whole setence. I always read the whole sentence at least for twice.

There are a lots of Teacher's Aid Resource on line for Teacher.