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What Would Kids Do If They Were Rich?

That is the question that some BBC reporters asked a few children back in 1979 for the programme Junior That's Life. The answer is this funny video clip about the perception of wealth by innocent children that can be found on BBC Archive. 

Some of the most interesting words you can come across in this video are: cabbages, lettuce, carrots, a platinum ball, a display cabinet, a pistol, miserable, a piggy bank, a booby, jolly [rich], to polish, silly me! This video with subtitles can be watched by B2 students and above.

This video can be used to end a class about the topic "Money" with a touch of humour.  Here you can find a speaking task to discuss "Attitudes to Money",  and you can add a split reading task about two historical figures of Capitalism in the USA, John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie, which come with a simple vocabulary matching task with a key entitled "The Birth of Capitalism (... and Philanthropy)".  All these tasks are suitable for C1 students and even for B2 students.

Some of the most interesting words you will find in the Rockefeller biography are: a business trust, a partnership, [wealth] to soar, targeted [philanthropy], the hookworm, a trustee, a clerk, a janitor, [to feel] righteous, [transportation] rebates, pitiless, a grasping [monopoly], the boom and bust [of the business cycle], to rack up [profits], a well, a pipeline, to top out, a breakup, stock, to be broken up, [the companies' combined net worth rose] fivefold.

And in the Carnegie text: steel [industry], parlance, a bobbin [factory], a bill logger, [two companies] to merge, a pension fund, an oil derrick, a bond, a rags to riches [story], a dispute, unrest, to peak, staunch [anti-union sensibilities], to lock [the union] out, a lockout, to crush, a pivotal [demonstration], strikebreakers, to be tied in [for an assassination attempt].


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