What are we going to do during this class?

A full ESA lesson to teach students how to describe your profession, financial status etc. The main part of the class will be an activate stage: students will start interviewing each other about their profession, apartments or houses they live in, economic difficulties they have come across during the recession.

We discuss the video and I give my students useful pieces of vocabulary they might need to express themselves. My students ask me in English and I reply them in English only. We cover basic vocabulary, grammar and common speech constructions we have come across while watching the video.

I work with the students on the language and grammar that caused them difficulty during the discussion.

'Deaf Group' game. Everyone including me pretend we are deaf. I play back a phrase from the pre-recorded podcast. All the group asks, 'What has the tourist asked?' One students reports his words using reported speech.

A divorced couple' game. A male student is a husband, a female student is a wife, two other students become a matrimonial attorney and a mediator. "Husband" tells how he sees the situation and his attorney and mediator retell his story, using Reported speech. Then the "wife" does the same and the game continues.

Staying Married for the Money

Well the economy is keeping people together, for better or for worse. Many unhappy couples are staying married and living [together] longer ... they are living together longer because they cannon afford to unload their homes. Christine Romans is back with us now. Unfortunately, there are a lot of us who know no people like this. Maybe not to that extreme, but who say, "we'd better find the way to get along because we cannot afford not to".

And I'll tell you when I first started covering the financial crisis, personal finance. People would tell me, "Look, you gotta not take any kind of risks in your marriage, and I said 'in your marriage', but it is exactly right 'cuz now [it is] really tough time to try to get divorsed".

The decision to end a marriage, it's personal, it's emotional, it's all too common. And once you finally decide to untie the knot, what happens if you cannot sell the house?

Breaking up is hard to do - just ask Sallie Frederick. She is getting a divorce, but she and her husband, fifteen years, still live together and not because they want to.

"My husband lives in a guestroom, and he comes home on Wednesday nights early to have dinner with the kids. And other nights he comes home late to give me my space. So it's not perfect, it has been difficult."

While her husband did not want to appear on camera she describes the divorce as already painful personal experience made more difficult by the recession.

"I really depend on my friends and family for emotional support. And I don't ... I cannot talk on the phone. I don't have privacy. My computer is in the kitchen, so I don't write things on the computer that I don't want someone looking over my shoulder and saying."

Celebrity divorce attorney Raoul Felder says the Fredericks [have] made the right choice.

"As far as the house is being concerned it is very sticky. People have to decide how much they hate each other, because if they can still live with each other, and the house or the apartment is big enough, they ought to stay together and wait for a rising market."

Add divorce to the list of casualties of the recession. The American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers says 37% of attorneys polled reported fewer divorces in the bad economy.

"Now things have gotten so bad that because they cannot sell their house and because their assets are down so much and because their debt is so high, they cannot afford to get a divorce. Now we have reached actually the next level: they cannot afford to break up even if they wanted to."

As for Sallie Frederick she says after legal bills for two divorce attorneys the couple switched to a less expensive mediator. She hopes the divorce is complete next month, but the couple plans to remain under the same roof.

"Right now there are 20 houses on the market in town that are in our price range, and there are no buyers. So my broker has pretty much prepared me that the house is going to sit for quite a while."

The divorce attorney Raoul Felder says the average divorce takes about eight months. It might be best for a lot of people, he says, "to", quote, "tread water [a little bit]" for now, he says, "trading in a little bit of misery today can save you a lot of money down the road". "Stay together", he says.

And for this couple, I know, it's fascinating. But what is their hopeful ending? Will they be able to sell the house and separate? Or will they be able to somehow work it out?

They think this divorce is gonna be done within a month. The house is to go anyway.

Christine, unusual set of circumstances facing people 'cuz of this recession, well.