Maps pairwork dictation

Give pairs of students different maps of the same region of the world with half the country
names tippexed out of each one. They then explain one of the countries they have on their
map until their partner guesses which one it is or gives up. They then describe where the
country is on the map so that their partner can write the name in at the right place. When
they have done the same with all the countries, they can compare their maps to make sure
that they now both have all the countries written in in the right places.

10. Identifying music

Students listen to some traditional folk music or pop from another country and try to guess
where it comes from. Things that could help them and make the topic more interesting
include having pictures of the instruments used labelled by country, pictures of people in
traditional dress dancing to the different kinds of music, and giving them hints if they guess
wrong (“Warmer”/ “Colder”, “This country is further South” etc).

11. Comparatives guess the country

Students explain one country in relation to others until their partners guess which country
they are talking about, e.g. for Italy they could say “It’s food is more famous than Spanish
food”, “It is hotter than Germany”, “It is more historic than the USA” and “People there are
more stylish than Australians”.

12. Superlatives guess the country

Students try to guess which country is the largest, has the longest river etc. Alternatively,
students pick a country and have to find as many superlatives about that country as they can
from web research.

13. Guess the country/ guess the language 20 questions

Students ask up to 20 Yes/ No questions to try and guess which country or nationality
someone is thinking of. Possible questions include “Are there any famous sports/
sportsmen/ actors/ foods from that country?”, “Is the weather hot/ cold/ humid?”, “Is it in
America/ Africa/ Asia?”, “Do they speak Spanish/ a tonal language/ loudly?” and “Is the
food spicy/ popular here/ healthy?” Alternatively, they could ask questions to try to guess
things that famously come from one country, e.g. “Is it Australian?”, “Is it an animal?” and
“Does it jump?” for “kangaroo”.

14. Country/ nationality bluff

Give different groups three different surprising but true pieces of information about
different countries and ask them to make up two more which are false but sound possible.
They then read out the five sentences (or just two of them) to the class and the other teams
guess which ones were made up and are therefore false. Another way of doing this is to
give each team five different surprising but true pieces of information, and get them to
change two, e.g. by changing the nationality word, to make them false.

15. Identifying national flags

Trying to identify flags of different countries is always fun and especially popular with
younger students. You can add more language to this by one student describing the flag and
then the country until the others guess what it is without looking at it, e.g. “It’s got three
vertical stripes. Two stripes are red, and the middle stripe is white. In the middle stripe,
there is a leaf. It’s a maple leaf, and the most famous food from this country is maple
syrup.” Another possibility is to give descriptions of what the flags mean and how they
came about so that students can use that information to match the texts to the flags and then
guess which country each one came from.

1. Clothes search
The teacher shouts out an item of clothing and students try to find a picture of that thing as
quickly as possible. This can be done with magazines (it also works if different people have
different magazines), the textbook (if it has lots of pictures) or on the internet (e.g. on one
internet shopping site). To make it more challenging and add more language, try describing
the clothes in more detail, e.g. “A red hat” or “A smart shirt”.

2. Clothes search 2
This is similar to Clothes Search above, but students compete to find the best match to what
the teacher says, e.g. “The shortest skirt”, “The biggest hat” or “A really tarty outfit”.

3. Clothes memory
Students close their eyes and are tested on what their teacher and classmates are wearing.
This can be done with the questions being asked by the teacher, by other teams, or by their
partner. If you can’t trust them to close their eyes, send one or two people outside the
classroom, ask questions about those people’s clothes, and check the students’ answers
when those people come back in.

4. Clothes memory 2
You can do something similar to Clothes Memory above with a picture. Students look at
what the people in the picture are wearing, turn over the picture, and then are tested on it.
This works best if it is a picture of a situation where they really might try to remember what
people were wearing, e.g. just before a crime happened or a fashion show catwalk.

5. Clothes picture difference

Give students two similar pictures where some of the clothes, e.g. five items, are different.
The differences could be colour, length, or item of clothing (e.g. the old man wearing a
bowler hat in Picture A but a cap in Picture B). Each pair of students describes the clothes
on their worksheets without showing their pictures to each other, continuing until they have
found all the differences. The easiest way to create these kinds of worksheets is to take one
picture and alter it to make the second version, e.g. changing colours etc with Photoshop or
using a drawing and Tippex. If it is too obvious which bits have been changed on the
pictures, change some more bits on both version in the same way as red herrings, e.g.
drawing the same handbag on both versions. When students have finished the activity, they
could discuss something such as which of the two outfits is better.

6. Clothes picture similarities

Students are given two very different pictures with people in them and must find as many
similarities as they can by describing their pictures, without showing the picture to their
partner. For example, they might be able to come up with similarities such as “There are
people wearing skirts in both pictures”.
7. Incomplete pictures
Give students the same picture with different information or parts of the picture missing
from each one. For example, Tippex out the handbag in Student A’s picture and the high
heeled shoes in Student B’s picture. They then ask each other questions to fill in the gaps,
e.g. “What is the tall woman wearing on her feet?” Other things that can be taken out and
filled in by the students include people’s names (“What is the woman wearing dangly
earrings called?”) and names of clothes in the pictures (e.g. “It’s like a skirt but the man is
wearing it. What is it called?” “On my picture it says that it is a kilt”)

8. Real but absent pictures

A nice way of adding some personalisation to the use of pictures to practise clothes
vocabulary is to ask students to describe a real photo in precise detail, including what
people were wearing when it was taken. They can bring the photo into class (but not show
it to their partner), just try to remember one, or even remember a real scene which they
don’t have a photo of and describe it as if they did. As their partner is listening, they can
draw what is being described or just ask as many extra questions as they can (e.g. “Was it a
short-sleeved shirt?”).

9. Guess from the clothes

Another way to add personalisation is for a student to describe what they were wearing at
one particular time (e.g. a graduation ceremony, a job interview, a ball or a first date) so
that their partner can try and guess what the situation was. Students can also do the same
thing with other people they know or have seen, e.g. the local milkman or bin man, for their
partner to guess who they are talking about.

10. Decide on the clothes

Students are given a situation, e.g. television interview or graduation ball, and have to
decide which clothes would be best. One way of adding more language to this activity is to
only give them written descriptions of the clothes that they can choose from, showing them
the pictures only after they have chosen the outfits. Alternatively, they can write down the
choice of any clothes they like, so that the other teams can read all the descriptions and vote
on the best. Another possibility is to give each Student A and Student B different
worksheets with different pictures of clothes on from which they should describe the
clothes as they decide which combinations are best, e.g. “My picture seven is a very narrow
black skirt with a long slit. I think it would look good with your picture six, if I understood
you correctly”.

Present Continuous tense activities with no or minimal resources

1. Make me say “Yes, I am”/ Make me say “No, I’m not”Students take turns asking yes/
no questions that they think their partner will probably say “Yes, I am” to such as “Are you
sitting down?” and “Are you feeling tired?”. They get one point for each positive answer
from their partner, as long as no one has already used that question. Students might need a
list of suggested verbs such as “wear”, “think”, “worry”, “touch”, “move” and “carry”. You
could also allow sentences with your like “Are your eyelashes moving?”

2. Happening now brainstorming

Students look around the room and/ or out of the window and make as many true sentences
as they can about what is happening, e.g. “She is breathing” and “They are walking”. If you
want to score, give one point for each sentence that hadn’t been said before, perhaps
allowing the same sentence with a different subject (“He is breathing”, “We are breathing”
etc.) with lower level groups. If you are including actions in the classroom, you can
encourage the other students to do lots of actions for their classmates to make sentences
about, or you can do the opposite and encourage them to try and stay still and so only
accidentally give their classmates something to describe (e.g. “He is sniffing”). You might
want to allow use of bilingual dictionaries to boost the level of language used.

You can also do this game with only one person looking and the other people guessing
what is happening outside the window etc., with the person who is looking giving points for
any sentences which are both factually and grammatically correct.

3. What are you hearing?

Students guess what is happening from what they can hear. The sounds can be things
happening naturally in the class (“A clock is ticking”), sounds that the teacher or their
classmates are making deliberately (“You are kicking the table”), or things happening on a
video or in a recording. They obviously need to close their eyes for most of these, or their
view can be blocked, for example with a piece of cardboard in front of the TV or a blanket
held up behind which people make sounds. If you have the technology, groups of students
could also gather sounds on a recording device and then play them back for others to guess,
or find similar sounds online.

Students can just guess what action they are hearing (“Somebody is moving their desk”
etc.), who is doing it (“Who is coughing?” “Joao is coughing” etc.), or how many people
are doing it (“How many people are jumping?” “Seven people are jumping” etc.)

Suitable actions for students to deliberately make noises with in the classroom include
“opening and closing”, “knocking on”, “pushing”, “dropping”, “kicking”, and “turning”.

4. Present Continuous things in common

Students work together to find Present Continuous sentences which are true about both of
them, e.g. “We are both sitting down”, “We are both breathing”, “We are both feeling a
little cold” and “Our parents are working right now”. If you want to score, you can give
them one point for each true sentence which none of the other groups thought of.

5. Present Continuous projects

Students draw the scene that they are told to and add as many pictures of people doing
suitable things for that situation as they can, with a written description for each. For
example, students work together to draw 20 or so people in a park and label each person
with what they are doing. The pictures can be drawn, cut from magazines, or found online.
The same thing can also be done with animals, robots, monsters, aliens etc. doing the
actions.

The projects can be made more realistic and given context by making them advertising or
instructional posters, e.g. a poster of a theme park showing all the things that people are
having fun doing at one moment in time, or a poster showing all the things that are good
and bad for the environment that people are doing in a town right now.

6. I don’t know what he’s doing

Students try to ask questions about their partners’ families etc. that the person answering
doesn’t know the answer to, e.g. “What is your father doing?” and “Is your mother
watching TV?”

You can also make this into a bluffing game by students answering all questions and the
questioners guessing which answers are made up, perhaps after asking for more details like
“Why is he/ she doing that?” and “How do you know?” Especially with this variation,
students can also answer questions about their partners’ neighbours, friends, local postal
worker, boss, teacher in other classes, etc.

7. Present Continuous time zones guessing game

Using a map, globe or list of time zones, a student chooses a country and describes what is
probably happening there now without saying its name, e.g. “They are sleeping on futons”
or “They are eating tacos and playing guitars”. As well as matching the country, the
sentence must reflect the time in that place (by students calculating from the time
differences). Students continue giving hints until their partner guesses which country they
are thinking of.

8. Present Continuous picture search

Students are given magazines, catalogues or books that include lots of pictures of people
doing different things, e.g. fashion magazines, picture dictionaries or visual encyclopaedias.
Different people can have the same books etc or different ones each. Students search for
pictures that match what the teacher or a classmate says (e.g. “Someone is running”) as
quickly as possible. They can also search for a picture and sentence that no one else can
find, or search for a picture and sentence that no one has said yet.

This game can also be played with people spotting things in single very detailed pictures
such as pages from a “Where’s Wally?” book.

9. I’m still not getting through

Students roleplay telephone conversations where one person is trying over and over to get
through to the same other person, with the receptionist who answers giving a different
reason each time why that person isn’t available. This should eventually lead to more
unusual and amusing excuses like “He’s out jogging”. Students can then brainstorm and
rank good and bad excuses in that situation, and maybe try the same activity again.

10. We’re boasting on the phone

Students take turns describing the perfect scene where they are, trying to outdo the other
person with how wonderful the situation they are in is, for example “The sun is shining and
the birds are singing” “That sounds nice. Here are millions of stars are twinkling and a few
flakes of perfect snow are falling slowly from the sky”. You can ask students to imagine
specific scenes such as particular countries, tourist resorts, or holiday homes. It is also
possible to do it the other way round, with students “boasting” how awful the situation they
are in, with situations like holidays, city living, shared housing and jobs.

11. Present Continuous memory games

Students describe what is happening now from memory, i.e. without being able to see what
they are speaking about. The simplest way of organising this is for students to close their
eyes and answer questions about what is happening around them, e.g. “Where is John
sitting?” and “What colour shoes is Jeremy wearing?” Alternatively, they can brainstorm
everything that they can remember without questions to prompt them.

The same thing can be done with a picture that is turned over or scene from a video that is
turned off, probably after they look for 30 seconds and try to memorise it first.

12. Present Continuous guessing from hints games

Students guess the Present Continuous action or person doing it from spoken clues.

For the guess the action version, hints can include who is doing that action now (“Many
people all over the world are doing this now, but only a few people in this country are
doing it”, “My father is doing it now, and I guess your father is doing it too”, etc.), or how
the person who is doing it feels (“I’m feeling bored/ excited/ scared/ etc.”)

Students can guess the person from Present Continuous hints like “He’s working now”,
“He’s probably sitting in front of a computer” and “He’s almost certainly wearing a tie”.
The person can be someone who the person speaking knows (e.g. a family member) or
someone with a certain job.

The time zones game above is a variation on this.

13. Present Continuous spelling code game

Give or dictate a list of numbers associated with each letter of the alphabet, e.g. “A = 23”,
“B = 16”, etc. After checking that students have the right list of numbers written down, read
out an –ing form (e.g. “putting”), a Present Continuous phrase (“I’m wearing”, “He is
sitting”, etc.) or short Present Continuous sentence (“She’s having a bath”). Students write
down what they hear, add up the numbers associated with those letters, and shout out the
total, e.g. “A hundred and twelve!” The first person to shout out the right answer wins that
round. Students can then take the teacher’s role of reading things out and judging who got
the right answer first.

This game is good for recognising contractions and practising when to put double letters in
–ing forms (“shutting” but not “warnning” etc.)

14. Present Continuous Kim’s game

Students step out of the class, close their eyes or look away. When they look again, they
should list the things which have changed, e.g. “Henry is wearing a jacket” or “The teacher
is sitting down” because those things changed while they weren’t looking. They can also do
the same thing with pictures with differences (“The old woman is drinking coffee” because
that was different in the first version of the picture that you showed them) or two scenes
from a video (“She is wearing his jacket” because that has changed while the video has
been turned off). The videos and photos can also be made by students if you have the
equipment.

15. Present Continuous instructional play

Students design and act out a play showing someone doing lots of wrong things such as
things that are bad for the environment, things which aren’t allowed in school, or things
which are dangerous. One of the people in the group or someone in the audience shouts
“Stop” when something bad happens, the people acting freeze, and their teammate or
someone from the audience says what bad thing is happening which shouldn’t be, and why
it shouldn’t be done.

The same thing can easily be done with the teacher doing the actions, or with students
filming their plays on video cameras.

16. Present Continuous 20 questions

One student thinks of a verb and the other person asks questions like “Am I doing this
now?”, “Are you doing this now?”, “How many people in the world are doing this now?”,
“Are most people in Brazil doing this now?” etc until they guess which action is being
thought of. The students will probably need suggested questions like these, and maybe a list
of possible verbs like “breathe” and “sit”.

17. Present Continuous picture similarities and differences

Give students pictures of two busy scenes, e.g. two street demonstrations, two pictures from
Where’s Wally (= Where’s Waldo) books, or two photos of crowded town squares. Without
showing their pictures to each other, students must find Present Continuous sentences that
are true of both pictures or are only true of one (depending on what you tell them to do).
It’s obviously usually easier to find differences than similarities in such real pictures.
Many books also have photocopiable version of this, usually with each pair of students
having the same picture with five or ten small variations, similar to a children’s spot the
difference puzzle but again with students doing it without looking at each other’s pictures.
It’s quite difficult to make your own versions of this, because if you Tippex a picture and
make changes it’s usually too obvious where you’ve done so. Although this is less
satisfying than a single picture, the same thing works with twelve or so ClipArt pictures of
actions on the worksheets, with four or five of them being at least slightly different.

18. Present continuous tennis

Students “serve” an “I” Present Continuous phrase or sentence such as “I’m skiing” or “I
am taking a photo”, their partner returns with the second person form of the same thing, e.g.
“You’re skiing”. This continues through all the subjects that you want to practise. To
“return”, the next person must then choose another verb or sentence to continue the game
with such as “I’m feeling hungry”. If anyone makes a mistake or pauses for too long, they
start again with a serve with a new verb. This continues until someone has reached the
number of points that you set them as a goal, or the person with highest number of points
when you stop the game wins.

19. Bad and worse actions

Students take turns “boasting” about how annoying their (imaginary) spouse, parents,
teacher, friend, siblings etc. are using Present Continuous, e.g. “My brother is always
picking his nose” “That’s nothing. My sister is always picking her nose and eating it”.
Whenever both sides run out of ideas, they discuss which person actually sounds more
annoying and/ or guess how much of that was actually true about their real sister etc.

20. We are cutting

Students cut up scrap paper into the shapes of people (or animals, robots etc.) doing actions.
This can be producing what the teacher or a classmate says (e.g. “A horse is running”, with
points for the quickest and/ or best options), or trying to come up with as many shapes and
matching sentences as possible (written and/ or spoken).

21. He’s doing that first

Students are dealt out pictures which should be in some kind of order such as a cut-up
comic strip (with no dialogue). They have to describe what is happening to put them back
into order without showing them to each other, e.g. “In my picture a boy is tying someone’s
shoe laces together” and “In my picture a man is falling over, so it must be after yours”.

What Are You Seeing?, Present Continuous Miming Games and Present Continuous
Drawing Competitions below are also possible with no or minimal resources.

Photocopiables for classroom practice of Present Continuous

22. Present Continuous miming games

Miming sentences like “You are drinking tea” and “A gorilla is beating its chest” is by far
the most obvious thing to do with the basic meaning of Present Continuous, as it means
students are using the tense as they see an action in progress. To make that true, the teacher
or students should always continue doing the action until the people watching guess what is
being done (so that it is not more accurate to say “You jumped” or “You were jumping”).

It’s also possible for students to come up with their own things to mime. A nice way of
doing this is to give them a verb and ask them to take turns making actions that go with it,
e.g. “You’re having a bath”, “You’re having breakfast” and “You’re having a good time”
for “having”. This can still be done as a guessing game, or students can get one point for
each action they can both say and do. Students could also work in mixed-sex groups so that
they can get one point for each of “I’m swimming”, “We’re swimming”, “He’s swimming”,
etc.

A variation that involves both the teacher giving ideas and students coming up with their
own is the teacher giving a list of complex processes such as “You are making pizza” and
“You are changing a bicycle tyre”. The students mime single actions from that process one
by one, with their classmates trying to guess both the actions and the larger process, e.g.
“You rolling some dough. You’re making cookies.” “I am rolling some dough but I’m not
making cookies. Here’s the next action”.

Livelier classes might prefer to race to do the mime that the teacher chooses, with one point
for the first correct mime. To make it match the meaning of being in progress, the sentence
will need to be held up and left up while the miming is going on, or shouted out over and
over (by the teacher and/ or by the people doing the mimes).

Guessing and doing mimes can be made more challenging and fun by the mimes being
made with just hands (e.g. two fingers down representing a standing person), shadows,
puppets, soft toys, etc.

Another kind of miming challenge is for two or more students to try to exactly mirror each
other’s actions, with the people watching trying to spot and point out differences, e.g. “He’s
jumping but she’s hopping” or “She’s winking one eye but he’s blinking both eyes”.

You can add cultural training to these activities by having gestures that vary by country,
e.g. “You are calling a waiter” or “You are telling someone that it’s a secret”.

23. Present Continuous drawing competitions

Present Continuous drawing competitions can be to draw a sentence until the people
watching guess what the sentence is, rush to make the fastest and/ or best picture of the
sentence that the teacher or a classmate says (“She’s playing with a yoyo” etc), or draw and
write as many correct Present Continuous sentences as they can on the topic given (“At
school” etc) within the time limit.
24. Make them doing it

Students arrange slips of paper with words written on them to make sentences like “He + is
+ wearing + long + pink + socks” and “The + lion + is + sleeping”, then read out their
completed sentences.

You can ask them to make sentences of things that they’d like to draw on a picture, real
things that are happening in the classroom, things that they want people to act out, or just
things that could be true. Whether you want to then eliminate those slips of paper from the
game or put them back onto the table to be also used to make different sentences later is up
to the teacher, but the latter is usually better.

For students who have problems with reading and/ or grammar, you might want to provide
different kinds of words on different coloured paper and/ or different sizes of paper, e.g. all
the subject pronouns on small pieces of blue paper and all the verbs on larger green paper.

25. Present Continuous accusations

Students ask questions using the Present Continuous about bad things that they imagine
their partner is doing such as “Why are you hitting your brother?” or “Why are you wearing
underpants on your head?” Their partner must give a reason (i.e. they can’t say that they
aren’t doing it). The person who asked the question can reject bad reasons like “Because I
hate him” for “Why are you hitting your brother?” Note that students will probably need to
be at least Pre-Intermediate level to be able to explain their reasons in English. They will
also probably need a few on a worksheet to choose from before they start making up their
own accusations.

26. This is what I’m saying

Make a list of functional language which is used in particular situations, e.g. “I would have
loved to, but…” for politely rejecting invitations or “Thanks for having me” when you
leave someone’s house. The teacher or a student says one or more phrase for one situation
and the other people guess the situation with a Present Continuous sentence, e.g. “You are
rejecting an invitation” or “You are leaving someone’s house”. More confident classes can
also try this game with just a list of situations (“Apologising” etc) before being given the
phrases to use.

27. Bad habits sentence completion bluff

Students fill in the gaps in some sentence stems on a worksheet to make true and made-up
complaints about their neighbours, classmates, cousins, etc., e.g. “My mother is always
telling me ______________________” and “My bus driver is always
_____________________ the steering wheel”. Students fill in at least half of the sentences
with a mix of facts and imagination, then take turns reading out their sentences. After
questions about details (during which they can continue lying if the sentence was made up),
their partners guess if the sentence is true or false.
28. Shooting blind

This is based on a common use of Present Continuous in movies, namely someone working
for the secret services or police describing what is going on into a microphone. In the most
dramatic version of this game, one person is blindfolded and given something such as a
pencil to pretend is a gun. One person walks around the room and the other members of the
class describe what they are doing, using a Present Continuous sentence each time such as
“He’s walking in front of the whiteboard” and “He’s standing behind the teacher”. You’ll
need to be strict about use of this form so that they don’t just use prepositions of position.
Whenever the person with the “gun” feels confident of being able to shoot the right person
(without hitting any innocent bystanders and obviously without being able to look), they
aim and make a shooting noise. The rest of the class then judges how successful their shot
was.

A less dramatic version is for the person to go around the room and suddenly commit some
kind of crime, with the blindfolded person deciding when to launch an arrest, with
announcing too early or late being a failure.

This can also be done with a video, with the person facing away from the screen deciding
when to shoot or arrest someone from the description of the people who can see what is
going on.

Present Continuous Verb Guessing and Present Continuous Spelling Code Game
above can also be done with worksheets, as can Present Continuous Time Zones
Guessing Game with a worksheet giving the time zones of different countries. More
artistic teachers might be able to make their own Present Continuous Picture
Similarities and Differences Worksheets.

Technology-based Present Continuous classroom activities

29. Video activities for Present Continuous

Students can guess what is happening just from the sounds on a video and watch and check,
make as many true sentences as they can about a paused scene, shout out Present
Continuous sentences as the video is playing (getting no points if the action ends before
they finish speaking, as that would make the tense incorrect), or shout out Present
Continuous sentences from their worksheet when they think they are true. The last of those
activities can be good practice for typical confusions like “He is watching…” and “He is
looking at…”, with points taken off for sentences that are shouted out if they aren’t
(exactly) true.

The shouting out their own ideas for what is happening can also be limited in some way,
e.g. only things which seem dangerous or naughty.

If you have access to videoing technology, groups of students could also make similar
videos for the whole class to do those activities with.
Shooting Blind above can also be done with a video.

30. Pictures of Present Continuous

Students take digital photos of each other doing actions and then share them with the class.
The challenge can be to come up with pictures and Present Continuous sentences that no
other group has made, to take obscure photos that are difficult to work out the action from,
or to take photos to illustrate how to do or not to do something, e.g. different suitable and
unsuitable woodworking actions.

31. What are you seeing?

Students guess what action a picture shows even though they can only see a tiny part of it,
it is shrunk very small, or it is very blurred. It grows or becomes more and more in focus
until they get the right sentence.

This is also possible with pictures where the action is ambiguous due to the lack of
information in them, with things becoming as the teacher gives hints, a video slowly
progresses or they race to read the explanation in texts on the pictures.

This is easiest with a computer and projector, but can also be done with an overhead
projector. This is also possible without technology by hiding a card and revealing it bit by
bit from behind another card.

32. Celebrities now

Students search social media for what famous people are doing right now, with points for
actions which are probably still happening when they announce them to the class, plus
maybe bonus points for interesting information. All reports to the class should be in the
Present Continuous tense, e.g. “Justin Bieber is singing in Wembley Stadium”. This works
best with Twitter, because people don’t have to be a member or be “friended” to read the
tweets. They will need to make note of when the tweet was sent each time so that other
people can judge whether it is still ongoing or not.

33. Only one person is doing it

Students try to make Present Continuous sentences that (just about) make sense but have
only one result on Google or Google images. For example, I found that was true for “She is
eating a desk” or “He is chewing a feather”. Students will need to use quotation marks (or
the equivalent for other search engines) to make sure that other combinations of those
words don’t come up as results.

34. Present Continuous songs

Quite a few pop songs and children’s songs include a significant number of Present
Continuous sentences, with maybe the most famous being Tom’s Diner by Suzanne Vega.
However, it’s quite difficult to know what you can do with such songs to actually increase
students’ understanding of or ability to use this tense. Many worksheets online just get
students putting –ing forms or be + ing into gaps, but unless they still have problems with
subject + be or contractions it is difficult to imagine that they learn much from such an
activity. If you can get students singing along, that should help them memorise the structure
and some of the verbs and collocations in the song. To reinforce that memory building, you
could get them to sing along from more limited clues than the full lyrics would provide
such as lyrics with blanks, just verb forms in the infinitive, or just pictures.

Personally, I’m a bit too embarrassed to have actual singing in adult and teenage classes, so
the job then is to find alternative things to do before, during and after listening to the song.
Perhaps the best way is to almost ignore the actual –ing form and have students guess the
collocations instead, e.g. joining subjects and verbs or verbs and objects, then listening to
check. They could also guess what –ing phrases they will hear from pictures and/ or a
description of the situation described in the song, then listen to check.

35. What are six billion people doing?

Students research data like time zones and populations of countries to make statements like
“Two billion people are sleeping right now” and “Over one million people are suffering
from malaria”. Searching terms like “are suffering from” and “half the world’s population”
might help them find such info. Students get one point for each sentence that the class
accept is true and no one else thought of. Students will need to find out when the
information was put online so that other people can judge whether it is probably still true or
not, or you can ask them to update any old figures according to their own ideas of the
probable trends.

Conversation Questions
Travel

After a Vacation, Holidays

 Have you ever been abroad?

 Where have you been?
 Are you planning on going anywhere for your next vacation?
o If so, where?
o Who with?
o How long will you stay?
 Are you afraid of going abroad alone?
 Could you live in another country for the rest of your life?
 Describe the most interesting person you met on one of your travels.
 What was your best trip.
 What was your worst trip.
 Did your class in high school go on a trip together?
o If so, where did you go?
 o How long did you stay?
o How did you get there?
 Do you have a driver's license?
 Do you like to travel with children? Why or why not?
 Do you like to travel with your mother? Why or why not?
 Do you prefer summer vacations or winter vacations?
 Do you prefer to travel alone or in a group? Why?
 Do you prefer to travel by train, bus, plane or ship?
 Do you prefer traveling by car or by plane?
 Have you ever been in a difficult situation while traveling?
 Have you ever been on an airplane?
o How many times?
o What airlines have you flown with?
 Have you ever been to a foreign country?
 Have you ever gotten lost while traveling? If so, tell about it.
 Have you ever hitchhiked? If so, how many times?
 Have you ever taken a package tour?
 How do you spend your time when you are on holiday and the weather is bad?
 How many countries have you been to? How many states?
 How many times have you traveled abroad?
 How much luggage do you usually carry?
 If you traveled to South America, what countries would like to visit?
 If you went to ___(Insert a country name)__, what kind of souvenirs would you buy?
 If you were going on a camping trip for a week, what 10 things would you bring? Explain
why.
 What are some countries that you would never visit? Why would you not visit them?
 What are some things that you always take with you on a trip?
 What countries would you like to visit? Why?
 What countries would you most like to visit?
 What countries would you not like to visit? Why?
 What country do you most want to visit?
o Why?
o Do you think you will ever go there?
 What do you need before you can travel to another country?
 What is the most interesting city to visit in your country?
 What is the most interesting souvenir that you have ever bought on one of your holidays?
 What languages can you speak?
 What place do you want to visit someday?
 What was the most interesting place you have ever visited?
 What's the most beautiful place you've ever been to?
 When was the last time your traveled?
 When you are on a long car journey do you play games or sing songs to occupy your time?
o What kind of games?
o What songs?
 Where are you going to go the next time you travel?
o When are you going to go?
o Who are you going to go with?
o How long are you going to go for?
 o What are you going to do there?
o What kind of things do you think you will buy?
 Where did you go on your last vacation?
o How did you go?
o Who did you go with?
 Where did you spend your last vacation? Your summer vacation? Your Christmas
vacation?
 Where will you go on your next vacation?
 Would you like to take a cruise? Where to? With who?
 Do you prefer traveling on a hovercraft or a ferry?
 Would you prefer to stay at a hotel/motel or camp while on vacation?
 Would you rather visit another country or travel within your own country?
 Would you rather go to a place where there are a lot of people or to a place where there
are few people?
 Do you find more fulfillment from your leisure activities including vacations than from
your job?
 Do you think the type of vacation one takes reflects one's social status?
 What are popular tourist destinations in your country?
o Have you been to any of them?
o Which would you recommend if you could only recommend one? Why?
 Do you prefer active or relaxing holidays? Why?
 Which is better, package tour or a tour you organize and book yourself?
 Why do you travel?
o Why do people travel?
 Would you like to go back to the same place?
 Did you find anything of particular interest? / Did you get attracted to anything special?
 What are some benefits of travel?
o Why do people travel?
 What is your favorite mode of travel?
 Have you travelled in business class?
 When you were a child did your family take a vacation every year?
 Do you prefer a budget or first class hotel? Why?
 Do you travel with a lot of baggage or do you like to travel light?
 What is your favorite method of travel at your destination? Train? Bus? Boat? Bicycle?
Backpacking?
 What is the best kind of holiday for different ages of people? Children? Teenagers?
Adults? Elderly people?
 Do you think it is a good idea to travel with friends, or alone? How about with your family?
 If you had $100,000, where would you go on holiday? How about if you had $10,000?
What about $1,000?
 Which countries have you travelled to?
 Do you prefer hot countries or cool countries when you go on holiday
 Who makes the decisions when your family decides to go on holiday
 If you could choose one place to go this weekend, where would it be?
 Has the airline ever lost your luggage? What happened?
 On long flights do you usually walk around the plane to avoid health problems?
 Have you ever read an interesting question in an in-flight magazine? What was it?
 Is there any difference between young tourists and adult tourists?
  Do you think tourism will harm the earth?

Action
ESL EFL Writing and Speaking Activity - Elementary - 30 Minutes

Here is an entertaining miming game to help students practice the past continuous
tense. The students begin by doing a quick TPR activity to review the language on the
activity cards. The class stands up. When the teacher shouts out one of the activities on the
cards, all the students do the mime or action. After that, the students are divided into four
teams. The students then play a game to practice the past continuous tense. One student
from the first team goes out of the classroom. Each student in the class is then given an
activity card. Everyone starts miming or doing their action and the student outside comes
in. The students continue for a few more seconds, then stop. The student who went outside
then makes sentences about what everyone was doing when he/she came in. The student
scores one point for each correct past continuous sentence. A student from the second team
goes out and the process is repeated. For the final round, a student leaves the class as
before. But this time, when the student comes back in, the teams must try to remember and
write down what everyone was doing. Teams score one point for each true sentence.
The scores are added to the previous rounds to find the ultimate winning team.

What were you doing?

ESL EFL Speaking Activity - Elementary - 15 Minutes

In this enjoyable chain game, students use the past continuous tense to make statements
about what they were doing at 8 o’clock last night. The students sit in a circle. One student
begins by telling the class what they were doing at that time. The next student then repeats
what the previous student was doing using 'while', and adds what he or she was doing, e.g.
While Tom was watching a movie, I was playing a game on my phone. Then, each student
in turn repeats all of the previous student’s activities and adds their own activity. You can
include additional game elements, e.g. if students can’t remember the activities or make a
grammar mistake they are out of the game.

Change of Plan
ESL EFL Speaking Activity - Pre-intermediate - 25 Minutes

In this imaginative teaching activity, students practice creating sentences using the past
continuous to talk about something that was happening at a specific time in the past, and
the past simple to talk about a second action. The class is divided into groups of four and
each group is given a set of activity cards and picture cards. The students spread out the two
sets of cards face down on the desk, keeping the two sets separate. The students then take it
in turns to turn over an activity card and a picture card. The student then makes a sentence
with the past continuous and past simple using the two cards as prompts, e.g. I was riding
my bicycle when a fly flew into my mouth. The other students in the group judge each
sentence to make sure it’s grammatically correct. If the other students agree that a sentence
is correct, the student who made the sentence keeps the two cards. If they think the sentence
is wrong, they challenge the student. The two cards must then be turned back over. Students
continue in this way until all the cards have been used. The student with the most cards at
the end of the game wins.

Dream World
ESL EFL Writing and Speaking Activity - Pre-intermediate - 40 Minutes

In this group activity, students practice making past continuous sentences from pictures.
They also write a story about a dream using the past continuous tense along with words and
expressions used in stories. The students begin by reviewing the past continuous tense.
Each group of three or four students is given a set of picture cards. The students shuffle the
cards and deal them out. The first student in each group starts by asking the second student
what they were doing at 3 o'clock yesterday afternoon. The second student picks up a card
and responds according to the picture on the card by thinking of an activity associated with
it. The second student then asks the third student the same question, and so on, until all the
cards have been used. When the groups have finished, they write a story of a dream by
completing text written on the board. They shuffle all their picture cards again and each
student chooses three pictures. Each group must include these pictures in their dream, in
any order they choose. The students then write the story of a dream using the past
continuous tense. When all the groups have finished, the students read out their dreams to
the class. After that, the class votes for the strangest or funniest one.

It was a cold dark night...

ESL EFL Reading, Writing and Listening Activity - Pre-intermediate - 45 Minutes

In this group activity, students put a ghost story in the correct order by saying and listening
to sentences. Students then write the story down in a group dictation. The story focuses on
the use of the past continuous with while and when. The class is divided into groups of 14
and each student is given a sentence card. The students read the sentence on their card and
memorize it. Then they work with the people in their group and form a circle in the order of
the story by saying their sentences aloud. Students have to repeat their sentence several
times and listen to the other students’ sentences carefully in order to achieve the correct
order. When the story is complete, they number their cards (1 to 14) accordingly. After that,
each student dictates their sentence to the rest of the group, starting with the student who
has the first line. The students then take it in turns to read out their sentences in order for
the rest of the group to write down. When everybody has written down the story, the
students check their story for any mistakes.
Showing Places of Interest - English for Tour Guides
This page covers vocabulary needed by people working as tour guides in an English-speaking
context.

Silence can be uncomfortable during

a tour. While you can't talk the whole time, you should try to know as much about the
history, scenery, and culture (in English) for the places where you are giving tours so that
you can keep the tourists interested. If you ever run out of something to say, you can
always point out something such as a landmark or a type of tree or flower. Here are some
different ways you can point out interest points during the tour.

Tour Guide

 In front of you is...

 On your right/left you will see...
 Up ahead...
 On your left you will see...
 As we turn the corner here, you will see...
 In the distance...
 If you look up you will notice...
 Off to the north...
 Look to the east...
 To your west...
 In a few minutes we'll be passing...
 We are now coming up to...
  As you will see...
 You may have noticed...
 Take a good look at...
 I'd like to point out...
 Keep your eyes open for...

Tourist Questions

 Is that the...you were talking about?

 Are we going to pass the...?
 Are we going to see any...?
 Is it on the right or the left?
 I don't see it. Can you point it out again?
 Did I miss it?
 Will we see it on the way back?

Sample Conversation
Guide: It's about a three minute ride up to the top of the mountain. As we pass the two
towers the gondolla may sway a little.

Man: This thing is safe, right?

Guide: Yes, you don't have anything to worry about. We do about 100 trips a day up the
mountain, and these tours have been going on for over ten years without any accidents.
Keep your eyes open for wildlife as we ascend. It isn't uncommon to see deer and even
bears.

Woman: What's that mountain to the left called?

Guide: That's Mount Karen. And to the right of that with the three small points is Mount
Brown. Now, if you look up straight ahead, you should be able to see a large eagle's nest.
Does everyone see it there?

Man: Are there any baby birds?

Guide: That's a good question. I haven't seen any yet, but we usually see them around this
time of year.

Woman: What's that lake down there, to the right of the green meadow?

Guide: I'm glad you asked. That's John Lake. It's actually a man made pond that was built
as part of a conservation effort over twenty years ago. During the 70's there was a lot of
clearcutting of forests in the area, and much of the wildlife was lost. Since John Lake was
built, ducks, swans, and geese have returned to the area.
Man: Is this the highest mountain in this region?

Guide: No, actually, Mount Heather, which you we will be able to see in just a minute or
so has the highest peak. But, this is the highest mountain for recreational purposes like
skiing and guided tours.

Woman: Can you ski throughout the year?

Guide: No, it warms up enough to actually suntan up there in the summer. Oh, look
everyone. There are two deer feeding in the clearing right below us.

Man: Thanks, that should be a great photo. So... what is there to do besides ski at the top of
the hill at this time of year?

Guide: Oh, there's plenty to do. We have horseback riding, snowmobile tours, and a petting
zoo for children. If you look to your left you'll see the snowmobile trail going through the
mountain.

Check your understanding

1. Where is this tour taking place?

a. on top of a mountain b. on the way up a mountain c. at the bottom of a mountain

2. Which of the following does the tour guide NOT point out during the tour?

a. scenery b. wildlife c. a restaurant

3. What does the tour guide do after he points out John Lake?

a. he suggests they all go swimming. b. he provides a brief history of it. c. he quickly takes
another question.

Answers: 1.b 2.c 3. b

English conversations for tourists

Here is English vocabulary for some typical places of interest for tourists to a city, town, or
the countryside.

Famous tourist attractions

There are many types of museum:

Local history museum / Town museum = where there are displays of objects found in the
local area, or which are important to the local area.
Art gallery = where you can see paintings, photographs and sculptures, as well as
exhibitions of particular artists.

In London (for example) there are many other types of museum, such as:

Natural History museum = a museum where you can see everything related to Earth and
to the history and development of Earth, such as dinosaur skeletons, fossils, etc.

Science Museum = a museum where you can see scientific and technological
developments and discoveries. Often these museums have interactive displays.

Others are Madame Tussauds (a waxworks museum), the London Dungeons (a museum
which recreates historical events), a Maritime museum, the Imperial War museum and the
Tower of London (an old prison which also contains the Crown Jewels).

Famous attractions

Tourists often visit churches and cathedrals, as well as other historic buildings.

Other attractions include historical sites of interest (such as Roman ruins and famous
battle or burial sites), as well as parks, gardens, and stately homes (= big house owned by
aristocrats) and castles.

Some palaces (= house for the royal family) or parliament buildings are also open to
visitors.

Things to do

You can go and see an exhibition (in a museum or art gallery).

You can also go to a festival (such as a music or arts festival) or a fair (often an annual
event with various stalls to raise money for a charity or a town).

You can also go to hear live music (a concert of classical music or a "gig" of rock or folk
music).

Other cultural attractions are the opera, plays (with actors) and the ballet.

In some towns you can also go to the funfair (where you pay to go on rides) and theme
parks, such as Disneyland, for example.

Local attractions

These might be areas of natural beauty, such as mountains, lakes and the coastline. (See our
page on Scenery vocabulary for useful words and phrases to describe the countryside.)
For towns on the sea, other places to enjoy can be a promenade (walking area next to the
sea), a pier (a long walking area built out over the sea) and a lighthouse (tall building
where a light shines to show ships where the dangerous areas of the sea are). The harbour
(area where ships come in) can also be a popular area for restaurants and shops.

English speaking: Information for tourists and visitors

In the Tourist Information office you can ask about the opening hours (or opening times)
for parks, museums and galleries, etc.

You can also ask if there is an entrance fee or admission cost. For many attractions there
is a car park nearby (but not always free parking). Some parks, gardens and historical
buildings are open to the public only at some times of the year.

You can also ask if there is a gift shop (or souvenir shop) or refreshments (a bar or cafe
that serves drinks, snacks or light meals).

Many tourist attractions arrange tours for visitors (guided tours or audio tours) and you
can find information in brochures and leaflets (a one-page brochure folded vertically into
two, three or four pages), or on posters and flyers (very small leaflet often left on cars, for
example).

Past Continuous activities

Amusing ways of giving students intensive practice of the Past Progressive tense

1. Past Continuous Accusations

This is not only a classic activity for the Past Continuous, but also an all time classic TEFL
game. Students are given a list of strange actions and ask their partners to come up with
innocent reasons why they were doing those things, e.g. “When I saw you, you were
painting over your windows. Why were you doing that?” “I was turning my whole house
into a big flag to celebrate Independence Day”. It is important that they say the “When I
saw you…” part each time, to make the use of the Past Continuous realistic.

2. Past Continuous Alibi Game

This is another all time classic TEFL game. Students are divided into suspects and alibis
and they have to concoct a story of where they were together at the time of the crime. They
are then questioned separately, and too many differences between their stories mean that
the suspect is guilty. You can make this more specific to Past Continuous by only allowing
the detectives to ask questions about the time of the murder, e.g. “What were you talking
about?” and “Where was the waitress standing?”
3. Past Continuous Mimes

Students mime an action and when their partner is sure what it is they shout “Stop!” They
then guess the action with the sentence “When I shouted stop, you were + ing…”, e.g.
“When I shouted stop, you were polishing your fingernails on your shirt to show how proud
you are”. It is important to use the “When I shouted stop” part of the sentence each time to
make this the right tense, as otherwise “You polished your fingernails…” is more natural.

4. Random pelmanism

Students take two cards at random and try to make a sentence including those words or
expressions with the Past Simple and Past Continuous. For example, if they pick the words
“alligator” and “wallpaper”, they could say “When I was covering my son’s bedroom with
teddy bear wallpaper, he suddenly came in and said he wanted alligator patterns instead”.

5. Past Continuous Things in common

Students try to find times when they were doing the exact same thing, e.g. “What were you
doing at 7 o’clock this morning?” “I was taking a shower” “So was I!” They can’t use the
same action more than once, e.g. only one sentence about sleeping!

6. All kinds of actions

Put a list of actions on the board, e.g. “tapping your fingers” and “yawning”. Ask students
to do any of the actions in any order they like and at some point shout “Stop!” The students
then test each other on what their classmates were doing at the time the teacher shouted
stop with questions like “Who was polishing her fingernails?” and “What was Juan doing?”

7. Past Continuous picture memory

Give students a picture that shows lots of people doing different actions, e.g. a page from
Where’s Wally? (=Where’s Waldo?) When they turn over the picture so that they can’t see
it, test them on what people were doing with questions like “What was the old lady
doing?”, “How many people were smoking?” and “Who was standing next to the counter?”
You can make the use of the Past Continuous more natural by using a picture with a clock
in or by making it a situation that people might really be asked these questions about, e.g.
the moment before a bank robbery.

8. Past Continuous memory challenge

Students try to ask each other “What were you doing when you first/ last…?” questions that
their partners can’t remember the answer to, e.g. “What were you doing when you first
tasted wine?” or “What were you doing when you last saw a double-decker bus?” You can
also make this into a bluff game by asking students who don’t remember to make
something up, e.g. “I was cleaning up after my parents’ birthday party” or “I was flying low
over London”. Their partners then guess whether the answer is true or not.
9. Past photos

Students pretend that a blank piece of paper is an important photo of theirs and describe it
to their partners. As it is just as natural to use the Present Continuous to describe the actual
actions in the picture, they should also describe what they were doing when the photo was
taken (e.g. having their honeymoon), what people in the photo were doing at that time (e.g.
studying at university), what was happening outside the frame of the photo, etc.

10. Continual nagging

Students take turns complaining that they did all the work to prepare for something like a
party or presentation, e.g. “While I was making the sandwiches you answered your mobile
three or four times” or “While I was cleaning the tables you were staring at pretty women
out of the window”. The other person should also say they their action was more useful
than it seemed, e.g. “Actually, I was waiting for the delivery van to arrive so that I could
bring the paper plates upstairs”, or retaliate with a worse accusation like “While I was
typing up the Powerpoint document, you were playing poker on your computer”.

11. Who was doing that?

Students make true sentences about what someone was doing when they saw that person,
and the other students guess who it was, e.g. “He was pulling across two lanes of traffic”
for a taxi driver or “She was writing something down in a notebook” for a traffic warden.

12. Video task 1 – When the screen went blank

While students are watching a video, the teacher suddenly presses the stop button. Students
have to describe what was happening in as much detail as they can, and then check when
the teacher presses play.

13. Video task 2 – Detailed viewing

When students have finished watching a short clip, test them on things that were happening
in the background, e.g. “What was the window cleaner doing when the hero was taking out
his walkie talkie?”

14. Video task 3 – Complicated cutting

Every time a character reappears on the screen, pause the video and test students on what
that person was doing last time we saw them.

 What Were You Doing When…?

Often you can use Past Continuous tense to talk about memories, or for looking back on
what was happening at a specific time. With this activity students ask each other
questions that they may or may not remember the answer to. For example What were you
doing last Tuesday night at dinner time? or What were you doing when xx important thing
happened? You can explain that some historical events or other news events leave such an
impression on us, we will always remember what we were doing at the time that thing
happened. Sometimes our memories are very clear and sometimes they are not. You may
want to provide prompts so the students get the idea and then have them generate their own
questions. Some ideas for prompts are:

 9/11
 The earthquake
 Last Thursday at dinner time
 Princess Diana died

You can also make this into a bluff game by telling students who don’t remember to
make something up. For example, I was doing laundry when my mom called or I was
driving my car when I heard about 9/11. Their partners can then guess whether the answer
is true or not.

 2

Alibi

This game is similar to the murder mystery Clue. You can set it up by having the students
create the crime they are going to investigate. After that, students are divided into two
groups--suspects and detectives. You want to have more suspects and just 2-4 detectives.
The suspects each have to create a story of where they were and what they were doing at
the time of the crime. They are then questioned by one of the detective students. The
detectives must ask questions pertaining to Past Continuous by only asking questions about
the time of the murder. For example they could ask questions like: What were you
discussing? or Where was the doctor eating? If you want you could set up a jury as well
and have the class vote as to who is guilty and why they don’t believe the alibi.

 3

Word Cards

Have a stack of cards with random words prepared. Each student will choose two. In
rounds have them create a sentence for their pair of words—one word for the past tense
clause and one for the past continuous clause. For example, they draw the two words, drive
and monkey. A possible sentence could be: I was driving down the street when I saw a
monkey in the road. Or you can tell them to be more creative and allow some nonsense
sentences. It does make it more challenging and fun if each of the words has to be used in a
different clause. To make this activity even more involved you could have the students
create sentences that somehow relate to the last person’s sentence to create a silly sort of
story of things that were happening at a given time!
 Helping Hands

This role play works best in groups of about four students and gives them lots of room
for independent thinking and creativity. Choose one person in the group to share their
plans for a future activity. They will tell the members of their group something that they
plan to do, and they will use the simple future to share their plans. For example, someone
might say, “I am going to run a marathon.” The other members of the group then jump in
with the things they will do to help that person accomplish his or her task. One at a time,
the students say what they will do. “I’ll help you buy the right shoes…I’ll run with you
when you train…I’ll bring water for you to drink during the race…” Students continue to
offer a helping hand until no one can think of any more ways to help. The student with the
original plan should feel free to comment on each offer, and once all the offers have been
made the group makes a timeline or plan of when and how they will accomplish the tasks.
If you like and have the time, have another person in the group share his plans and repeat
the process.

 2

Troublesome In Laws

In this role play, one student will try to convince another student why his plans are
bad ones. One person plays the future son-in-law or daughter-in-law while the other person
plays the mother-in-law or father-in-law to be. The SIL or DIL shares plans for after the
wedding with the other person. These plans can be about moving, having children,
changing jobs or anything that your students can come up with. The in-law then tells the
person that what they have planned will not work. He or she then explains what will happen
if the SIL or DIL tries do make these changes using the simple future tense. The first
student then changes his plans and shares his new idea using the simple future, and the
second student again shows why it is impossible. The conversation continues until one
person cannot think of anything else to say. The last person who talks in the dialogue is the
winner. Then, have students switch roles and repeat the exercise.

 3

It’s Not Easy Being Green

This role play not only gets your students using the simple future; it will also have
them thinking about protecting the environment. One or two students play the role of an
activist trying to tackle an environmental issue: water pollution, the greenhouse effect,
ozone depletion, renewable resources, or any other topics that your students feel strongly
about. (Hint: this is a great opportunity to bring science into the ESL classroom.) This
student approaches one or two other students in the class who are playing the role of big
company executives. Their business practices are damaging the environment in the specific
way the activists are trying to prevent. To persuade the corporate tycoon, the activist tells
her what will happen if she does not change her business practices. The tycoon, on the other
hand, tells the activist how changing business practices will negatively impact the
company. Each side tries to convince the other that they are right. As they do, they should
use future tenses. The conversation continues until one person agrees with the other or the
two give up and must agree to disagree.

 4

Back to the Future

If you have the resources, start this role play with a segment from the classic Michael
J. Fox movie Back to the Future. In this movie a teenage boy travels back in time to when
his parents were in high school. His mother falls in love with him instead of his father, and
comedic results ensue. Your students will role play this scenario. One person travels back
in time to when his or her parents were in high school (the time that they fell in love). Two
other students play the parents who are no longer in love with each other because of their
time travelling child. The student who travelled back in time must convince the two others
to get together by telling them about their future. The parents ask questions about the future
and say what they think will happen – ether agreeing or disagreeing with their child.
Discussion continues until the time traveler can get his parents back together.

 5

Game Show Winnings

Stage a game show in your classroom to review class material while practicing the
future tenses. Have three contestants in your game show answer questions and win money.
You should provide the questions to a third student who plays the host of the show. When a
person answers a question correctly, the game show host tells them how much money they
will receive for answering that question correctly. That person should then tell the host
what he or she will do with that money. This role play serves double duty as your students
review content information and use the simple future to ask and answer questions.

 6

Makeover

Do you have creative and fashionable students in your classroom? If you do, they might
enjoy this makeover themed role play. One person plays the part of a celebrity stylist –
someone with knowledge of fashion and beauty. The other person plays the part of a person
in need of a minor makeover (either a celebrity, themselves, or a fictional person). The two
have a conversation about the makeover they are about to give/receive. They stylist wants
the makeover to be extreme, including plastic surgery. The person getting the makeover
does not feel such extreme measures are necessary. What will the stylist do? How will the
person feel when he or she does it? Have the two discuss the possible makeover until they
come to an agreement somewhere in the middle.

Materials: students’ paper and pens.

Time: 20 minutes
A) Introduce the forms

Start with an example. Tell students about a definite plan that will allow them to predict a
possible outcome. Here are some examples.

 I am going to meet a friend tomorrow morning, and we are going to run ten miles.
 I am excited because I am going to Bali next summer.

Ask students to make a prediction about how you will feel or what will happen. (You
might also note that in predictions it is also okay to use be going to.) They might produce
something like the following.

 You will be tired afterwards.

 You will spend a lot of money. You will have a good time.

Check understanding of be going to for plans that are not expected to change and will for
predictions, but do not spend a lot of time “teaching” them. (Perhaps note that the more
sure you are about your prediction, the more likely it is that you will use be going to.)

B) Practice

1) Have individual students write a quick list of five scheduled or definite plans using be
going to.

2) Put students in pairs, and have them take turns stating their plans. When partner A
explains a plan, partner B should make a prediction. When A’s list is exhausted, they can
switch roles. Partner B reads a statement with a plan, and A makes a prediction.

3) While students practice, the teacher can listen for errors or misunderstandings and use
the information for lesson planning or error correction. The teacher can also extend the
lesson to include will with probably, or use of the present progressive for future meaning
depending on students’ accomplishments.

4) As a follow up to any new material, students can switch partners and repeat with a
new partner using the new language.

http://learnenglishteens.britishcouncil.org/skills/listening-skills-
practice/work (listening activity)

Transcript:
A.

I work on Saturdays and in the school holidays. Saturdays are busy because that’s when everyone
goes shopping. Our shop sells clothes and accessories for men, women and children. I work in the
children’s department. It can be crazy sometimes, but it’s fun.

B.

I work during my summer holidays when I’m not at university. Oxford has thousands of tourists in
the summer, so it’s easy to find a job as a tour guide. I take tourists to visit the university colleges
and then we go down to the river. We go along the river on a boat. The tourists love the boat trip,
but last summer one tourist fell in the river! I love meeting people from all over the world.

C.

I like my job, but lots of people don’t like coming to see me because they hate dentists. Sometimes
it’s very hard work, but it’s great to help people when they have a problem. It’s so important to
look after your teeth.

D.

My job is very difficult, but I like it because I love flying. I fly planes that take people to different
places on holiday. Most of the time I fly in Europe to places like Spain, Greece and Italy. The most
difficult thing about my job is when the weather is bad. Snow and thunderstorms are the worst.
The best thing is visiting different places.

E.

I work in a hospital in the city centre. It’s a very big hospital. I help the doctors with the patients. I
give them their medicine and look after them when they feel ill. I love my job but I don’t like the
uniform and sometimes I have to work at night.

Write sentences in going to future.

1. he / get up / early
o Positive:
 o Negative:
o Question:
2. they / do / their best
o Positive:
o Negative:
o Question:
3. you / learn / Irish
o Positive:
o Negative:
o Question:
4. she / buy / a computer
o Positive:
o Negative:
o Question:
5. we / take / the bus
o Positive:
o Negative:
o Question:
6. she / watch / the match
o Positive:
o Negative:
o Question:
7. they / wait / in the park
o Positive:
o Negative:
o Question:
8. He / buy / bread / this afternoon
o Positive:
o Negative:
o Question:

Type in the verbs in the future I (going to).

1. Mr Potts (sell) his house.

2. Our neighbours (spend) their next holidays in the Caribbean.
 3. I (move) to another town.
4. My husband (build) a tree house for the kids.
5. His friends (learn) English.

Type in the verbs in the future I (going to).

1. I (tell/not) you the secret.

2. She (ring/not) me.
3. We (invite/not) him to our party.
4. Greg (work/not) abroad.
5. Her parents (lend/not) her any more money.

Write questions in the future I (going to).

1. (you/help/me) ?
2. (she/study/in Glasgow) ?
3. (they/paint/the room) ?
4. (he/apply/for that job) ?
5. (what/you/do) about this?

7 fun activities for mixed future tenses

Ideas on how to practise two or more future tenses together in ways that make their
different meanings clear

It can be so difficult to learn the differences between the various future tenses that even
high-level textbooks tend to deal with them one by one. This is generally a good tactic, as
students need to get used to using the Present Continuous for arrangements (which might
have been avoided or mistaught in their previous classes) before they can start contrasting it
with both plans and predictions. Sooner or later, though, they will need to put them all
together in conversations such as “What are you going to do this weekend?” “I don’t have
any plans yet, but my girlfriend will probably come round and cook as usual” and “I’m
going to move house soon. Didn’t you say that you were going to move too?” “Actually,
I’m moving tomorrow!” This article gives seven ways of putting those tenses together in
communicative activities.
Actually
As shown in the examples above, people often respond to future questions with a different
tense or structure, e.g. “Are you meeting your girlfriend tonight?” “Actually, she’s going
out with some friends of hers so I’m going to stay at home and watch some videos that she
doesn’t like.” In this example, the different structures are because the person imagines that
their friend must have an arrangement but in fact they have only a plan. The same is
possible for any pairing of future tenses. You can exploit this by asking students to respond
to every future question with a different tense in this way. Students will probably need
some help with the original questions (e.g. “Are you going to try to give up smoking again
this year?”) and some sentence stems for the answers (e.g. “I don’t have any plans but…”)
Most answers will need to be imaginary in order to match the available tenses.

Plan/arrangement/prediction
This activity can help students avoid difficult conversations like those in Actually above by
choosing a tense that is more probably right in their questions. Give students a list of future
events, each of which could be an arrangement, a plan or just a thing that they can predict
(e.g. birthday party, retirement, exercise and window shopping). A student picks one and
guesses whether their partner already has an arrangement or a plan, or can only make a
prediction. After their partner has confirmed which one it is, they then try to make a true
sentence in the right tense, e.g. “You are having a birthday party this weekend”
(arrangement), “You aren’t going to bother with a birthday party this year” (plan) or “Your
family will probably arrange a surprise party for you” (prediction).

Discussion questions
Discussion questions can be used to practise tenses in two ways – giving the question in a
particular tense (e.g. “How will this city change in the next twenty years, do you think?”),
or designing the question so that a particular tense is supposed to come up in the answer
(e.g. “Tell us about your plans for next weekend”). For more controlled grammar practice,
students can then fill in gapped versions of the same questions or example answers.

Future tenses Ask and tell

Give students a list of topics and vocabulary that can be connected to the future, e.g.
“retirement” and “ambition”. You should also include some that are a bit more risqué like
“remarry”, “bet” and “holiday romance”. Students pick one word or topic (either their own
choice or random, depending on how you want them to play the game) and then make a
future question from it. They can make any question they like, e.g. “What would you do if
your husband lost all your money betting on the horses?”, but they might have to answer
the question themselves. This is decided by a flip of a coin. Heads means that they can ask
their question to one other person in their group, but tails (= tell) means that they must
answer their own question.

Mixed video predictions

The easiest and most fun video predictions task is a well-known one – pause the video and
ask the students to predict what happens next. You can use this for a mix of both “going to
for predictions with future evidence” and “will for predictions” by picking moments where
the present evidence is clear (e.g. someone being about to bump into something) and the
consequences are also possible to predict. Students can then use “going to” for the first
sentence and “will” for the latter.

Plans and spontaneous decisions helping game

The easiest way of practising these meanings of “going to” and “will” is for someone to say
what their plan is (maybe from a list of suggestions like “You are going to have a
housewarming party”), and other people to offer to help with sentences like “I’ll bring the
booze” and “I’ll help you tidy up afterwards”. The last person to speak when everyone else
has run out of ideas is the winner.

Plans and spontaneous decisions hindering game

In this game, when someone says what their plan is (e.g. “I’m going to take the train to the
seaside tonight”), the other people have to think of a reason why that plan is impossible
(e.g. “The last train leaves at noon” or “The weather forecast says that there will be a tidal
wave”). The first person then has to say how they will change their plans, e.g. “Really? In
that case I’ll go to the mountains instead.” The other people then have to think of a reason
why that new plan is impossible. This continues until either side runs out of ideas.

 Predict The Fate Of Classmate X

After studying the target language and engaging in some form of controlled practice, you can pair
students off and ask them to ask each other a few questions about their current hobbies, likes, dislikes
and habits.

After learning a little more about each other, students are then asked to make predictions about each
other’s future. This works best in classes which already have a good rapport and are comfortable with
each other, since students in these classes will be more likely to joke with one another or say something
playfully negative, which makes the lesson more entertaining.

This activity will draw out example sentences like “Stephen will become very successful since he works
six days per week and studies every night” and “Muhammad will die young since he likes to eat fast
food every day”.

This is a great activity for both using the target language and helping students to identify causal
relationships between activities now and results in the future.

If you don't think this will work well with your class, you can modify this activity to “predict the future
of celebrity X” where you give the students pre-prepared cards with some facts about the lifestyles and
habits of certain celebrities which they then have to make predictions about. This will work better in
classes where students are not comfortable with each other or where personalities are more controlled
and formal.

 Plan A Dream Vacation

I have used this activity countless times with great success. I have put every variation and spin possible
on it from “you have won a $1 million round the world trip” to “teleportation has been invented and you
have five days off work”. No matter the premise, students have to pair up and create a dream holiday,
listing activities they will do in the morning, noon and evening for five days, with no limits on where
they can go or what they can do.

This will always be a hit because most people the world over harbour dreams of travel and seeing the
world. I use a simple table, included below, which you can copy and paste and use for the activity. I
have also included some examples in italics of what students may write, based on a five day USA trip.

 Run For Office

This activity works best with adults who have developed at least some political opinions or thoughts and
who are of a more advanced English level. It will not work well with pre-intermediate students or below,
and so will serve more as a refresher or practice of future tenses rather than an introduction. Never use
this lesson plan in a country where political dissent is not tolerated or where authoritarian governments
rule.

The idea is to put students into groups of three or four and tell them their country has been over-thrown
in a coup by the military due to incompetent governance (which usually gets a knowing laugh) and ask
them to run in the new elections. Groups of three or four can run for different positions – eg president,
treasurer and secretary of state. You can even make this more entertaining by assigning wacky positions
like “Minister of extraterrestrial affairs” or “Minister of gender”.

Of course, you should have pre-taught some basic political vocabulary and the lesson should have been
themed along these lines. The students then work as a group to launch a five minute campaign to the rest
of the class, trying to win their votes.

You will hear all kinds of campaign promises such as “I will reduce tax” “We will be removing current
bans on ownership of semi-automatic weapons” and “I will re-implement the death penalty for certain
crimes”.

This can, when done correctly, be one of the most interesting and engaging activities you will ever do.
With the right group, the right class rapport and the right level of maturity in the students you will have a
lot of fun and learn a lot about your students’ opinions, beliefs and inclinations.

Note, this activity can take a long time to both plan and execute. I recommend no less than 45 minutes –
1 hour for a class of 12 (e.g. 4 groups of three).

 Project: The World In The Future

This is a group work activity which asks students to come together and think about/make predictions
about what the world will be like in the future.

Begin by drawing a spider diagram on the whiteboard and fill in the different topics/areas of interest. Try
to elicit these from the class but give them a helping hand where necessary – you should list at a
minimum: Technology, the environment, medicine, work, money, lifestyle, education.
These topics and any others you can elicit will give you enough food for thought to then assign the class
activity. Groups should come together to make one or two predictions about the world in the future
under each heading.

Example answers will be:

People will work from home as internet technology improves.

Humans will be living on another planet by the year 2100.

Money will be completely digital.

If your students are younger (teenage works best) you can have them create a group poster and present
their predictions to the class after the activity. For adult students, keep it simple and just ask them to
make predictions.

Note, as with all group activities, make sure weaker, more introverted students are not left out and
dominated by more advanced, confident group members. When it comes to eliciting answers make sure
to nominate equally.

 Rapid Fire Q&A

This is more of a game than an activity, but it is good fun and will engage the students, especially if the
winner is to be awarded some sort of prize (homework pass, candy, etc).

The class should form a circle and the teacher should be included in this activity in order to keep the
flow going if and when it stops temporarily. To begin, you nominate one student who then must ask a
fellow classmate a question about the future, which can be either personal or abstract. Both the
questioner and the student giving the answer only have a five second window to begin speaking or they
are eliminated from the game.
For example: Student one is assigned to ask a question. The clock begins ticking and he has five seconds
to ask his classmate a question.

He asks “Ikbal, what will you do after you graduate from high school?”

Ikbal now has five seconds to answer before he faces elimination.

He may answer something like “I will begin working with my father”.

Ikbal then has another five seconds to ask another question, and so on.

It is important for the teacher to be included in this activity because students will tend to ask those who
they know and are comfortable with over and over again. It is important that the teacher redirects this
flow to include students who are less social, popular or who are too shy to actively butt in and make
themselves included.

If this is an introduction to future tense, be sure your students are familiar with question forms and
possibly extend the time allowed between question and answer to eight-ten seconds.

1. Video predictions
Stop the video as something is about to happen and see if students can predict what it will
be, such as what the character will see when they enter the room or who will end up killing
who. Make sure that you only need to watch a short segment to find out if their predictions
were right or not, for example watching just the beginning and end of a film. If you choose
the right video, it is possible to do the “stop and predict, watch to check, stop and predict”
sequence over and over again as the video goes on. Short comedy sketches with little
dialogue such as the Mr Bean series, Pingu, or the Wallace and Gromit films are easiest for
this. If your students are unlikely to come out with their own predictions, you can ask them
to choose them from the options you give them orally or from a worksheet. Be careful that
the place where you stop the video is not a situation when there is clear physical evidence
of what is going to happen such as a vase that is leaning over, as it is more natural to use
“going to for predictions with present evidence” (e.g. “The vase is going to fall on the floor
and break”) for such situations.

2. Jigsaw video predictions

You can add more speaking to the task above by sitting half the students with their backs to
the video screen. The partner of each person describes what is happening in the video
(which has the volume down to zero), and then when the teacher stops the video the person
not watching has to choose which of the things written on their worksheet (which the
person watching the film doesn’t have) will happen next. Their partner who is watching
then watches the next part of the video to check whether their prediction was correct or not,
and can then tell their partner.

3. Predict the whole video

This video activity is similar to the ones above but with students predicting the order of
events from the worksheet, feeding back with “We think he will clean his teeth before he
gets dressed” etc and then watching to check.

4. Predict the story

Similar activities to those with videos suggested above can be done with written or
recorded stories cut into segments, with the places where students stop and make their
predictions carefully chosen so that there is an interesting cliff-hanger where it is possible,
but maybe difficult, to predict the outcome.

5. Classroom changes predictions

One student closes their eyes while the other students make three changes to the classroom
set up such as closing the blinds and changing seats. The student predicts what they will see
once they open their eyes, e.g. “When I open my eyes two people will be outside the
classroom”. Note that sentences like “Two people will be sitting on the teacher’s chair” are
also likely to come up as the basic use of the Future Continuous is also for making
predictions, so make sure you only use this game with classes you are prepared to explain
that grammar to. A variation that avoids this grammar is to get students to write down
predictions of what will happen during a certain period of class time, e.g. “in the next five
minutes” or “before the end of this lesson”, such as “At least one person will sneeze” and
then keep an eye out for which came true.

6. Prediction songs
Quite a few songs include will for the future, including I Will Survive by Gloria Gaynor,
but if you are only doing predictions make sure other meanings such as spontaneous
intentions and promises aren’t involved in the song. There are many fun and useful ways of
using songs in adult classes, so many that it would take a whole other article to explain
them all!

7. The past/ present/ future game

Students give some information about themselves without using a full sentence, e.g. “two
children”. Their partner has to guess if it is something that happened in that person’s past, is
true in the present or is about that person’s picture of their future. As the next stage up in
difficulty, students can then do the same but go on to guess the whole true sentence for their
partner, e.g. “You were one of two children” for the past, “You have two children” for the
present, or “You would like to have/ will have two children” for the future. As you can see
from the example, it isn’t possible to limit students to just predictions in the future (see the
variation below for that), but this can be a good freer stage after controlled practice of “will
for predictions” or as a lead in to explaining the differences between the various future
forms.
8. The wish/ plan/ arrangement/ prediction game
A variation on the game above is to make all the sentences about the future, but with
students guessing if their partner’s thing is an arrangement they have already made, a plan
they have in their heads (such as an ambition or career plan), just a wish they have, or a
prediction they are making. They can then go on to try and make true sentences about their
partner with the correct future form.

9. Market predictions
Students predict what will happen to stock and/ or commodities prices and then check what
really happens either from information the teacher collected before or by checking the real
market changes up to the next lesson (or by the end of the lesson if there is internet in the
classroom). A more fun alternative is to get them to bet pretend money on their predictions
as a kind of stock trading game (as is included in several Business English textbooks
including Business Matters). Alternatively, if you just ask them to decide together on which
things to buy, they should use “will” naturally in their discussions.

10. Other graphs and trends activities with “will”

If you tell students that the graphs you give them are partly or totally about the future, e.g.
by drawing the last part of the graph with a dotted line to show that it is just someone’s
idea, they should use “will” when doing activities such as pairwork spot the difference
activities. More suitable activities for will for trends are described in my separate article on
TEFL.net on the topic of fun trends language games.

11. Other negotiation activities

If you give students the right kind of information or functional language when setting up
other kinds of negotiations they should also use “will” to emphasize their negotiating
position, using sentences like “You are right about oil prices being low now, but we are
sure they will rise soon and so make plastics more expensive”.

12. First conditional games

If students bring up predictions in negotiations, they are also likely to use the first
conditional in sentences such as “If the price of oil goes up, the exchange rate against the
dollar will drop and so prices of our products won’t need to go up”. This common use of
the first conditional is basically an example of “will for predictions”, and maybe one that
students will be more familiar with than “will” without an if clause. This means the many
fun games for the first conditional such as chain stories can also be tied in with lesson on
“will for predictions”, but please note that there are other meanings of the first conditional
such as the promises meaning of “If you give us a 5% discount, we will order more” that is
used in negotiations more often than the predictions meaning.

13. What am I predicting?

Students predict the future of one thing and the other students guess what they are talking
about, e.g. “They will get wider but thinner, and then they will eventually become 3D” for
“televisions”.

14. Fortune telling

Activities such as palm reading and Chinese horoscopes are included in many TEFL books
such as Reading Games, and although there can be a confusion of tenses (does seeing a line
on someone’s hand count as present evidence and so give you the confidence about their
future to use “going to”?) this does make the predictions/ hopes/ plans/ arrangements
distinction quite clear and can also bring in other skills such as reading. One variation that
can be done with authentic texts is to read out horoscopes from last week and get students
to guess which one is about them. They can then write similar ones and check next week if
any came true. Even less preparation and materials is needed for “Delphic Dictionary”,
where students choose three words at random from a dictionary and their partners make up
a story about their future from those three words, e.g. “You will discover COPPER in your
back garden and become WEALTHY, but it will poison your water and so you will grow a
LUMP on your back like the Hunchback of Notre Dame”.

15. Predict my partner’s weekend

Students write down their predictions about what their partners will do in the next week and
then check next week which ones actually happened. For example, students tell their
partners their hopes, plans and arrangements for the weekend and they guess which ones
which actually come off and which ones probably won’t come to fruition.

7 Superb Speaking Activities That’ll Get Your ESL Students Chatting

“All right everyone, pair up!”

This sentence can be met in many ways.

Blank stares. Two class troublemakers reaching for one another’s hands.

The shy kid in the class trying very hard to become invisible.

It’s no secret, getting students to work well in pairs can be hard, and it doesn’t stop with
just having them pair up.

ESL students doing pair activities can often try to skive off doing the activity at hand.
Shyer students can be tempted to let their partner do all the work.

As far as the teacher is concerned, it can be tough making sure that the students who are
actually working are speaking correctly.

Well, it’s time for all those problems to be ancient history. Here, you’ll find the ultimate
guide to perfect pair work.

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take
anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)
Techniques for ESL Pair Work

The first mistake many teachers make when assigning pair work is letting students choose
their pairs.

While that may be fun for those in the class who are already friends, your job as the teacher
is to assess each student’s strengths and weaknesses and put them with someone they can
work with well. In other words: you make the pairs.

If you know that two students are particularly good at conjugation, it might be interesting to
put them together so that they have a real challenge. If one student is exceptionally shy,
don’t stick them with the class loudmouth; they’ll only be overshadowed.

The best way to set up pair work in the classroom is to allow no expectations amongst
students that they’ll be picking their own partners.

“We’re going to go about this activity in pairs! Sasha with Kevin. Lucy with Mary.”

By making it obvious that you’ll be the one deciding who works with whom, no one will
get upset or try to fuss.

Once the pairs have been established, it’s time for your most important role: monitoring
pair work.

While most pair work should finish with a group discussion or individual evaluation, the
purpose of the pair work is lost if you aren’t listening and gently correcting. While you
should be wary of over-correcting and silencing a student, do wander the room, listening
for errors that you know a student can correct him or herself. Then you can gently remind
the student how to properly use that language.

This serves two purposes: not only does it reinforce correct use of English, but it also
ensures that students know you’re listening. This way, they’re sure to give the pair work
activity their all.

7 ESL Pair Work Speaking Activities to Get Those Lips Flapping

Not all classroom activities are designed for pair work. The best time to use pair work is
during oral activities, as these activities allow students to get more speaking time than they
would in a class setting.

But you can’t just ask students to talk to each other for two minutes—you need a bit more
structure than that!

Here are 7 great ESL pair work activities that you can use in a variety of ways to get your
students talking.
1. Investigative Journalist

Investigative journalist is a classic pair work activity for a reason: it works!

It can be used in a variety of scenarios and tailored according to specific grammar or

vocabulary points that you’ve been reviewing in class.

The basis of investigative journalist is for students to interview one another in pairs and
present their findings. It can be used for groups at all skill levels from beginning to
advanced, as long as you tailor it to their levels.

Beginners may do a simple version, asking their partners about their family structure,
favorite colors and foods, pets and hobbies. Intermediate students could use investigative
journalist to practice past tense structures by asking about their interlocutor’s childhood.
Advanced students might benefit from a murder mystery version of the game, where each
student is assigned a character to play and the game concludes with the “murderer” being
sussed out as a result of the questions.

Have fun with this game, and remember: if you give your students the tools to succeed,
they’ll surprise you!
2. Debate

Debate is another classic that can incorporate pair or group work, depending on the size of
your class. Create groups and assign each group or pair a side of an argument. Use pair
work time to allow students to develop their argument and conclude with a class-wide
debate.

Debate is made even more interesting when you present students with authentic materials to
use as support for their claims.

3. What’s Your Secret?

What’s your secret? is a pair work activity that truly involves the whole class. In this
game, which is a play on investigative journalist, each student writes a secret down on a
piece of paper, things like: “I play the clarinet.” or “I have a twin.” The papers are placed in
a hat and each student draws one: that’s where the game begins.
What’s your secret? can either be played by allowing students to mill about the classroom
freely or by setting up a speed dating scenario, where each pair has 1 minute to speak
before rotating. Students may ask one another yes/no questions—they may not ask directly
if what’s on the piece of paper is true about them or not.

Students then must guess to whom the secret they drew belongs.

4. It’s Your Turn: Teach a Class!

Teach a class! is a fun activity for advanced ESL students. In this activity, you assign each
pair a grammar, vocab or culture point that they’ll have to teach to the class. The pair works
together to prepare activities and lesson plans and teaches the point to the class.

Unlike many of these other activities, the conclusion portion of this activity is built right in:
when the pair teaches the class, the teacher should play the role of the student, but you
may evaluate the lesson at the end and feel free to correct any mistakes the “teachers”
make!
5. Following Directions

Following directions is an interesting game that offers a change from classroom routine.

In this game, each student in the pair draws a picture, keeping their paper shielded from the
eyes of their partner. Ideally, pictures should be fairly geometric. Once the picture is
complete, they explain to their partner, using words only, how to replicate the image.

For example, if a student has drawn the stereotypical square house with a triangle roof, he
might say: “Draw a square in the middle of the paper that’s about a third of the size of the
paper. Draw an equilateral triangle on top of the square, using the top side of the square as
the bottom side of the triangle.”

The goal of this game is for each partner to replicate the other’s drawing going by these
spoken directions.
6. Games! Yes, No

Many pair work activities can feel like games, but sometimes it’s fun to introduce some real
games into the mix.

Yes, no is a game where the only two words that students aren’t allowed to say are yes and
no. Pair students off and play. When a student loses, he or she is out and the winning
partner is paired with another winning partner. In this way, you can create a tournament of
yes, no.

Other versions of the game also forbid “maybe” and “I.” Consider these versions when the
game is lasting too long or students need an extra challenge.

7. Games! Guess Who

Guess who is a version of 20 questions that focuses entirely on people.

Students draw the name of a famous person out of a hat (you’ll need to prepare these slips
in advance!) and their partner tries to guess who’s on the paper by asking a series of yes/no
questions.

Like yes, no, guess who can be turned into a tournament-style game.

Actor /Actress - a person that acts in a play or a movie

Architect - a person that designs building and houses.

Chef/Cook - a person that prepared food for others, often in a restaurant or café.

Dentist - a person that can fix problems you have with your teeth.

Doctor - a person you go to see when you are ill or have some type of health problem.

Electrician - a person that works with electric circuits.

Engineer - a person who develops solutions to technical problems. They sometimes design,
build, or maintain engines, machines, structures or public works.

Farmer - a person that works on a farm, usually with animals.

Fireman/Fire fighter - a person that puts out fires.

Gardener - a person that keeps gardens clean and tidy. They take care of the plants in the
garden.

Judge - a qualified person that decides cases in a law court.

Lawyer - a person that defends people in court and gives legal advice.

Mechanic - a person that repairs machines, especially car motors.

Model - a (usually attractive) person that works in fashion, modeling clothes and
accessories.

Nurse - a person trained to help a doctor look after the sick or injured.

Painter - a person that paints pictures or the interior and exterior of buildings.

Pilot - a person who flies a plane.

Plumber - a person that repairs your water systems or pipes.

Politician - a person who works in politics.

Policeman/Policewoman - a member of the police force. They (try and) prevent crime.

Secretary - a person employed in an office who types letters, keeps records etc.

Soldier - a person who works for the army.

Taxi driver - a person who drives a taxi.

Teacher - a person that passes knowledge to students, usually at school.

Veterinary doctor (Vet) - a qualified person that looks after sick animals.

Waiter/Waitress - a person that works in a food outlet, looking after customers and
serving food.

 At what age do people usually begin to work in your country?

 At what age do people usually retire in your country?
 At what age would you like to retire?
o What do you think you will do after you retire?
o How much money do you think you need to retire with your lifestyle?
 Can you talk about what a typical day at your current job is like?
 Can you describe some of the people that you work with?
 Can you describe your current job?
 What was your first job?
 Do women usually work after they get married in your country?
 Do you ever work overtime?
o If so, do you get paid more for overtime work?
 Do you have a part-time job? If so, what do you do?
 Do you have to attend a lot of meetings for your job?
 Do you have to do a lot of paperwork?
 Do you have to work overtime?
o If so, how often?
o Do you have to work on Sundays?
 Do you know someone who has worked as an undertaker?
o What is the job of a an undertaker?
o Can women do this job or is it better for a man to be an undertaker?
 Do you like your boss? Why or why not?
 Do you like your job?
 Do you like your job? Why or why not?
 Do you think it is more important to make a lot of money or to enjoy your job?
 Do you think it's acceptable for women to be in the military? Why/why not?
 Do you think people over 65 should be made to retire?
 Do you think women and men should be paid the same for the same job?
 Do you think women are good bosses?
o Are there women bosses in your country?
 Do you think your company is well run?
o Do you think that the place where you work is well run?
 Do you work on weekends?
o Do you work on Sundays?
 Does your mother work?
o Does your mother work outside of the house?
 Have you ever been promoted?
 Have you ever taken any courses that specifically help you with the job you are
doing now?
 Have you ever worked on a farm?
o Did you like it?
o Would you like to go back on this farm job?
o If not , why?
 How do you like your work?
 How have working conditions changed in recent years?
o Do you think that working conditions have improved? If so, in what ways?
 How long do you plan to continue working where you are?
 How long have you been working at your present job?
 How many days a week do you work?
 How many hours a week do you work?
 How many times have you been promoted?
o When was the last time you were promoted?
o Did you get a large pay raise at that time?
 How much do you think a doctor should be paid a month?
o How about a secretary?
o How about a truck driver?
 How much money do you make? (Maybe this is not a good question to ask.)
 How much money does a secretary get paid per week?
 How old were you when you got your first job?
 How well do you get along with your boss?
 If you could own your own business, what would it be?
 If you had to choose between a satisfying job and a well-paid one, which would you
choose?
 Is it common for men and women to have the same jobs in your country?
 Is it easy to find a job in Canada? How about in your country?
 Name three occupations that you could do. (For example, be a mortician)
o Name three occupations that you could never do?
 What are some common occupations in your country?
o What are some common jobs for men in your country?
o What are some common jobs for women in your country?
o What are some jobs that children do?
 What are some jobs that you think would be boring?
 What are some jobs that you think would be fun?
 What are some questions that are frequently asked in a job interview?
 What are you responsible for?
 What are you trying to do in order to find a job that you really like?
 What do you do?
o What's your job?
 What do you like most about that job?
 What do you think is the best job? What do you think is the worst?
 What do you think would be the most interesting job? The most boring?
 What does your father do? (What does your father do for a living?)
 What does your mother do?
 What influenced your choice of job? (Why did you choose your job?)
 What job do you want to have in five years' time?
 What job would you most like to have, if social/cultural boundaries did not apply?
(How different are they?)
 What job(s) do you wish to have in the future?
 What jobs in your country are considered to be good jobs? Why?
 What kind of volunteer work have you done?
 What kind of work do you do?
o What kind of work do you want to do in the future?
 What plans have you made for your retirement?
 What three adjectives would describe yourself as a worker?
 What time do you get home from work?
o Is it the same time every day?
 What time do your start and finish work?
 What would be your dream job?
o Do you think it would be possible for you to get this job?
 What's one job you wouldn't like to do? Why not?
 What's your brother's occupation?
 When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
 When you were a child, what job did you want to have when you grew up?
 Where do you work and what is your current job?
 Where do you work?
 Which job are you best at?
 Which job would you never do?
 Which jobs do you think are the most prestigious?
 Who among the people you know has the most interesting job? What is it?
 Why did you leave your last job - did you resign or were you sacked?
 Would you be upset if your boss was a woman?
 Would you consider the military as a career choice? Why or why not?
 Would you consider yourself to be an ambitious person at work?
 Would you describe yourself as a workaholic?
 Would you like a job in which you traveled a lot?
 Would you like a job that required you to sit at a computer all day?
 Would you like to do the same job for the rest of your life?
 Would you like to work in an office? Why or why not?
 Would you rather be a doctor or a banker?
 Would you rather work inside or outside?
 What job would you most like to do?
 What are the names of some of the people with that job?
 Do you personally know any one with that job?
 How long do you plan to keep it for?
 When do plan to retire?
 What other fields or work will that job make you qualified for?
 What are the work details of that job; what will be your duties at that job?
 What steps are required from you to become a/an...?
 So, how long before fore you become a/an...; at what ages will you both start and
finish this/each job/career?
 What do you hope to spiritually gain from that job?
 What do you wish to physically gain; what kind of things would you like to buy
with your money?
 How much money do you need to make to fulfill you dreams and desires?
 If money weren't a problem for you, which job would you prefer to have?
 How does money affect your decisions?
 How do your wants and desires affect your career options and goals?
 How many years of schooling would you prefer to have?
 Can you improve on the way things are now being done in the field you choose?
 Which college courses are needed for you to be the very best in your field?
 Which college courses are required for you dream job?
 What other courses do you need to take so you can pursue your hobbies and
personal interests?
 Which of the classes mentioned above are you giving the highest priority? Why?
 Who is the breadwinner (provider) in your family?
 Who makes the most money in your family? (This may not be a "polite" question to
ask.)
 Is it common for people from your country to have one job for life?
 Do you see any unfair labour practices in your country's workforce?
 Do you have an after-school job?
 Would you like to have a management position?
 What are the pros and cons of being a manager?
 What are the qualities a good boss should have?
 What is a fair wage for the skills you have?
 Are there any jobs which can only be done by one gender?
o If so, what are they?
o What are some jobs that some people think only one gender can do, but can
be done by either gender?
 What should you not do during a job interview?
 Who would you hire a employee with a lot of experience or an employee with a lot
of education?
 Have you ever worked?
 Getting a Job
o What is the difference between work and a job?
o Do you have a job?
 o How did you get it?
o Did you have to go to university to get it?
o What is the name of your job?
o Is it a popular job?
o Is it a job mainly for men, or for women?
o Did you need any special training to get your job?
 What type of special training did you need?
 How long and where was the training?
o Is it an indoor, or outdoor job?
o Which do you think most people prefer, indoor or outdoor jobs?
o Does your job pay a good salary?
o What are the advantages and disadvantages to your job?
o Which do you think are some of the more demanding jobs?
 Which are the least demanding jobs?
o Which jobs are badly paid?
 Which jobs are over-paid?
o Which job are more popular than others, and why?
o Is your job competitive?
o What about promotions?
o Is it too competitive?
o How is your relationship with your co-workers?
o Why would I choose you instead of the 50 others wanting this position?
 These were submitted as possible job interview questions.
o What degrees do you have?
o How much experience do you have?
o Where have you worked?
o Why did you choose this employment?
o How much would you like to earn?
o Have you ever worked in this field?
o Where would you like to work? Why?
o Why do you find your job interesting?
Verb Games
1. Verb Charades
This is a speed game. Play it in small groups or a large class.

Prepare a large number of verb cards, one verb to each small card. If you need inspiration,
you can find an excellent list of regular verbs at the title=”English Club”>English Club.

Put the cards in a box or bag. In turn, each student will be given a brief time to take verb
cards and silently perform as many as they can for their team to guess. The performer may
pass (if they don’t know a verb or have no ideas for a mime) and draw a new verb to guess.
Play should progress as fast as possible. Encourage speed.

The performing student should be given a short time (about a minute or two) to perform as
many verbs as they can while their team tries to guess.

Repeat as long as you have schedules time, attempting to give each student an opportunity
to perform.

Post-round, be certain to explain (and perform) any verbs that were passed on, or that
students were unable to guess.

To increase difficulty for advanced students, encourage full sentence responses. For
example: Rather than a short answer “sleep”, an acceptable answer would be “I sleep every
night.”

2. Verb Relay
 This is a good energy starter for any class and any level, but especially young
learners.Prepare a list of verb cards as above. Mark of a relay course across the
classroom, from one side to another and place the box or bag of verb cards (see
above) at the far end of the race course. Make teams. Each team in turn must run to
the bag or box of verb cards, pull out a card and both make a sentence and perform
a pantomime verb and then return to their team. The next in line goes again. Be
prepared to help students that encounter a word they don’t know, or who have
difficulty making a sentence.

3. Pantomime Verbs
A good game for shy beginners.

Explain rules. Write “Is it this?” on your blackboard. Explain what the word
‘rhyme’ means.

Collect the class into a large group.

The teacher says, “I’m thinking of a verb that rhymes with ______.” (Try to use
single syllable words and verbs).

Any student in the group may respond with the phrase “Is it this?” and then the
student should pantomime the verb they are guessing.

For example: The teacher targets the verb ‘run’ and says, “I’m thinking of a verb
that rhymes with ‘fun’.

The first student to say, “Is it this?” and pantomimes running is the victor.

Repeat. With lower level classes the teacher should always lead, but in more
advanced classes, the victor starts the game again.

4. Mother May I?
A fun game for young children, less so for teenagers and adults, though some adults
will get into the spirit of the game and enjoy it.

This is a variation on the old school yard game “Mother May I?” also known as
“Captain May I?” and “Father May I?”

To begin the game, the teacher stands at one end of a room or play area, while the
children line up at the other end.

The students take turns asking “Mother/Father/Captain, may I ____?” and makes a
movement suggestion.

For example, a student might ask, “Mother, may I walk?”

 The teacher either replies “Yes, you may walk three steps” or “No, you may not do
that, but you may _____ instead” and suggests another action.

It helps if you model on your blackboard the following examples.

o Mother may I walk?

o Mother may I crawl?
o Mother may I hop?
o Mother may I dance?
o Mother may I run?
o Mother may I skip?
o Mother may I roll?
o Mother may I march?
o Mother may I jog?
o Mother may I race?
o Mother may I fly?
o Mother may I fall?
o Mother may I trot?
o Mother may I jump?
o Mother may I leap?
o Mother may I sneak?
o Mother may I swim?

The first of the children to reach the location of the mother/father wins the game.
That child may then becomes the mother/father if their ability is high enough to lead
the game. If not, keep score.

5. Verb Shouts!/Verb Acting

This is a game that is best played in a large group.

Find a simple English story that you will read to your students. You can find some
useful easy stories at Really Learn English and some news stories at News in
Levels.

The teacher reads the story while the students listen carefully. When a student hears
a verb in the story he/she shouts out “VERB!” and quickly performs (pantomimes)
the verb heard. (Let student’s know that the verb “to be” (is, was etc.) is best
performed by doing nothing. This can and will be seen as humour by the class)

Keep score.

6. Verb Scavenger Hunt

Prepare a number of cards with words on them.
 Suggested Mix:

o 15 verbs
o 15 nouns
o 15 words of other parts of speech (adjectives, conjunctions, adverbs etc.)

Secretly place these cards around the room. Be certain to hide them in unusual
places (Under desks, in drawers, behind other objects).

Each student is expected to search around the room and keep a running list of verbs
only. (you may repeat the game another time with the same material, yet have
students search for nouns etc.)

This should be played quietly, while each student searches and records their finds.
However, if you have a mixed level class, pair up a beginner with a more advance
learner to travel and search together.

Score the game with winners being the learners that collect the largest number of
verbs. Penalize students that record words that are other parts of speech.

o +1 point for each verb

o -2 points for each noun
o -3 points for adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions etc.

Note: be cautious with gerunds (verbs used as nouns) and hybrid verbs (nouns used
as verbs; ie: bat, rake, keyboard etc.). It can be fun to include them in your word list,
but to be fair to your students, let them know that you have included a few in their
scavenger hunt.

Mixing up verb tense can make a more challenging game for some students.

7. What do I like to do?

This is a variation on Blind Man’s Poker.

It is best played in groups of 4-6.

Using post-it notes or blank paper, write simple verbs on a card for each student in a
group. The card is stuck to a players forehead (by tape or spittle or the glue of a
post-it-note).

Each student in turn is attempting to guess the verb that is written on their own card.

Each student in turn may ask a yes/no question of the rest of the group. They must
answer truthfully.
 At any time a student may guess their verb. The first student to guess correctly wins
the game.

Example of play:

1. Student one (Verb: sleep)

2. Student two (Verb: eat)
3. Student three (Verb: cook)
4. Student four (Verb: study)

o Student One: “Do I do this outside?” Group: No.

o Student Two: “Do I do this everyday?” Group: Yes.
o Student Three: “Do I need tools to do this?” Group: Yes.
o Student Four: “Do I do this everyday?” Group: (Laughing) Some people do,
but do you? Maybe.
o Student One: “Do I do this in the bathroom?” Group: No
o Student Two: “Do I do this with with other people? Group: Yes, but not
always.
o Student Three: “Do I do this inside?” Group: Yes.
o Student Four: “Do I need books to do this?” Group: Yes.
o “Is it read?” Group: No
o Student One: “Do I do this in the kitchen?” Group: No.
o Student Two: “Do I do this with toys?” Group: No.
o Student Three: “Is this a chore?” Group: Yes. “Is it clean?” Group: No.
o Student Four: “Do I do this for English Class?” Group: Yes! We hope so!
“Is it study?” Group: Congratulations you won!

Though one student will win, it is best to keep playing until the last person has
guessed their verb.

Repeat the game as time allows.

8. Verb Snip
Form a circle with your class with one student in the centre.

The student in the centre will point to one student in the circle and say and spell a
three-letter word (example: “Cat, C-A-T”). Then the student in the centre will
(slowly) count from one to twenty and say “Snip”.

The student pointed at must name three verbs that start with the letter spelled
(example: “Call, Ask, Teach”).

If a student is not able to say three verbs before the person in the centre says, “Snip”
then they are moved into the centre and the game begins again.
 If the student gives three verb examples, the student in the centre choses a new
person and a new three-letter word.

Beware of (and veto) impossible, or very difficult words (example: B-O-X) and
encourage students to not repeat verbs that have been used.

9. Verbtionary
This is a variation of the game Pictionary.

Divide the class into teams usually four per team is a good number.

In turn, a member from each team works at the blackboard and becomes the team
“drawer” for the round.

Tell each student a verb either in writing or for students that with difficulty
reading, whisper it.

On “Go!” each drawer will draw the verb for their team. Each team shouts out their
guesses.

The first team to shout out the right verb wins the round. Keep score.

New drawers will come to the board for the next round and the game is repeated.

Be aware: This game is known to be noisy, so try to be aware of the classes around
you.

10. Verb toss

To play this game, you will need a balloon or ball.

Write on your blackboard “I _VERB_ the ball” and model some examples “I throw
the ball”, “I kick the ball” “I hit the ball”

Arrange your class into a circle.

Each student must say the phrase inserting their own verb and throw the ball to
another student.

Encourage students to mime their action (when possible).

Do not correct obvious grammar mistakes such as “I sleep the ball” or “I dance the
ball” this game is about fast thinking and playing with verbs. Allow some repetition,
it will help reinforce learning.

Try to insert yourself into the game adding new verb vocabulary when possible.
11. Robot
This is a fun game for very young and beginning learners. It is also a low-stress
game for shy students.

Arrange your class into a group.

Write the word “Robot” on the blackboard and draw your best robot picture.
Explain to each of the students that they are going to be robots under your control.
Students will be expected to mime activities that you call out.

Such as “Robots dance!” “Robots eat!” “Robots jump!” “Robots swim!” On each
command students should mime the activity.

Robot is a good game for beginners as learners have the ease of copying other more
advanced students even if they don’t know the vocabulary expressed by the teacher.

After a few practices, encourage learners to repeat the command as they mime the
verb.

If you are presented with a class that doesn’t understand a verb you say, be prepared
to mime it for your students first.

12. Verb Conjugation Relay Race

Divide your class into equal teams facing your blackboard a short distance away.
Each team will need a piece of chalk.

Model on the blackboard: “I am. You are. He is. She is. We are. They are. It is.”

The game is played as the teacher shouts out the simple form of a verb. In turn, each
team member must run to the blackboard and conjugate the verb in turn.

Example (verb: sleep):

o First student writes: “I sleep”
o Next student in line writes: “You sleep”
o Next student in line writes: “He sleeps”
o and so on, until the verb has been conjugated in each form.

Let your students know that if a mistake is made, they may give up their turn to
correct it. But they may only correct one mistake per turn.

This game should be played silently, do not allow conversation/assistance inside

teams.
 When a team has completed all forms, the round is over. The first team to complete
the series receives seven (7) points {one for each example} each other team will
receive one (1) point for each correct example.

Repeat with a new verb and continue to keep score.

13. Verb Tic-Tac-Toe

This can be an excellent game for irregular verb practice.

Separate your class into two teams. Draw a tic-tac-toe playing area on your
blackboard and randomly place pronouns (I, you, he, she, we, they, it) in each of the
boxes of the tic-tac-toe board.

Prepare verbs written on pieces of paper and place them in a box or hat for students
to draw from. In turn, each student selects a verb, chooses a space and then gives
the correct form of the verb for the box the student chooses. If correct, the team is
awarded the box.

A student may re-use a box that has been filled in by conjugating a new verb to go
with the pronoun. They will steal the space this way.

First team to get three boxes in a row, wins the round. Keep score.

14. Hot Verb-tato

This is a variation of the school yard game “Hot Potato”.

Arrange students in a circle. You will need a ball, balloon, bean bag or potato to be
tossed around. Keep time. Fifteen seconds is a good starting time, but it helps to
vary the time from ten to thirty seconds.

On start, each student must say a verb and pass the ‘potato’ to another student.

When time runs out the student holding the ‘potato’ loses and is subjected to some
light-hearted punishment (sing the ABC song, do a dance, run around the circle,
answer three questions in English, etc.).

Each student:
o May only pass the potato after saying a verb. Verbs may not be repeated in a
round, if they are, the student is deemed the loser
o Must take the potato when it is passed to them
o Must not throw hard
o Pick up the potato if they drop it, say a verb and only then pass it on
 A more difficult variation of this game for advanced students is for each round to
declare the letter that each verb must start with (example: “A” ask, answer, assault,
ambulate, assume, aspire, etc., “B” bathe, bat, blend, bleach, bask, etc.)

Verb games can be a great warm up to a class or an energy reviver when students seem
tired and run down. If used regularly they can be a fun break for students that will help add
more laughter to what may be a dull memorizaiton exercise.