About the simplest activity I can recall is to complete a stem like '(Just think,) (T)his time last year/(A) year ago, I was...(!)'. This would seem to suit "fondly reminiscing" more than not (unless people really like to talk about
awful pasts!), but if your students aren't in exactly slightly less pleasant circumstances this year LOL then maybe you can show them people who are! For example, a cartoonishly raggedy castaway guy on a desert island still, and now on Christmas Day (according to the days he's been crossing off on a washed-up calendar he'd salvaged and religiously kept track of time on ever since being shipwrecked) thinking to himself... (about all the fun he was having last year, eating turkey, drinking, watching TV etc etc, when safe and sound in the lap of luxurious civilization).* Or you could show a banker...(oh, wait, they're still doing OK aren't they!). But it would of course also be fine to complete the stem in a much more factual, matter-of-fact manner (hence the bracketing in the above "example" stem).
A variant on the above is of course the 'Where were you (and/)what were you doing when ((in)famous, reasonably contemporaneous event) happened? Can you remember?' (For example, ...when Desert Storm began? Or ...on 9/11? etc).
Or you could simply use (or even recycle) pictures that have a lot of activity/activities in them or are telling a story (even if such pics have been used previously, for more present-tensed language practice).
Putting the onus more on the student's own imaginations, though still giving them some sort of storytelling structure/organizing framework, you could try the 'Fortunately/Unfortunately' activity outlined here:
http://forums.eslcafe.com/teacher/viewtopic.php?t=9143 . This activity definitely suits the use of narrative 'I/X was ...ing...', but I'd allow simple co-ordination (or indeed no explicit linking of clauses at all: I was sitting in the park (and/?when) # There was an old man sitting next to me...), and note that prepositions can do a lot of easy work: I was in O'Malley's bar (is it really necessary to say 'drinking', unless it happened to be a particularly strong/rare/expensive drink we were having?); see also the 'on' in the 9/11 example above.
More genuinely dialogically, Past Progressive (just varying the terminology used, for the purposes of whoever may be searching in future for info/activities for this form/construction) can be associated with questions that demand answers/explanations, with the classic activity being 'Alibi'.** But rather than having cops and robbers being played out in yet another classroom, you might instead like to consider the more down-to-earth activity of making excuses for e.g. failing to turn up for a meet(ing): Why did(n't) you...?/Where were you? What were you doing?! It wouldn't take long to think up and make a deck of simple pictures illustrating various problems/excuses (that the students in a group can take turns turning over, thinking about then trying to formulate/"answer" - the question always stays the same (perhaps the person who answered last can then ask the question of the next answerer), but make sure that you include at least a few things that might not require progressive aspect (e.g. My car (had) broke(n) down, rather than ?My car was breaking down), or do but can also be expressed without (I was fixing the front door lock (to the house)/I had to fix the front door lock; ?I fixed the front door lock).
You might also like to try searching (structurally) the BNC @ BYU for authentic Past Continuous examples - good contexts can suggest further activities or variants of activities. Instructions here:
http://forums.eslcafe.com/teacher/viewt ... 1753#41753 .
Hope this gives you a few ideas that you can work with, develop and use successfully, Brix!
*If you aren't much of an artist, or you (or others) would like to see what sort of picture I might come up with to illustrate this activity, I can crack out my marker pen and paper, draw something, and post it on Imageshack!
**The set up I'm familiar with (the Idea Cookbook here on Dave's may have some variant) is that you announce there was a robbery last night e.g. at some local bank or store, then two students are chosen as suspects, sent out of the room and given a few minutes to work out what they were both doing (they'll supply each other with an alibi) whilst the rest of the students are assigned the police role (and potential subroles: good cop, bad cop, shorthand notetaker(s) etc) and anticipate/practice what sort of questions they might ask in order to uncover inconsistencies between the two stories. You'll need to flit in and out and monitor/help with how the suspects and police are each preparing for the coming "interrogation". Each suspect is then led in separately and questioned individually/alone. If the police can uncover (n) number of inconsistencies between each story given say five minutes questioning of each suspect, then the implication is that the suspects are guilty, meaning the police have got their men/women and thus won/solved the case.
