Past Continuous
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Past Continuous
Could you please give some suggestions about oral activities to work with Past Continuous? Yesterday I asked my students to make up a conversation by using this tense, I told them to imagine that we all went to a party and that they had to set a possible context for the conversation. They did well on it, but the thing is that I ran out of ideas and I still need to work on this tense because they will be asked to have an oral examination.
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This one cries out for pictures. Get a picture of everybody doing things on the beach and a huge sea monster coming out of the sea.
What were they doing when the monster appeared?
Same with a guy digging the garden and the aliens appearing.
You're not going to get an extended activity using it, because it's used to describe actions at a point in time, and in normal life the conversation would soon shift to the narrative in the Past Simple.
What were they doing when the monster appeared?
Same with a guy digging the garden and the aliens appearing.
You're not going to get an extended activity using it, because it's used to describe actions at a point in time, and in normal life the conversation would soon shift to the narrative in the Past Simple.
Warm up for Steven's exercise
Hey there!
Steven's idea is on the mark, I'd suggest "Where's Wally?" (Just saw it in a book fair in the park yesterday and was thinking about how I might be able to use it for some activity.... ended up buying Zafón's La Sombra del Viento)
I'd also like to suggest warming the students up for up to 30 minutes doing a series of drills before getting the picture out. I'd probably begin with a simple transformation exercise with the "be", maybe "Change these sentences into the simple past tense"
The boy is here.
The student is tall.
You are very tired.
I am a student.
(in all of these warm-ups I'd use the following exchange: T reads sentence, S transforms sentence, T repeats sentence. Further on, you can continue with: S makes a question from the transformed sentence that the teacher has repeated, T repeats the question and S answers with a short answer either affirmative or negative, I'd keep it affirmative since they will mostly be making affirmative sentences when looking at the Wally picutre)
Then: "Change these sentences into the present continuous"
I eat every day. -- I am eating now.
He reads every day. -- He is reading now.
Then: "Make sentences with the verb given, following this pattern"
I was verbing when Mary phoned.
eat. I was eating when Mary phoned.
sleep. I was sleeping when Mary phoned.
He. He was sleeping wen Mary phoned.
shower. He was taking a shower when Mary phoned.
I'd spend about five to ten minutes with each exercise, each student saying a couple of sentences, one by one. I have the students sitting in a semi-circle and we do rounds, I hand out a photocopied dollar bill for each correct participation in the exercise, we count money at the end of each round, students see how well/poorly they have done with the exercise. I don't go so far as the "look at the picture" thing, as my classes continue with guided improvisation and the students spend about an hour rehearsing a short conversation and another presenting them for critique. However, I might try the picture out in this next adult class I have.
On the short conversation, I don't ask my students to invent their own conversations, none of them are script-writers or playwrights. I use basic dialogues from the "Streamlines" series of books and give them suggestions on how to take advantage of the structure offered substituting in order to create different chats. And I'm with Steven on the frequency of use of this structure, I usually explain it as a "setting the scene" type of sentence....once we know what was going on when that something else happened (and being in the simple past, that other thing takes on the focus of the sentence, unless what was happening is in response to a doubt or question, for example. Here I mean that the two structures in which the verb is alone, without an auxiliary, stand out a bit for their simplicity) we would indeed tell the rest of the story in the simple past, or even simple present if we feel an immediacy in the drama we are relating.
peace,
revel.
Steven's idea is on the mark, I'd suggest "Where's Wally?" (Just saw it in a book fair in the park yesterday and was thinking about how I might be able to use it for some activity.... ended up buying Zafón's La Sombra del Viento)
I'd also like to suggest warming the students up for up to 30 minutes doing a series of drills before getting the picture out. I'd probably begin with a simple transformation exercise with the "be", maybe "Change these sentences into the simple past tense"
The boy is here.
The student is tall.
You are very tired.
I am a student.
(in all of these warm-ups I'd use the following exchange: T reads sentence, S transforms sentence, T repeats sentence. Further on, you can continue with: S makes a question from the transformed sentence that the teacher has repeated, T repeats the question and S answers with a short answer either affirmative or negative, I'd keep it affirmative since they will mostly be making affirmative sentences when looking at the Wally picutre)
Then: "Change these sentences into the present continuous"
I eat every day. -- I am eating now.
He reads every day. -- He is reading now.
Then: "Make sentences with the verb given, following this pattern"
I was verbing when Mary phoned.
eat. I was eating when Mary phoned.
sleep. I was sleeping when Mary phoned.
He. He was sleeping wen Mary phoned.
shower. He was taking a shower when Mary phoned.
I'd spend about five to ten minutes with each exercise, each student saying a couple of sentences, one by one. I have the students sitting in a semi-circle and we do rounds, I hand out a photocopied dollar bill for each correct participation in the exercise, we count money at the end of each round, students see how well/poorly they have done with the exercise. I don't go so far as the "look at the picture" thing, as my classes continue with guided improvisation and the students spend about an hour rehearsing a short conversation and another presenting them for critique. However, I might try the picture out in this next adult class I have.
On the short conversation, I don't ask my students to invent their own conversations, none of them are script-writers or playwrights. I use basic dialogues from the "Streamlines" series of books and give them suggestions on how to take advantage of the structure offered substituting in order to create different chats. And I'm with Steven on the frequency of use of this structure, I usually explain it as a "setting the scene" type of sentence....once we know what was going on when that something else happened (and being in the simple past, that other thing takes on the focus of the sentence, unless what was happening is in response to a doubt or question, for example. Here I mean that the two structures in which the verb is alone, without an auxiliary, stand out a bit for their simplicity) we would indeed tell the rest of the story in the simple past, or even simple present if we feel an immediacy in the drama we are relating.
peace,
revel.
Re: Past Continuous
Loquito Cortes wrote:Could you please give some suggestions about oral activities to work with Past Continuous? Yesterday I asked my students to make up a conversation by using this tense, I told them to imagine that we all went to a party and that they had to set a possible context for the conversation. They did well on it, but the thing is that I ran out of ideas and I still need to work on this tense because they will be asked to have an oral examination.
Try "police reports" or "courtroom scenes".
Many grammars correctly use two sentences to explain Past Perfect:
Ex: The policeman went to the reported area. A bridge had collapsed.
== Past Perfect happens before and finishes before the precedent Simple Past (went).
Similarly, Past Progressive also demands two sentences for explanation:
Ex: The policeman went to the reported area. A bridge was collapsing.
== Past Progressive happens before but not finishes before the precedent Simple Past (went).
Ex: The policeman went to the reported area. A bridge had collapsed.
== Past Perfect happens before and finishes before the precedent Simple Past (went).
Similarly, Past Progressive also demands two sentences for explanation:
Ex: The policeman went to the reported area. A bridge was collapsing.
== Past Progressive happens before but not finishes before the precedent Simple Past (went).