Chapter 6: Holding the Reins and Letting Them Loose – Giving Students Practice 89
Remember that students need a challenge. In this exercise I include another
gerund (stops working) to see whether the students can distinguish between
this structure and the Present Continuous, which always includes the verb ‘to
be’ plus a gerund.
Finding specific words in a text
You can use other ways to use a text without underlining tenses. When you’re
doing a vocabulary based lesson, try using identifying and categorising tasks.
This exercise from a more advanced lesson is about descriptions of personality.
Decide whether the underlined words are positive, negative or neutral
and write each under one of the headings after the passage. Cheerful is
already slotted for you.
There are five people in my department. Sometimes we get on well but
there’s also friction when we’re under pressure. Bill is the most ambi-
tious. He’s pretty frank but on the whole a cheerful chap. Then there’s
Rick who has more experience than the rest of us so he’s a shrewd char-
acter. Being more mature he likes to be selective about the projects we
take on. Sarah and Beverley are both very cooperative but Sarah is far
more assertive.
Positive Negative Neutral
cheerful
Mixing up anagrams
You’re probably familiar with anagrams, which are basically words with the
letters jumbled up. By putting the letters in order, the students not only have
to remember the words but also make sure of the spelling of the new words.
Put the letters in order to find three sports
lolyallevb: volleyball
skoorne:
scattehil:
The last two are snooker and athletics in case you’re wondering!
Scrambling sentences
To practise the word order of a particular structure you can design an exer-
cise in which words in a sentence are jumbled.
