Category: English games

I have already published 10 posts on teaching irregular verbs. You can see the list of the posts down here:

1. Irregular verbs again
2. Irregular verbs again 2
3. Irregular verbs – third time lucky?
4. Irregular verbs in context 1
5. Irregular verbs straightforward

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1. Irregular verbs straightforward #2
2. Irregular verbs straightforward #3
3. Teach 9 irregular verbs in one lesson
4. Irregular verbs in context – Scream
5. Irregular verbs in context – Teacher story

But I still cannot say that my students know the verbs. That was why I joined forces with Fluency MC, and this time we would like to teach the irregular verbs together.
To achieve this, we have prepared a song, an infographic, a game and an online quiz. We believe that if you go through all the activities, you will know the 20 irregular verbs we would like to teach in this post.

Listen to the song and complete the lyrics.

Irregular verbs lyrics first part

Show the following infographic to your students and ask them to go through the example sentences. If you teach a monolingual class, ask them to translate the more difficult sentences. Note that the print version of the worksheet looks different than the infographic here:

You can download the print version of the infographic here:

Irregular verbs with Fluency MC 1

Now it is time to test your students knowledge. Ask them to complete the following online test. If they pass they will be rewarded with a game.

Online quiz on irregular verbs
You can watch more videos by Fluency MC here:

Students often hesitate over whether they should use an adverb or an adjective in a sentence. And to be honest, I did not make it much easier for them with my explanations. So I decided to buckle down to work and create a simple system which will work for my students.
Here is the final result. I have created an infographic which helps the students decide what form they should use. Then there are two games to help them to practice what they have learned and an interactive quiz where they can test their knowledge.

First, make sure, that your students know how to form adverbs. If they don´t, we have a great post on adverbs here.

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Once you are sure your students can form adverbs correctly, show them the following infographic. Explain that they have to consider two factors when deciding whether they should use an adjective or an adverb. First, are any of the verbs mentioned in point 1 in the sentence? If so, they should use an adjective.
If not, they should consider point 2. Is the word in front of a noun and does it describe it? If so, they should use an adjective again.
In all other cases the students should use an adverb. I know it is just a rule of thumb, but it works most of the time.
You should not forget to mention that there is a difference between GOOD and WELL after the verbs in case 1. GOOD means not bad and WELL means fine or healthy.

Now there are two games to practise the grammar in an enjoyable way. The first game is called On Target. Your task is to choose the correct option and then shoot all the bad ducks. You can shoot one of the bottles near the walls and thus earn a bonus.

On Target game

The second game is called Penalty Shootout and students love it. Your task is again to choose the correct option and then score a goal.

Penalty Shootout Game

Now you can practise the grammar in the following quiz. Students should fill in the correct answers and if they pass the quiz they will be rewarded with a game. Unlike the games above, this one is in HTML5 so it will play on all mobile devices.

Online quiz

This is the second post in which engames.eu has joined forces with Fluency MC to provide materials for teaching collocations with the verb HAVE. In this post we teach the collocations from the second part of Jason’s rap song.
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In this post you will find the song, an infographic, two interactive quizzes and a game. We hope you will find the post interesting and useful. If you have any suggestions about how we can improve our effort, please leave a comment.

Ask your students to listen to the following song and complete the second part of the lyrics (the third verse starts at 1:30.)

Listen and complete the lyrics:

Have collocations lyrics 2

If you dare, you can sing along with Jason 🙂

Display the following infographics and go through the information to clarify the meaning of the more difficult phrases. If you teach a monolingual class, translate the phrases into your students’ mother tongue.

Once the students understand the collocations ask them to work in pairs and ask and answer the questions in the outside circle. In this way they can practise the collocations in a communicative way.

Both of the quizzes are made in HTML5 so they will play on computers and all mobile devices. In the first quiz, you have to drag the correct words into the correct places. If you pass the test, you can play the game Angry Farmer as a reward.

In the second quiz you should match the collocations and their definitions and then write the collocations. Once again, if you pass the test, you can play a game.

To play on the full screen, click here:
Quiz – full screen

The game contains questions from the first post on collocations with HAVE and this post. You can practise all the collocations with HAVE here.
Click the dice in the right hand corner and then move your counter. If you step on a question mark, you have to answer a question. If you answer correctly, you will move forward. If not, you will move back.
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To play on the full screen, click here:

Quiz – full screen

If you like Jason’s song, have a look at some more by him:

You can download the quiz here:

Have collocations 2 (Web)

Jason R. Levine produces some of the best videos for teaching and learning English online. You probably know his super famous rap on irregular verbs. However, for this post we agreed to create materials for another one of his videos. You will find materials here for his video on collocations with the verb HAVE.

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In the post you can find the following activities: a video with the song (by Jason), the lyrics worksheet, an infographic with all the collocations, an interactive quiz and a game. If you go through all the activities I am sure that you will know most of the collocations.

Watch the video and complete the following worksheet with the lyrics.

This post covers only the first two verses of the song so stop the video after the two verses.
Have collocations song

Go through the following infographic. If you have a monolingual class, ask them to translate the collocations. If you teach an international group, explain only the more difficult phrases.

Then ask the students to work in pairs or small groups and to ask and answer the questions in the outer circles.

Both of the following games are created in HTML5, so they will play on all mobile devices.
The first game is called Quiz Goose Science, and your task is to click on the dice in the upper right hand corner. When you do, your avatar moves. If you finish your move on a question mark, you will be given a question. If you answer correctly, you will move ahead. If not, you will be moved backwards.
You can play against either the computer or other people.

To play on the full screen click the button:
Game – full screen

The second game is an interactive quiz. Your task is to answer all the questions as well as you can. If you pass the quiz you will be rewarded with a game.

To play on the full screen click the button:
Quiz – full screen

I would like to thank Jason for his cooperation, and I hope we will publish many other posts together. In the meantime, you should check out the following videos by Fluency MC:

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Most placement tests are for adults. There are few placement tests for young students. Thus, when a teacher tries to test his or her students’ proficiency in English using a standard placement test, the students quickly become discouraged because they don’t understand anything. Then the final results tell you nothing about the students´ knowledge.
This placement test is different. It contains only 40 multiple choice questions, and it is for students who are at level A1 of the CERF. If the students get more than 28 answers correct, their English is at level A1 CEFR. If they get over 36 answers correct they are well into A2 CEFR level.
The grammar tested here contains only the verbs BE, HAVE GOT and CAN, present simple and continuous tenses. About half of the items test students´ knowledge of vocabulary and phrases.

There are two versions of the test. The first one is an interactive quiz, which you can try here:

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To play the quiz on the full screen click the button below:

Placement test – full screen

Or you can try the paper version of the test here.

Placement test for level A1

I hope the test will help you know your students better and choose the right level for each of them.

This placement test is for students 9-13 years old. If you are looking for a placement test for younger students, you can try the one that is here.
If you are looking for a placement test for adults, try this one.
You can try a placement test by Saint George Institute.

Questions with the verbs WAS and WERE are among the most common in English. Therefore it is vital for students to learn these questions well. They have to be able to form them, understand them and answer them.

To help you teach these types of questions, I have included the following activities in this post: an infographic explaining the grammar, a worksheet, a motivational song, a memory quiz and an online quiz. I hope you will find these useful and that your students will master questions with the verbs WAS and WERE.

Display the following infographic to your students and explain that questions with WAS and WERE usually start with these words. Elicit that you can add a WH word in front of them.
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I try to teach the grammar using a topic that the students are interested in. This time I have chosen the topic Selfies.

Was were questions worksheet

Start the lesson with the following song and ask the students to complete the lyrics in the first exercise in the worksheet.

Then play the video for the students and ask them to check their answers.

In the second activity, they should work in pairs and discuss the questions about selfies. If you happen to have a group whose English is not very good, have the students ask you the questions. That way you can demonstrate the way they should answer, and at the same time you can clear up the meaning of the questions.

Now ask the students to put the worksheets away and play the following video:

When the video finishes, ask your students to answer the questions as well as they can. Ask them to answer in full. Once they finish this task, tell them to check their answers and count 1 point for each correct YES or NO and 2 points if they gave a full answer (like, Yes, she was.)

Find out the winner and congratulate them.

Play the video again and ask the students to write their own questions for the pictures.

Ask them to work in pairs and to ask and answer their own questions.
In the last exercise, students work in pairs and give true answers to the questions.

The following online quiz contains a lot of different tasks which the students can do either as homework or at school. The quiz is in HTML5 and it will play on all digital devices.

Was and Were questions – full screen
There are some great activities for learning and practising WAS and WERE at the British Council site.

I like teaching prepositions of place. I can use the Cuisenaire rods, and my students can be creative in many ways and use English a lot.
Here I would like to share the activities I use to teach prepositions of place. In this post you can find the following activities: a mind map, an infographic, a worksheet and online exercises.

First, I introduce the prepositions of place using the following infographic. If you have an interactive whiteboard in your English class, you can display it there, or you can print it and hand it out to everyone in the class.
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Then display the following mind map and elicit the prepositions.

Hand out the following worksheet to your students. There are four pages and it is best to print out two pages on one sheet.

Prepositions of place worksheet

First you need to practise the names of pieces of furniture with your English class. You can find a furniture vocabulary post here.

Ask your students to solve the crossword and word search and then check their answers.
The second page concentrates on the prepositions. Ask your English class to figure out the names of the cats using the clues on the right.

In the task that follows, students should complete the sentences using the correct prepositions.
On the third page there is another infographic to introduce the meanings of the prepositions of place.

If you have a monolingual class and you speak their mother tongue, you could ask them to translate the sentences.

In the last task on page four, students have to place the pieces of furniture in the room. Then they have to describe their room to their partner and the listener has to draw the room.

My English classes love this activity. I bring the Cuisenaire rods and I give each pair of students a set. First, I tell them that they have 3 minutes to play with the rods.

After the 3 minutes I ask them to stop playing and put all the rods in the box. Then I dictate sentences like: Put the red rod on the table. Put the green rod under the red rod. Put the white rod next to the red rod.

I dictate 5 sentences and then we check the resulting shape.

In the next phase students work in pairs. One of them dictates and the other puts the rods on the table. After a while they swap their roles.

You can either ask your English class to use the following online quiz at home or you can do it at school if you have enough computers.

As the quiz is in HTML5 and should play on every mobile device, you could even ask your English class to do the quiz on their mobile phones.

In the quiz there are several slides with questions. If the students pass the quizzes, they can play a game.

Prepositions of place – full screen

There are some great activities for learning and practising prepositions of place at the British Council site.

I always loved the word formation part of the FCE test. This was the part of the test where I always scored really high. However, some of my students don’t. So I sat down and tried to find out why I have been so successful in this part of the test.

And the result? I believe that I do well on these tests because I know the other forms of words. I take the key word and then learn all of its other forms, and when I meet the word in a test I am able to remember the correct form.

In this post I am going to give you a chance to do the same. I selected 10 words that regularly appear in the word formation test for B2 level, and I listed all the forms and example sentences. What should you do? Try to memorise all the forms from the infographic and then go through the online quizzes.

Study the following infographic and try to remember all the forms. Do not forget to notice the differences in meaning.

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Do not spend too much time just learning the forms. It is best to use them in context, so I believe it is time to move to the online quizzes.

The first online quiz is in HTML5 so it will play on all devices. Your task is to choose the correct form of the words, and if you pass the quiz you will be given a chance to play a game as a reward.
Word formation quiz – full screen

The second game is called En Garde and it will only play on your desktop as it is made in flash. Your task is to choose the correct answer and then stop the circle as close to the centre as possible. Will you win?

Word formation quiz – full screen

You can find more interesting exercises at the British Council site.

For an unknown reason many elementary textbooks teach HAVE GOT at the very beginning. Students find it difficult and they get confused. Moreover, they get even more fed up when they learn that the Americans do not use this form.
But I have to teach the grammar, so there is no use crying over spilt milk. To be honest, I was not very successful the last time I taught this grammar, and that is why I decided to create some new materials.
In this post you will find a song, an infographic, a worksheet with communicative activities, and an interactive online quiz.

Start the lesson with the following song. Ask the students to listen and complete the lyrics. Check their answers and ask the students to listen and sing along. In this way they will practise their pronunciation and grammar at the same time.
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Have got song lyrics

Now draw the students’ attention to the following infographic. Explain the form of the verb have got. This may be the right time to drill the form.

Once you have explained the grammar, it is time to practise it using the following worksheet. Download it and print it out.

Have got communicative worksheet

Ask the students to work in pairs. They must not show their pictures to their partners.
In the first exercise they look at their picture and write what they have in the bag.
In the second exercise they write questions asking whether their partner has the same things in their bag . When the students finish writing their questions, they work in pairs and ask and answer in pairs.
In the third exercise, the students look at their bags. Then they look at the objects on the right. They ask their partner whether Jane or David has these things in their bags. They tick or cross out the objects in their pictures.

The following quiz can be taken at school or you canask your students to do it at home.
In the first part, the students should write correct sentences about the pictures using HAVE GOT. If they produce enough correct sentences, they will be able to play the game called Angry Farmer.
In the second part of the quiz they should first match the pictures and the words and then write them. In the last part of the quiz they have to write the correct answers. Again, if the students pass the quiz they will be rewarded with a game. This time they should write the words they see in the picture (of course, in English).

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Have got online quiz – full screen

Conditionals scare students to death. They seem complicated and difficult to understand. But as I explain, they only seem to be like this. In fact, they are quite simple and easy to comprehend.

In this post, I will try to keep things as simple as possible. I will deal only with one type of conditional – the second conditional. At the beginning of the post, there is a song that clearly demonstrates the form and the meaning of the grammar. Then there is a mind map and another explanation of the meaning.

Second conditional – song

First, ask your students to listen and complete the following lyrics. Then ask them to listen and sing the song. In this way they will improve their listening and pronunciation, and they will notice the form of the second conditional.

Second conditional song lyrics

Second conditional song:

Second Conditional – Infographic

Display the following mind map and ask the students to read the sentences. Then elicit the form of the second conditional.

Draw the students’ attention to the pictures at the bottom of the page and explain the usage of the second conditional. It is used for imagined situations.

Second Conditional – Links

You can find some excellent materials for teaching the second conditional at the British Council site.

There is a nice explanation of this grammar at the BBC Learning English site too.

Recently I have felt that my lessons are not language rich. And that is something no EFL teacher is happy about.
For example, I have been teaching questions to my fourth graders. We learnt all the vocabulary and grammar, but when I asked my students the questions, they were not able to answer. They did not understand the questions even though they knew all the words and grammar.
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In this post, I provide a series of entertaining activities in which students can practise and come to understand simple questions.

First, teach the following vocabulary. Read the words aloud and ask your students to repeat them. Then ask them to memorise the words. Give them only three minutes for this. Then ask the students to cover the words inside the circle and write the words in the outer boxes.

Do not forget to explain the phrase “the biggest” as there is no picture for this word.

Ask the students to take a piece of paper and a pen. Play the following video and ask them to answer all the questions. They should answer them as simply as possible.

Ask the students to check their answers at the end of the video. Find out who remembered the most in your class and reward them.

Now tell the students that you will play the same game, but this time they have to put the words in the questions into the correct order first. They will get one point for each correct question and one for each correct answer. The picture will show for only 5 seconds, but give the students enough time to write their questions and answers on a piece of paper.

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Memory test grammar – full screen

Display the pictures at the end, and ask your students to write their own questions. Then ask them to work in pairs and ask their partner the questions.

Vocabulary is the most important part of language. Without grammar you can communicate with difficulty, but without vocabulary you cannot say anything.
In this post, I would like to teach nearly 30 vocabulary items for different town facilities. I have included an infographic, an online quiz and a worksheet with several vocabulary activities. There is also a video where all the words are pronounced by a native speaker.
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The following map shows a town with all the buildings labeled in English. First, ask your students to have a look at the map and try to understand the meaning of the words. If you don´t understand any of the words, check their meanings below:

Here are all the words and their definitions:

• bank – a place where you keep your money
• airport – a place where planes start and finish their journey
• warehouse – a place where companies keep their goods until they need them
• hotel – a place where you can stay for a night or longer
• wood – a place with a lot of trees
• traffic lights – a set of red, yellow and green lights that shows you whether you can go or you have to stop
• school – a place where you can learn a lot of new things
• train station – a place where trains start and finish their journeys
• apartment house – a building with a lot of apartments
• house -a place where people live
• skyscraper – a very high building
• city centre – the buildings in the middle of a town or a city
• church – a place where people worship
• fire station – a place where firemen keep their equipment
• shopping centre – a place where there are a lot of shops
• park – a place with grass, trees and benches. You can relax there.
• bridge – a structure across a river or a deep valley
• police station – a place where the police are headquartered
• stadium – a place where football or rugby matches are played
• petrol station – a place where you can buy petrol
• hospital – a place where you go when you are really sick
• factory – a place where they make new things
• wharf – a place where they move goods from ships to trucks or warehouses

 

To learn the correct pronunciation of these words, watch the following video and repeat the words you hear.

Once you feel that you know the vocabulary, it is time to move to the quizzes.

Here you can choose between two options. You can either print out the worksheet and practise the vocabulary on the paper or you can do it on your computer or mobile phone.

Town vocabulary worksheet

Town vocabulary key

ONLINE QUIZ:

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To see the quiz on a full screen click the button below:
Town vocabulary online quiz

More often than not I teach in classrooms with no internet connection, so I realize that it is important to be able to use the activities offline too. You can download the online quiz, the game, and the picture and use them offline:
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Town

The past continuous tense is one of the most graphical tenses in English. By “graphical” I mean that it is easy to demonstrate the difference between the past simple and past continuous tense in a video or in a short dramatic sketch. Unfortunately, I could not find a video demonstrating the difference betweent the two past tenses, and that is why I created one myself.

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In addition to this video I created an infographic and an online quiz to practise the past continuous tense.

This infographic explains the form and the usage of the past continuous tense in a graphical way.

First, concentrate on the form. Explain that the students have to use the verbs WAS or WERE and the verb ending with -ing. Then explain how the negative and questions are formed.
If your students cannot create the -ing form properly, refer to the following post on the present continuous tense, which shows how the -ing verbs are formed.

Once you get to the usage of the past continuous tense, play the video. Play it twice and the second time stop the video and highlight the differences in the scenes and the tenses.

You can use the following online test in class or you can ask your students to do it at home. The online quiz consists of two parts. In the first part, the students are asked to put the verb into the past continuous tense. In the second part they have to choose either the past simple tense or the past continuous tense.

If you want to play the online quiz in full screen click the button below.

Past continuous – online quiz

Or you can use the flash version here:

Past continuous – online quiz

More often than not I teach in classrooms with no internet connection, so I realize that it is important to be able to use the activities offline too. You can download the online quiz, the game, and the picture and use them offline:
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Past continuous tense download

You can find one more post on past continuous tense here.

There is also a good discussion of the past continuous tense at the British Council site.

And the last link is to the BBC Learning English site.

Placement tests are extremely important if you do not know your students well and you need to know what to teach them. Further, these tests can be used to measure whether your students made any progress during a certain period of time.
Placement tests are often professionally produced and sold for a lot of money. And as nearly every publishing house sells placement tests, they are probably in demand. However, there are very few placement tests available for young learners of English.
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Noticing this gap, I decided to design a placement test for young students. The test is aimed at children aged 8 – 10. They should have studied English for 2 or 3 years for about 3 hours per week.

The test contains 40 items. The students should choose the correct word for each of the pictures from the line below. They should write the number of their answer in the box nearest the picture. You will need to print the placement test in colour as it is not possible in some cases to choose the correct answers without seeing the pictures in colour.

YLE placement test

You can either give the test to the students at the beginning of the school year and then compare the results with the same test at the end of the year and see the progress.

Or you can use the following interpretation:

• 40-35 The student knows everything from the textbooks Happy House 1, Happy House 2 and Happy Street.
• 34-20 The student knows everything from the textbooks Happy House 1 and Happy House 2.
• 19-10 The student knows everything from the textbook Happy House 1 and should move to Happy House 2.
• 9-0 The student should start with the textbook Happy House 1.

If you do not teach young learners and you need a placement test, you can find a free one here.
If you would like to know how many words your students know, you can try the vocabulary placement tests here.
Or if you would like to have your proficiency level checked professionally, you can find information at the British Council site.
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You can find some information about the Oxford online placement test here.

Present simple and present continuous are easy tenses to learn in English. However, as simple as they are, there are still many students who make mistakes in these English tenses. For this post I have collected the most common mistakes my students make. I believe it is much better to learn from the mistakes others make than to make them yourself and feel stupid.
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I have included the following activities in this post to help your students avoid mistakes in present tenses: a mind map, a worksheet, an online game on present tenses and an online quiz. I hope you and your students will find them useful.

Ask your students to study the following mind map:

The sentence in the white fields are the mistakes, in the blue fields there are the corrected sentences and at the end, there are explanations.
You should emphasize the fact that students most frequently leave out the verb TO BE in the present continuous tense.

I have prepared two online quizzes this time. The first one is in Flash and it will play only on desktops. The aim of the game is to highlight the mistakes students make in English tenses. In the game students should choose the correct option and then shoot all the bad ducks. They can shoot a bottle on the side of the screen and get a bonus.

Present tenses – online game

The second is an online quiz in which the students should fill in the verbs in the correct form of the present tense. The passing grade is set to 75%. As this online quiz is in HTML5, they can do it on their mobile devices too.

Present tenses – online quiz
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The following worksheet contains only two activities. The first one is called Hidden Picture. The students should colour the squares that contain a correct sentence. If they colour the squares correctly, a shape will emerge.
The second activity is a simple fill in the gap exercise. The students should complete the sentences with the correct form of the verb.
Present tenses worksheet

More often than not I teach in classrooms with no internet connection, so I realize that it is important to be able to use the activities offline too. You can download the online quiz, the game, and the picture and use them offline:
Common mistakes present_tenses

When students start to learn English as a second language, there is a set of basic questions in English they need to master. All language courses start with these questions, but many people struggle to learn them. It is necessary to learn these by heart. However, you also need to be able to vary them a bit.
To help you teach or learn these questions I have devised the following activities: a mind map showing the basic questions for students of English as a second language, a worksheet with several communicative and drilling exercises, a song to help in memorising the questions and an online quiz. If you like the activities, please do not hesitate to comment below.

I love starting lessons with something interesting. Students like songs, so I start the lesson with a simple song containing all the basic questions students of English as a second language need to learn.
Ask the students to listen to the song and complete the following worksheet:
Song lyrics fill-in

Play the song twice and then play the song on a whiteboard and ask the students to check their answers.

Ask the students to have a look at this mind map and deduce the meaning of the questions – using the lyrics and the mind map.

Ask the students to work in pairs and ask each other these questions.

The following worksheet contains several activities. First ask the students to find the questions for the fields a-g (students should only write the letters next to the questions below). Check their answers and tell them to ask you the questions and complete the table with your answers.
Ask them to find the questions for fields 1-7. Check their answers. (It is best to display the correct answers for both groups).
Have your students work in pairs (worksheet A and worksheet B). Ask them to ask the questions and complete their worksheet.
The next task is pure text manipulation. The students should fill in the missing words.
In the third exercise, students should put the words into the correct order to form questions.
In the fourth exercise students are given the answers, and have to write the questions.
In the last exercise students should write the questions using different pronouns.

Basic questions – communicative activities

In the following online quiz the students should first put the words into the correct order to make questions.
Then they should complete the questions. The online quiz is in HTML5 so it will work on all mobile devices. Students can practise wherever they like.

Basic questions – online quiz

The second online quiz is in Flash and will play only on desktops. The aim of the game is to choose the correct question and then hit the opponent.

Basic questions – En garde game

More often than not I teach in classrooms with no internet connection, so I realize that it is important to be able to use the activities offline too. You can download the online quiz, the game, and the picture here and use them offline.

Simple questions

Teaching irregular verbs in context is not only useful, but rewarding too. A short story attracts the attention of students and can be used in many communicative activities. Unfortunately, there are not many short stories which can be easily used for teaching the past tense.
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Luckily, my friend Lynne Blackburn sent me a nice short story to use here. With this post you can teach 8 irregular verbs and practise the past tense of regular verbs. There are many interesting activities which will make it easier for you to teach and for your students to learn. In this post you will find a video, a worksheet, a picture and an interactive exercise. I hope you will find them useful and interesting.

Here is the story. First, ask your students to have a look at the picture and figure out what happened.

Once, you think the students have had enough of guessing, play the following video.

After watching the video, it is time to start using the worksheet. Download the following worksheet and print one copy for everyone.

Past simple story – worksheet

Ask the students to translate the words in exercise one. They can use dictionaries or their mobile phones to do this.

Then ask the students to read the story again and answer the comprehension questions. You can find the correct answers in the key at the end of the worksheet.

In the third exercise students should complete the text with the correct verbs in the past tense. They can do so either in writing or orally.

The fourth exercise is called Grammar Up. You can find detailed instructions for this exercise in the following video:

In the fifth exercise students should complete the sentences with the correct conjunction. The correct answers are again in the key.

In the sixth exercise students should match the opposites.

In the seventh exercise students should find nine verbs in the past tense.

In the last exercise students should retell the story.

Your students can practise the grammar at home or on their mobile devices in the following online quiz:

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Irregular verbs – interactive quiz

If you would like to use more stories like this, you could try the following:

1. Irregular verbs in context – Scream
2. Irregular verbs in context 1
3. Teach 9 irregular verbs in one lesson

If you would like more practice with irregular verbs, the British Council has a great site.

If you do not have an internet connection at school, you can download the video and online quiz here. Unpack the files and find the index.html and play the quiz.

Past simple all activities

Weather is one of the most common conversational topics in Britain. Therefore, if you know the basic vocabulary, you can talk to 60 million people. With 60 million conversation opportunities, it is well worth the little effort you need to put in.
To make it as enjoyable as possible, there are several activities to help you learn all the words: a pictionary, a worksheet, a video and an interactive test.
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You can learn the vocabulary using the following infographic or pictionary:

To get the pronunciation right, listen and repeat the words in the following video:

After you learn the words, it is time to practise using the new vocabulary. First, you can try the following worksheet. Try to solve all of the puzzles.

The following interactive quiz is made in HTML5, so it will play on all mobile devices. Therefore, you can practise all of the words wherever you are.

If you would like to display the quiz on the entire screen, click the button below:

You can find a lot of information about weather at British Council site.

I like the following songs about weather:

I have already created two posts on the difference between the present simple and continuous tenses. There are Present simple or present continuous tense – improved and Present simple and continuous tenses posts. Both of them are good but as I have come up with a new idea, I want to share it with you in this post.

This post concentrates on the difference between the tenses. If you are not sure about the form of the tenses, you should see the following posts first:

1. Present simple tense
2. Present continuous tense

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In this post there are just two activities: a worksheet and an interactive quiz. I hope that they will help you with teaching the difference between the tenses.

Hand out the following worksheet (students have to work in pairs; one will need worksheet A and the other worksheet B) and ask the students not to show their picture to their partner. Ask them to describe what the people, whose names they know, are doing. Their partner has to listen and complete their own picture by filling in the names.

In exercise 2 they should complete the sentences with the correct names.

When they finish, it is time to explain the difference between the tenses. The present continuous tense is used to describe what the people are doing right now. However, when the students have a look at the rooms in their pictures they will see several objects there. For example, in the kitchen there is a basketball. James is not playing basketball now, but he plays it sometimes and that is why the ball is there.
You can go on like this with three or four more pictures. Then ask the students to complete exercise 3.

In exercise 4, students should take the picture and speak about it for 60 seconds without stopping or hesitating. Will they manage?

In the last exercise, ask the students to turn the paper over and write 10 sentences about it.

Present simple and continuous tense – worksheet

The following interactive quiz is based on the picture in the worksheet. It is ideal for homework or for a class where everyone has a smart phone with an internet connection. The quiz is in HTML5 and therefore will work on all mobile devices.
In the quiz students will practise the grammar they’ve learnt in the worksheet.

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If you want to have the quiz on the full screen click the button below.
Present tenses – Full screen

Present simple and continuous tense – more practice

If you need more practice, you could try the following pages:

British Council page on present simple and continuous

Here are two useful videos:

This is the third post which contains ten new words for intermediate students. The words are among the 4,000 most frequent words in English. This selection of words is based on Paul Nation’s list of words. If you have missed the first post on vocabulary, you can find it here. The second post Learn 10 words in 21 minutes is here.
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I hope you will find it useful and that you will learn the new vocabulary. To achieve this, there are a worksheet, a mind map with the words, an interactive exercise and a video with the correct pronunciation.

First, you should study the words in the following infographic. I try to give the definition of the word, a clue to remember the word quicker, and some example sentences. Be careful with the memory aids, though. They work perfectly for me, but it does not mean that they will work for you. If you feel they are unhelpful, just skip them. I honestly hope these will help you learn the vocabulary better and quicker.

To get the pronunciation right, listen and repeat the words with the native speaker.

You can practise the vocabulary now in the following interactive quiz. The quiz is in HTML5 and it will play on all mobile devices. If you pass the quiz you can play the game Indiara as a reward.

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Interactive quiz – full screen

If you cannot do the quiz above or you prefer working on a paper, you can print out the following document and practise the vocabulary there.

Vocabulary part 4_ws

Vocabulary part 4_key