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Verbs and Tenses

  1. Illustrate known tenses with tense clue words, for example:
    - Habit/truth = present simple
    - Now = present continuous
    - Experience = present perfect
    - Plan = going to
    - Yesterday = past simple
  2. Select a range of verbs.
  3. Divide the class into teams.
  4. Give the same verb and tense clue word to each team.
  5. The idea is for each team to make the longest and hopefully perfectly contructed sentence. Count up the words from each team's sentence and score on the board. Students of all ages like healthy competition, and the cleverer ones will realise that by adding lists to their sentences they will score more points! eg. Yesterday I swam quickly across the deep blue river with my brother, my sister, my sister's boyfriend, my fat black dog etc.

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