Teaching Simple past and past continuous - Context
 

Help .... please!!!!

I'm teaching a lesson tomorrow as part of my TESOL certificate training, but I'm struggling on the course as (it would appear) I'm not too creative with ideas, which is where I'm hoping someone here might be able to help. I need to set a context for an upper-intermediate class, then set some high-level vocab - I was thinking of using a schedule/timetable, but then get a bit overpowered by blankness!

Can anyone decipher and offer some guidance?

Thank you in advance.

Jayster

Re: Teaching Simple past and past continuous - Context
 

The context I always use is a memory of meeting for the first time someone who later turned out to be a very special friend. The meeting contextallows for sentences like He came into the room, and I remember he was wearing a brown velvet jacket and carrying a briefcase
The way I would do it is -

a) tell the anecdote to the students as a listening activity

b) in pairs they retell it to each other

c) at class level they then retell it to me - this checks comprehension and allows me to see if they've picked up on the structures - which I then formally present on the board.

If it's an initial presentation I'd then do :

d) some written "Put the verbs in the correct form" exercises.

If it's revision, and they seem to have got it (probable at Upper Int level) I'd go straight on to :

e) Pair work - I ask them to think of a time when they met someone special (a teacher, a friend, their husband) for the first time and to tell their partner. The teacher monitors, and if the anecdotes weren't told particularly well, does a full-class correction phase then changes the pairings and lets the students repeat the anecdote. At the end, a few good students tell the class their partner's story (to give them an added challenge).

Hope that helps.
Sue

Re: Teaching Simple past and past continuous - Context
 

Sue,

Grazie mille! Troppo gentile.

I've been sat in Starbucks all day and have written hardly anything ... then you pop along just as I was about to leave the coffee shop and prepare to resign from the course, tomorrow. I might just have to delay that resignation now!

Thanks, Sue

Jay