Past continuous: sporting experiences

By Pete on July 16, 2018 • ( 0 )

More football! Give me more football!

I heard it’s less than a month until the start of the Premier League season. Here’s more football related content for the post-World Cup/pre-PL football hungry students.

I wrote this to support materials on British Council Premier Skills English. It goes along with the content from a recent podcast which focused on using the past continuous.

You can find my basic resource here.

In an ideal world, this would be a listening, not a reading. If only there was another football mad teacher at my centre to help me bring these resources to life… (not so subtle hint to Rich McCully….!).

Topic: Describing sporting experiences

Language: past continuous

Level: B1 ish, but there’s some footie specific terms

Procedure

Get them chatting, access prior knowledge and all that…

A few gist questions for the reading. Answers in the resource. I wish this was a listening, would be much better. Still, it’s ok… (click to enlarge)

I haven’t done detailed reading questions here. Feel free to add some – I was only using the text as a way to review the grammar (again, it’s in support of this podcast). Still, I guess you could add some for a more comprehensive lesson. Chuck some in the comments if you want, would save me time!

Grammar bit…

The whole controlled bit there… some football terms in it. Give away a pen, etc. Mark over a TESOL Toolbox did a good post on ‘incongruity’ recently. Check out some of the activities in his post there, one could easily be adapted to suit this lesson.

There are some optional discussion questions – only in there to prompt a personal response, may discuss a bit about ‘being a team player’ and stuff…

As a follow up students prepare their own anecdote about a sporting experience. I kept this ‘sporting’ rather than just football – you’d assume that the students were big into footie if you’re doing a lesson focused on it like this one. You never know though, no harm in broadening it.

You can do far more with the resources than I’ve mentioned, it’s a skeleton of a plan really. Things like…

‘Mine the text’ for football related vocab (substituted, one-nil, nil-nil, etc)
Reduce the gap fill to simple prompts, like ongoing action/interruption (run/trip) and make it speaking practice
Students use the notes about Emma in the speaking section to retell Emma’s story to one another (trying to use the past continuous correctly)
Students could mime their sporting experiences before they describe them and have their partner guess the content, then listen and see if they were right
Focus on Rich’s reactions to Emma’s story. Make this into a speaking (pronunciation) task. Input a few natural phrases for showing interest and practice making them sound genuine. Learners can use these when listening to others stories
Various roleplay things, e.g. ‘ You are Emma’s teammate. You’re visiting her in hospital after the game. Imagine the conversation’ etc.
Find articles about Mo Salah’s injuries, follow up reading. Maybe research into Mo Salah for homework
Exploit the conditional structure in the final discussion question.

Stuff like that anyway! Enjoy!

Feature image: pixabay