Present continuous tense speaking

Speaking activities are one of the most popular teaching activities. Students usually like them and they are very useful. However, there are not many speaking activities around. That is the reason why I created several dealing with present continuous tense.

In this post, you can find a worksheet with three different speaking activities to practise the present continuous tense. I have tried all the activities in my classes, and they worked very well.

Present continuous tense – speaking

Print the following worksheet and hand out the pages to your students. Make sure that students work in pairs and one of them has got the first page and the other the second one.
Present continuous speaking – worksheet I usually start my lessons with the second activity – miming. I perform one of the actions and my students have to say what I am doing. Then I perform another and students have to choose from the list on the worksheet the correct sentence. Check that the students understand all the sentences in the section Miming.

Then students work in pairs. One of them performs one of the actions and the other tries to guess it. Once he/she guesses correctly, they swap roles. They go on like this till they perform all the actions or you stop them.

In the first activity, students first complete the questions using IS/ARE/AM. Check their questions and then they try to form the short answers. They form both the YES and NO answers. Again, check their answers.

Students read the questions and circle the answers that are true for them. Then they work in pairs and ask and answer the questions. When they finish this, they change partners. They should change partners at least twice.

The last activity is called War Ships. First, students work in pairs and dictate the underlined sentences to their partner. Demonstrate that they should read the question first and then dictate the sentence. The one who listens has to write the sentence on the line where the question is. Once they dictate all the questions and complete the free squares they cover their worksheet in such a way that their partner cannot see their grid.

In the grid, they colour 5 squares. They must colour only the answers – not the questions. Now, their task is to discover the squares their partner has coloured. They do so by reading the question and answer they think their partner has coloured. Their partner listens and if they hit the coloured square they admit it by saying HIT. If they miss, they say MISS. Students take turns. The winner is the one who finds the five squares before their partner does.

Present continuous test

As a bonus, I would like to offer a simple grammar test on the present continuous tense. It is simple and it tests the basic things about the present continuous tense.
Present continuous tense – test