Teaching the Present Continuous

Podcasts – ESL Teacher Talk – ESL Podcasts for Teachers

Listen to the show.

The show starts off with unseasonable weather and a circus but moves quickly into this show’s theme, the present continuous.

Matt and Mark go over:

• presenting the target language orally
• why teach the present continuous early on in your curriculum
• teaching and explaining the grammar using only English
• forming questions and negatives
• Teaching short answers, or that is to say not teaching short answers, but the ‘reduced’ answers.

Towards the end, Mark goes over quite a few games that can be used to practice the present continuous. The games were mentioned fairly quickly, but a couple that have further explanations can be found here: Go Fish, Memory, Slap, board games, and Bounce Around
If you have some ideas to add or questions about the show, please post your questions and comments here or at the ESL Teacher Talk Forums.

Game of the Week: the Skit Kit
This is an activity that focuses on creating stories, short dialogs and can be built up into skits or role plays for the students to perform. This activity can be used with large classes and works well all the way down to one-on-one classes. Mark goes over how to use the Skit Kit to accomplish the activity goals, but if you don’t want to use the actual kit, that’s no problem and Mark explains how.

The activity has many parts and it’s also great for introducing focused target language. We hope you and your students enjoy it.

Thanks for listening!