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past continuous grammar game, vocabulary worksheets, handwriting and tracing worksheets, word search worksheets, text maze worksheets, crossword worksheets, grammar flashcards, vocabulary flashcards, grammar games, vocabulary games, esl phonics flashcards, song worksheets, video games, interactive flash games, classroom game ideas, board games

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1*- 2* Making questions

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Try making the past continuous (or past progressive) tense - this exercise is about the question forms (both 'wh' and 'yes / no' questions)

Click here to review how to make the past continuous.
Click here to download this exercise in PDF (with answers)

Try some more exercises about the past continuous here:

Need more practice? Get more Perfect English Grammar with our courses.
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Try making the past continuous (or past progressive) tense - this exercise is about the question forms (both 'wh' and 'yes / no' questions) Click here to review how to make the past continuous. Click here to download this exercise in PDF (with answers) Try some more exercises about the past continuous here: Need more practice?

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1*-2* Afirmative /Negative

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Try making the past continuous (or past progressive) tense - this exercise includes the positive and negative forms.

Click here to review how to make the past continuous.
Click here to download this exercise in PDF (with answers)

Try some more exercises about the past continuous here:

Need more practice? Get more Perfect English Grammar with our courses.

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Try making the past continuous (or past progressive) tense - this exercise includes the positive and negative forms. Click here to review how to make the past continuous. Click here to download this exercise in PDF (with answers) Try some more exercises about the past continuous here: Need more practice?

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2* Afirmative/Negative

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2-3* Past Continuous or Past Simple

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Simple Past or Past Progressive - Online Exercise

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Simple Past or Past Progressive, Online Exercise - Learning English

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3* Past Continuous or Past Simple

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Here's an exercise to practise the verb tenses. Choose the past simple or past continuous tense.
You can review how to use the past simple here and how to use the past continuous here.
Finally, click here to download this exercise in PDF with answers.

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Past Simple and Past Continuous Exercise 1

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Here's an interactive exercise about the past simple and past continuous tenses - choose the correct tense.

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2*- 3* Jeopardy. Past Continuous or Past Simple

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ESL Interactive Fun Games

Here we have the games carefully laid out for you. Follow the links to browse the variety of games offered. This is only the directory for interactive games and exercises. Our ESL fun games here include : Snakes and Ladders, Hangman, Spelling games, Wheel of Fortune, TV Games(Betting Game), Mazes, Memory Games, Matching exercises, Sequencing exercises, Picture Quizzes, Catch it and more. These games provide the ultimate fun in practising the following skills:

Games for Practising Grammar: Present simple/present progressive games, past tense games, present perfect games, comparative/Superlatives and more...

Games for practising English vocabulary: Lots of games by topics and game types

Games to practice English pronunciation, phonetics and phonics.

Games and exercises to practice reading, spelling and lexis

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ESL Fun Grammar Games,Past Simple Vs. Past Progressive Betting TV Game

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ESL Interactive Fun Games Here we have the games carefully laid out for you. Follow the links to browse the variety of games offered. This is only the directory for interactive games and exercises. Our ESL fun games here include : Snakes and Ladders, Hangman, Spelling games, Wheel of Fortune, TV Games(Betting Game), Mazes, Memory Games, Matching exercises, Sequencing exercises, Picture Quizzes, Catch it and more.

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Past Continuous tense can be introduced at a fairly low level of language acquisition.

There is no shortage of great activities for practicing Past Continuous tense, but it may take some time and review to solidify the point with learners. Here are three great activities to practice Past Continuous tense to get your wheels turning.

Review the Grammar

A quick review of Past Continuous tense will be helpful before you jump into any activities. Ask the students how to construct the tense and have some reminders up on the board. Remind them that the past tense clause expresses some kind of interruption into another activity which is the continuous clause. The interruption didn't necessarily stop the continuous action, and most likely the continuous action still continued.

Past tense clause

Past Continuous clause (It doesn't matter which one comes first.)

Your mom called while you were taking a shower.

The president coughed a lot while he was giving his speech.

I drove the car into the gas station just as it was running out of gas.

Three Activities for Past Continuous

1. What Were You Doing When...?

Often you can use Past Continuous tense to talk about memories, or for looking back on what was happening at a specific time. With this activity students ask each other questions that they may or may not remember the answer to. For example What were you doing last Tuesday night at dinner time? or What were you doing when xx important thing happened? You can explain that some historical events or other news events leave such an impression on us, we will always remember what we were doing at the time that thing happened. Sometimes our memories are very clear and sometimes they are not. You may want to provide prompts so the students get the idea and then have them generate their own questions. Some ideas for prompts are:

9/11

The earthquake

Last Thursday at dinner time

Princess Diana died

You can also make this into a bluff game by telling students who don't remember to make something up. For example, I was doing laundry when my mom called or I was driving my car when I heard about 9/11. Their partners can then guess whether the answer is true or not.

2. Alibi

This game is similar to the murder mystery Clue. You can set it up by having the students create the crime they are going to investigate. After that, students are divided into two groups-- suspects and detectives. You want to have more suspects and just 2-4 detectives. The suspects each have to create a story of where they were and what they were doing at the time of the crime. They are then questioned by one of the detective students. The detectives must ask questions pertaining to Past Continuous by only asking questions about the time of the murder. For example they could ask questions like: What were you discussing? or Where was the doctor eating? If you want you could set up a jury as well and have the class vote as to who is guilty and why they don't believe the alibi.

3. Word Cards

Have a stack of cards with random words prepared. Each student will choose two. In rounds have them create a sentence for their pair of words-one word for the past tense clause and one for the past continuous clause. For example, they draw the two words, drive and monkey. A possible sentence could be: I was driving down the street when I saw a monkey in the road. Or you can tell them to be more creative and allow some nonsense sentences. It does make it more challenging and fun if each of the words has to be used in a different clause. To make this activity even more involved you could have the students create sentences that somehow relate to the last person's sentence to create a silly sort of story of things that were happening at a given time!

Past Continuous tense is an important one for learners and it may take some time to master it as well as fully understand how to use it.

Providing variable practice activities and tapping into students' own experiences will provide an experiential way of practicing what could have been just another boring grammar point.

P.S. If you enjoyed this article, please help spread it by clicking one of those sharing buttons below. And if you are interested in more, you should follow our Facebook page where we share more about creative, non-boring ways to teach English.

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What Were You Doing When? 3 Great Activities for Past Continuous Tense

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There is no shortage of great activities for practicing Past Continuous tense, but it may take some time and review to solidify the point with learners. Here are three great activities to practice Past Continuous tense to get your wheels turning. A quick review of Past Continuous tense will be helpful before you jump into any activities.

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1. Past Continuous Accusations
This is not only a classic activity for the Past Continuous, but also an all time classic TEFL game. Students are given a list of strange actions and ask their partners to come up with innocent reasons why they were doing those things, e.g. "When I saw you, you were painting over your windows. Why were you doing that?" "I was turning my whole house into a big flag to celebrate Independence Day". It is important that they say the "When I saw you..." part each time, to make the use of the Past Continuous realistic.
2. Past Continuous Alibi Game
This is another all time classic TEFL game. Students are divided into suspects and alibis and they have to concoct a story of where they were together at the time of the crime. They are then questioned separately, and too many differences between their stories mean that the suspect is guilty. You can make this more specific to Past Continuous by only allowing the detectives to ask questions about the time of the murder, e.g. "What were you talking about?" and "Where was the waitress standing?"
3. Past Continuous Mimes
Students mime an action and when their partner is sure what it is they shout "Stop!" They then guess the action with the sentence "When I shouted stop, you were + ing...", e.g. "When I shouted stop, you were polishing your fingernails on your shirt to show how proud you are". It is important to use the "When I shouted stop" part of the sentence each time to make this the right tense, as otherwise "You polished your fingernails..." is more natural.
4. Random pelmanism
Students take two cards at random and try to make a sentence including those words or expressions with the Past Simple and Past Continuous. For example, if they pick the words "alligator" and "wallpaper", they could say "When I was covering my son's bedroom with teddy bear wallpaper, he suddenly came in and said he wanted alligator patterns instead".
5. Past Continuous Things in common
Students try to find times when they were doing the exact same thing, e.g. "What were you doing at 7 o'clock this morning?" "I was taking a shower" "So was I!" They can't use the same action more than once, e.g. only one sentence about sleeping!
6. All kinds of actions
Put a list of actions on the board, e.g. "tapping your fingers" and "yawning". Ask students to do any of the actions in any order they like and at some point shout "Stop!" The students then test each other on what their classmates were doing at the time the teacher shouted stop with questions like "Who was polishing her fingernails?" and "What was Juan doing?"
7. Past Continuous picture memory
Give students a picture that shows lots of people doing different actions, e.g. a page from Where's Wally? (=Where's Waldo?) When they turn over the picture so that they can't see it, test them on what people were doing with questions like "What was the old lady doing?", "How many people were smoking?" and "Who was standing next to the counter?" You can make the use of the Past Continuous more natural by using a picture with a clock in or by making it a situation that people might really be asked these questions about, e.g. the moment before a bank robbery.
8. Past Continuous memory challenge
Students try to ask each other "What were you doing when you first/ last...?" questions that their partners can't remember the answer to, e.g. "What were you doing when you first tasted wine?" or "What were you doing when you last saw a double-decker bus?" You can also make this into a bluff game by asking students who don't remember to make something up, e.g. "I was cleaning up after my parents' birthday party" or "I was flying low over London". Their partners then guess whether the answer is true or not.
9. Past photos
Students pretend that a blank piece of paper is an important photo of theirs and describe it to their partners. As it is just as natural to use the Present Continuous to describe the actual actions in the picture, they should also describe what they were doing when the photo was taken (e.g. having their honeymoon), what people in the photo were doing at that time (e.g. studying at university), what was happening outside the frame of the photo, etc.
10. Continual nagging
Students take turns complaining that they did all the work to prepare for something like a party or presentation, e.g. "While I was making the sandwiches you answered your mobile three or four times" or "While I was cleaning the tables you were staring at pretty women out of the window". The other person should also say they their action was more useful than it seemed, e.g. "Actually, I was waiting for the delivery van to arrive so that I could bring the paper plates upstairs", or retaliate with a worse accusation like "While I was typing up the Powerpoint document, you were playing poker on your computer".
11. Who was doing that?
Students make true sentences about what someone was doing when they saw that person, and the other students guess who it was, e.g. "He was pulling across two lanes of traffic" for a taxi driver or "She was writing something down in a notebook" for a traffic warden.
12. Video task 1 - When the screen went blank
While students are watching a video, the teacher suddenly presses the stop button. Students have to describe what was happening in as much detail as they can, and then check when the teacher presses play.
13. Video task 2 - Detailed viewing
When students have finished watching a short clip, test them on things that were happening in the background, e.g. "What was the window cleaner doing when the hero was taking out his walkie talkie?"
14. Video task 3 - Complicated cutting
Every time a character reappears on the screen, pause the video and test students on what that person was doing last time we saw them.

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1. Past Continuous Accusations This is not only a classic activity for the Past Continuous, but also an all time classic TEFL game. Students are given a list of strange actions and ask their partners to come up with innocent reasons why they were doing those things, e.g.

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1-3* Assembling sentences ( good for evaluation

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Free online jumbled sentence game to help English students learn tenses. Past Continuous Game 1. Designed for ESL learners.

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Oral Practice. TPR game. 30'

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Several practices

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Here is an entertaining miming game to help students practice the past continuous tense. The students begin by doing a quick TPR activity to review the language on a set of activity cards. The class stands up. When you shout out one of the activities on the cards, all the students do the mime or action. After that, the students are divided into four teams. The students then play a game to practice the past continuous tense. One student from the first team goes out of the classroom. Each student in the class is then given an activity card. Everyone starts miming or doing the action on their card and the student outside comes in. The students continue for a few more seconds, then stop. The student who went outside then makes past continuous sentences about what everyone was doing when he or she came in. The student scores one point for each correct past continuous sentence. A student from the second team goes out and the process is repeated. This continues for a few rounds. For the final round, you leave the classroom and when you come back in, the teams must try to remember and write down what the students in the other teams were doing. Teams score one point for each correct sentence. The scores are added to the previous rounds to find the ultimate winning team.
ESL EFL Listening and Speaking Activity - Elementary - 20 Minutes
In this entertaining chain game, students use the word 'while' and the past continuous to make sentences about what they and other students were doing at certain times in the past. The students sit in a circle. The teacher chooses a time in the past and tells the students to think about what they were doing at that time, e.g. 8 o'clock last night. One student begins by telling the class what they were doing at that time by making a past continuous sentence, e.g. 'I was watching a movie at 8 o'clock last night'. The next student then repeats the previous student's sentence using 'while' and adds what he or she was doing, e.g. 'While Tom was watching a movie, I was playing a game on my phone'. Then, each student in turn repeats the previous students' sentences with 'while' and adds their own sentence, e.g. 'While Tom was watching a movie and Derek was playing a game on his phone, I was waiting for a bus'. If a student can't remember another student's sentence or makes a grammar mistake, they are out of that round. The round finishes when the turn comes back around to the first student. Students score one point if they manage to stay in the game. Several rounds are played using different times in the past. The student with the most points at the end of the game wins.

Convince Me
ESL EFL Speaking Activity - Pre-intermediate - 25 Minutes
In this fun teaching activity, students play a card game where they ask and answer past continuous questions about what they were doing at certain times yesterday. This activity also helps students to practice asking for and giving explanations with 'because', 'in order to' and 'so that'. The class is divided into groups of three or four and each group is given a set of picture cards and a set of time cards. The students deal out the picture cards and place the time cards face down in a pile. The first student picks up the top time card from the pile and asks the player on their right what they were doing at that time yesterday, e.g. 'What were you doing at 6:00 a.m. yesterday?' The player must then choose one of their picture cards, show the card to the other students, and give a convincing answer that matches with the time on the card, e.g. 'I was taking a bath'. If the answer is appropriate for that time of day, the player can discard their picture card. If the answer is doubtful, e.g. 'I was climbing a tree', the other students challenge the player and ask them to provide a convincing explanation as to why they were doing that activity at that time of day. If the player can provide a reasonable explanation, the picture card can be discarded. If not, the player must keep the picture card. The next student then picks up a time card and asks the player on their right what they were doing at that time yesterday and so on. The first player to get rid of all their picture cards wins the game.

Dream World
ESL EFL Reading, Writing and Speaking Activity - Pre-intermediate - 40 Minutes
In this intriguing group activity, students practice making past continuous sentences from picture cards. The students then write a story about a dream using the past continuous and past simple. The students begin by reviewing the past continuous tense. Each group of four is given a set of picture cards, which they shuffle and deal out evenly. The first student in each group starts by asking the second student what they were doing at 3 o'clock yesterday afternoon. The second student picks up the top card from their pile and responds by making a past continuous sentence using the card as a prompt. The student does this by thinking of an activity associated with the picture. The second student then asks the third student the same question, and so on, until all the cards have been used. When the groups have finished, they write a story about a dream by completing a text in the past continuous and past simple. The students shuffle all their picture cards together and each student chooses three pictures. Each group must include all the things in the pictures in their story. The groups then write their stories. When all the groups have finished, the students read out their stories to the class. Afterwards, the class votes for the strangest or funniest one.
ESL EFL Reading, Writing and Listening Activity - Pre-intermediate - 40 Minutes
In this challenging group activity, students put a ghost story in order by saying and listening to sentences. Students then write the story down in a group dictation. The grammar focus is on the past continuous and past simple. The class is divided into groups of 14 and each student is given a sentence card. The students read and memorize the sentence on their card. When the students have memorized their sentence, they work with the people in their group and form a circle in the order of the story by saying their sentences aloud. Students have to repeat their sentence several times and listen to the other students' sentences carefully in order to achieve the correct order. When the story is in order, the students number their cards (1 to 14) accordingly. After that, each student dictates their sentence to the rest of the group, starting with the student who has the first sentence. The students then take it in turns to read out their sentences in order for the rest of the group to write down. When everybody has written down the story, the students check their story for any mistakes.
ESL EFL Speaking Activity - Pre-intermediate - 30 Minutes
In this imaginative teaching activity, students play a card game where they connect the past continuous and past simple together with the words 'when', 'while' and 'as'. The class is divided into groups of four and each group is given a set of activity cards and picture cards. The students spread out the two sets of cards face down on the desk, keeping the two sets separate. The students then take it in turns to turn over an activity card and picture card and make a sentence in the past continuous and past simple with 'when', 'while' or 'as', using the two cards as prompts, e.g. 'I was riding my bicycle when a fly flew into my mouth'. The other students in the group judge each sentence. If the group members agree that a sentence is correct, the student who made the sentence keeps the two cards. If they think the sentence is wrong, they challenge the student. The two cards must then be turned back over and play passes to the next student. Students continue in this way until all the cards have been used. The student with the most cards at the end of the game wins.

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Past Continuous - ESL EFL Activities and GamesAction!ESL EFL Writing and Speaking Activity - Elementary - 30 MinutesHere is an entertaining miming game to help students practice the past continuous tense. The students begin by doing a quick TPR activity to review the language on a set of activity cards.

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New Presentación de Microsoft PowerPoint