These present continuous activities focus on the tense’s use for describing what is happening now or situations that are temporary. Activities which focus on its use for describing future arrangements can be found on the future forms page.
What are you Wearing?
The subject of clothes is an ideal way to introduce and practise using the present continuous in a relatively natural way. Have students describe what they themselves are wearing (I’m wearing blue jeans) and then in pairs have them describe to their partners what some of the other students are wearing. (he/she is wearing ...)
I usually do this activity in conjunction with a clothes vocabulary exercise.
You can also turn it into a guessing game. One student thinks of a classmate, and the other asks yes/no questions to figure out who it is:
Is he wearing brown shoes?
Is he wearing a blue t-shirt?
To contrast present simple and present continuous, use paired questions:
Do you wear glasses? / Are you wearing sunglasses?
Do you wear pyjamas? / Are you wearing pyjamas?
What’s Jill Doing?
This is a present continuous picture activity. Put students into pairs and give each pair a copy of the picture sheet and key. Student A has the pictures and student B the key.
Student A should now ask What is … doing? for each of the names on the right side of the sheet. Student B has to find the information and give it to student A who writes the name of the person next to the activity. After all the questions have been asked, students should have deduced that the remaining character must be Jill.
Present Continuous Mimes
While I usually avoid miming games with adults, this present continuous activity works well with neutral, everyday actions.
- Begin by miming a few actions yourself:
juggling, playing chess, eating spaghetti - Elicit questions from students: Are you playing tennis?
Are you eating spaghetti? - Put students into small groups and give each group a stack of mime cards (face down). Students take turns drawing a card and miming it while others guess using present continuous questions.
It’s light-hearted, interactive, and reinforces both structure and vocabulary.
Describing Videos
A classic present continuous exercise: one student watches a short video while their partner sits with their back to the screen.
The student watching narrates what’s happening:
The woman is opening a door.
Someone is running across the street.
Switch roles and repeat. For more guidance and recommended videos, see the descriibing videos page.
Describe the (Imaginary) Picture
In this picture-describing activity, students talk about picture using useful vocabulary such as, there is, there are and the present continuous tense. It’s good for practising asking questions and stretching your students’ creativity.
Your students will need to be confident pre-intermediates and above to tackle this activity.
Gather together some reasonably large pictures of people engaged in various interesting activities. Place each picture in an envelope and put them in a pile on a desk at the front of the class.
To save you searching for suitable pictures, there is an online version of this app on our sister site LearnHip.com.
In this pile, you should also include some envelopes containing ‘fake’ pictures. These are blank pieces of paper, each one with a descriptive phrase written on it. For example, a policeman eating an ice cream, a woman jogging with five dogs, a young couple walking on the beach.
Students take it in turns to sit at the front desk. They take and open a random envelope and describe the contents of the picture to the class. Invite the other students to ask for more details. Their goal is to try and form in their own minds a picture as close to the original as possible.
After a few minutes ask whether the students believe the picture described is real, or if the describer was creating an imaginary picture.
Teaching Online
You can find online present continuous exercises and activities at our online-focused site LearnHip.com.