Present Simple Activities

Looking for engaging ways to teach the present simple tense? You’ve come to the right place! We’ve compiled a list of fun and effective activities that your students are sure to love.


Teaching Online

You can find online present simple exercises and activities at our online-focused site LearnHip.com.


Snap!

This is a printable card game for practising the forms of present simple to be.


What do you never do? – practising adverbs of frequency

To help your students understand how often things happen, try drawing a diagram on the board using adverbs of frequency and situations. Then, use the table provided to ask students random questions and have them ask each other questions as well. Encourage your students to go off-script and have fun with it!

adverbs of frequency


Find someone who

I alway use this classic ESL mingling activity to practise asking present simple questions. It can be a very engaging activity for students and often marks the stage where they have enough English to have short conversations with their classmates.

Students are given a list of criteria and must find a fellow classmate who meets each one. It’s a great way way to break the ice with a new class and get students interacting one on one.

See the find someone who post for printable sheets and further instructions and suggestions.


Dream job

Ask students to think about a job they would love to do now or wanted to do when they were younger. Have them write down four or five present simple statements describing what they do in this job.

Either in pairs or as a class, get the other student(s) to ask closed questions in order to try and guess each other’s dream job. Model this activity using your own dream job as an example and write on the board examples of good and helpful questions.


Third-person interviews

This is a fun and effective present simple third person activity which I often use when introducing the third person form of the present simple. Students interview their partner and then rotate around the class asking for and giving information about their original partner – includes full details and printable interview sheets.


What’s the movie? – how to talk about a story

This enjoyable activity introduces movie and storytelling vocabulary while practising use of the present simple for talking about film and book plots.

Begin by taking a popular film and writing some present simple sentences describing the plot and setting.

It’s set on a big ship
It stars Leo DiCaprio and Kate Winslett
Kate Winslett plays a bored, rich American girl
It takes place in the early 1900s
It’s about a rich girl and a poor boy who fall in love
Unfortunately, the ship sinks and the boy dies
In the final scene, the girl, who is now an old lady, revisits the scene of the tragedy

Students try to guess the film and then in pairs or alone write similar sentences to describe their own choice of movie. The class then tries to guess each other’s choices. Alternatively, this makes a good writing activity for homework.


Present simple board game

Students can practise this tense in groups with this present simple board game. There are also ESL board games available for other grammar forms. You can also find an online present simple board game at our sister site LearnHip.com along with other online present simple activities and exercises.

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