Bad Habits- Past Continuous

Past Continuous bad habits

Choose one of the actions below and do it or pretend to do it until your teacher says “Stop!” Look around the classroom while you are doing your action and try to remember what other people are doing. When the teacher shouts out, test your partner on what the other people in the classroom were doing at that time.

• applying make up
• blowing your nose
• chewing your fingernails
• cleaning the sleep from your eyes
• cleaning your eraser by rubbing it on the table
• cleaning your teeth with your tongue
• coughing
• crossing and recrossing your legs
• drumming your fingers on the table
• fidgeting
• flicking through your book
• kicking someone else’s chair
• kicking your table
• picking your nose
• picking your teeth
• polishing your fingernails
• scratching
• sharpening pencils
• sighing
• sniffing
• spinning your pen round and round between your fingers
• staring out of the window
• sticking your finger in your ear
• tapping your foot on the floor
• yawning

 

Do the same, but this time doing a range of actions one after another. When you hear “Stop”, your teacher will test you just on the actions that were happening at that time. You will therefore have to keep looking around the classroom as you do your actions.

 

Bad habits discussion

• Which of the things above do you find annoying or disgusting?
• Which ones are okay, but not in the classroom?
• What other bad habits do people often dislike? Which ones do you feel strongly about?

 

Roleplay speaking game

Complain about the person who used to sit next to you at school using “He/ She was always …ing (…)” Take turns with your partner and try to make each complaint more extreme than the last one. Continue until one of your runs out of ideas, then discuss whose ex-classmate sounds worse. 

 

Grammar discussion

 

First use of the Past Continuous

Present Continuous/ Past Continuous

Why did you use the Past Continuous in the first and second games you played (the miming games)?

How could you change the game to use the Present Continuous instead?

How are the uses of the Present Continuous and Past Continuous similar to and different from each other?

Past Simple/ Past Continuous

How would your answers change if your teacher asked you the Past Simple question “What did Giovanni do?” rather than the Past Continuous question “What was Giovanni doing (when I told you to stop)?” 

What are the similarities and differences between the uses of the Past Simple and Past Continuous?

 

Second use of the Past Continuous

Why did you use the Past Continuous in the roleplay conversation about classmates?

What other tenses could you use in that kind of conversation? How would that change the meaning and impact of what you say?

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Suggested answers for the grammar discussion questions

First use of the Past Continuous

Present Continuous/ Past Continuous

Why did you use the Past Continuous in the first and second games you played (the miming games)? Because the actions were in progress when the teacher shouted “Stop” and were finished when you were speaking about them.

How could you change the game to use the Present Continuous instead? By continuing the actions while you are talking about them

How are the uses of the Present Continuous and Past Continuous similar to and different from each other? They are both used to talk about a moment in time or an action in progress, one being used to talk about now and the other for the past

Past Simple/ Past Continuous

How would your answers change if your teacher asked you the Past Simple question “What did Giovanni do?” rather than the Past Continuous question “What was Giovanni doing (when I told you to stop)?” You would need to explain everything that he did, rather than just the one action that was in progress when the teacher shouted “Stop” 

What are the similarities and differences between the uses of the Past Simple and Past Continuous? They are both used to talk about finished actions but the Past Continuous focuses on a point in time

 

Second use of the Past Continuous

Why did you use the Past Continuous in the roleplay conversation about classmates? To emphasize that it happened often

What other tenses could you use? Simple Past, “used to”, or “would”

How would that change the meaning and impact of what you say? With Simple Past, it could just be one time rather than a habit. “Used to” doesn’t emphasize that it happened all the time, and so it doesn’t sound like as strong a complaint as Past Continuous or “would”.