Humanising Language Teaching
Year 5; Issue 5; September 03

Age: teenage onwards
Grammar: present perfect continuous
have/has been + ing
Level: intermediate +
Time: 45 – 60 minutes
Skills: speaking and writing

Preparation

Make enough copies of the jumbled sentences below for each pair of students. Cut them up but keep each sentence separate, so you have 3 piles for each pair.

Jumbled sentences

1. again/desk/her/colleague's/eating/my/my/sandwiches/at/been

2. has/know/I/she

3. it/are/all/there/crumbs/over

In Class

1. Get your students into pairs

2. Set the scene by saying: My colleague's been eating her sandwiches at my desk again. I know she has. There are crumbs everywhere.

3. Ask the students to collect as many annoying habits as possible in their pairs and write them down.

4. Ask the students to call out 'their' annoying habits and write them on the left-hand side of the board.

5. Now ask the students to get into groups of 4 and decide what makes these habits so annoying eg: He doesn't clear up his nail clippings when he's cut his toe nails

6. Collect the answers on the right-hand side of the board.

	Habit	Clue
	He cuts his toenails in the living room	There are nail clippings on the floor

7. Put the students into new pairs and give them the cut up jumbled sentences to put in order.

8. When the first pair has finished, call 'stop' and let them read it out to the others.

9. Now give them the skeleton poem to fill in:

   You've been................................again.
   I know you have -
   I can see......................................

   You've been...............................again.
   I know you have -
   I can hear....................................

   You've been..............................., too.
   I can smell..................................

10. When the students have finished, ask them to give their poem a strong finishing line. Then, when they're ready, to read it to another group.

11. Read out the poem below (which I wrote) or make up your own.

You've been working overtime again.
I know you have –
I can see the dark rings under your eyes.

You've been arguing with the boss again.
I know you have –
I can hear you complaining about him next door.

You've been drinking, too –
I can smell the whisky on your breath.

I can taste the bitterness.

Poor sod.

Rationale: to make learners aware of the speculative nature of the present perfect continuous, especially for learners whose L1 does not have this form e.g. German.
Acknowledgement: adapted from an exercise shown by Hania Kryszewska at Pilgrims 2003

Gail Mair, Gaisgasse 8, 70825 Korntal-Münchingen, Germany