15 fun ways of practising the

Past Perfect
1. Fairytale dominoes This is a game from Intermediate
Communication Games that can easily be played without
access to the book. Students continue a story by choosing
from pictures that they have spread out on the table in front
of them, continuing until they bring the story to a conclusion
with the very last picture. To []
Written by Alex Case for TEFL.net

1. Fairytale dominoes
This is a game from Intermediate Communication Games
that can easily be played without access to the book.
Students continue a story by choosing from pictures that
they have spread out on the table in front of them,
continuing until they bring the story to a conclusion with the
very last picture. To make the use of Past Perfect higher,
allow them to add pictures to earlier in the story with
phrases like By the time he arrived back at the castle, the
witch had already kidnapped the princess. You can play the
same game with other kinds of story such as murders and
spy stories (crime vocabulary), science fiction or love
stories. If you cant find suitable pictures, students can play
the same game with relevant words on cut up pieces of
paper.
2. Alibi game
Half the class are suspects for the murder of someone in the
school, and the other half are their alibis. In pairs, they
have to create the stories of what they were doing
elsewhere at the time of the murder. They are then
questioned separately, and the pair with the most
differences between their stories are the guilty ones. This is
one of the all time classic TEFL games and gets students
who are usually shy or uninvolved speaking much more than
usual.
3. Business English alibi game
With some careful preparation, the concept of the alibi game

can be extended into other fields such as Business English.

Prepare slips of paper with typical business daily tasks such
as send a fax. Students set them out to make an
imaginary business day and then try to memorize their own
day. Another student then tests them on the order of the
events with questions like Had you already finished lunch
when you started gossiping? or How many things had you
achieved before the meeting with your boss started? You
can also add the Past Continuous by allowing them to place
some of the slips of paper vertically to represent things that
lasted a longer time during which other things happened
(slips of paper placed next to them horizontally).
4. Past Perfect Kims Game
Another game that can be played with the same pieces of
paper as the Business English Alibi game above is for one
student to move around the pieces of paper showing the
sequence of events in the day and for the other person to
spot and explain the changes, e.g. Now it says I had
already polished my shoes when I put them on, but actually
I put my shoes on and then polished them.
5. Guess what order
A personalized version of the Business English Alibi Game
above is for students to guess the order of their partners
actions yesterday or at the weekend. One student says two
things they did and their partner has to make a true
sentence, keeping the same order in the sentence as they
were said in, e.g. When you had a shower, you had already
finished breakfast or You had a shower and then you had
breakfast. This activity can also be used to contrast the
Past Perfect and Past Continuous.
6. Guess the sequence
An longer version of Guess The Order above that has more
vocabulary in it is for students to show their partner a mixed
up list of 10 things they did yesterday or at the weekend
and for their partner to put them in order using questions
like Had you already left the office when you phoned your
wife?
7. Yesterdays schedule spot the differences
Give them schedules with differences of order of the events

to ask and answer questions about such as How many

times had you studied maths by the end of school on
Thursday?
8. Texts spot the difference
This is similar to Yesterdays Schedule Spot the Difference,
but involves reading and therefore maybe more useful
language input. Give them two texts that have the same
events in a different order, e.g. texts of what people said
during alibi interrogation. This can be used as the lead in to
the Alibi Game above.
9. Guess what happened next
A student says the Past Perfect part of a true sentence
about themselves and their partner tries to guess the true
Simple Past part, e.g. I had been sacked You had been
sacked from your previous job when you entered this
company? Wrong! That was from the job before last
10. Sentence completion guessing game
Give students ten to twenty sentence stems that you know
that most people can complete almost all of in some way,
e.g. When I joined this class or I had never felt more
excited before in my life when Tell them to complete at
least half the sentences. They then read out only the part
they have written and their partners guess which sentence it
is a completion of, e.g. I had already worked in twenty
three places When you started in your present company?
No. Try again. By the time you started university?
Thats right! Wow! How come?
11. Your partners day backwards (the Memento
game)
Starting when their partner went to bed, students see how
many true sentences they can make about things they did
before that, working backwards slowly, e.g. When you went
to bed, you had already brushed your teeth Thats right
When you brushed your teeth, you had already had a
shower Wrong! I had a shower after I cleaned my teeth.
My turn.
12. Who had been busier competition
Choose a time of day yesterday and students try to prove

they had been busier or more productive up to then than

their partner, e.g. By 6 pm yesterday, I had typed 20 A4
pages Thats nothing. By 6pm yesterday I had made 20
phone calls Really? I still think typing is more difficult
though
13. Past participle pron SNAP/ pellmanism
Doing the Past Perfect is a good opportunity to spend some
time on the pronunciation of the Past Participle. One way of
improving their pronunciation while actually making the
process seem simpler rather than more complicated is get
them to match up past participles like bought and caught
by their vowel sound (students often overcomplicate things
by trying to make sounds that dont exist in English to show
distinctions in spelling when in fact the pronunciation is
exactly the same). This will also help them learn the forms
so that they can produce them automatically and so can
concentrate on using Past Perfect in the right situations.
14. Vowel sound brainstorm
Another way of practicing the vowel sounds of the Past
Participle is to get students to race to write as many as they
can with a particular vowel sound within the (2 to 5 minute)
time limit. After going through their answers, you can get
them to repeat the process, but this time writing sentences
with those past participles out in full.
15. Ive been had!
Another difficulty associated with the pronunciation of the
Past Perfect is using d (because using the whole word
had can seem too emphatic, as if you are contradicting
someone) and spotting the difference between d = had
and d = would in context. Students listen to sentences
including had (because it is a short answer or a
contradiction), d = would or d = had and only react
when they hear the third of those forms, for example by
racing to put their hands up as quickly as possible or
slapping their card on their table before their partner does.