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 []
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.