Resource centre - English grammar - Say and tell
Form
Meaning
Teaching ideas
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Reported Questions
Reported Speech
Reporting Verbs
Articles
Be used to
Causative Have
Comparatives
Few and Little
First Conditional
Future Continuous
Future Perfect
Get Used To
Have and Have Got
Indirect Questions
Lend and Borrow
Passive
Past Continuous
Past Perfect Continuous
Past Perfect Simple
Past Simple
Present Continuous
Present Perfect Continuous
Present Perfect Simple
Present Simple
Questions
Reflexive Pronouns
Reported Questions
Reported Speech
Reporting Verbs
Say and Tell
Second Conditional
Small and Little
So and Such
Tag Questions
Third Conditional
Too and Enough
Used to
Will and Going to
Wish
Zero Conditional
How do you teach say and tell? Add your idea ยป
We use 'tell' to give
or ask for information. For example:
"Please tell me your name."
"Could you tell me your address?"
"I told him the time."
We wouldn't use 'say' in these examples as they are all asking for
information.
I like to keep it simple and I
focus on 'say something' and 'tell someone'. The details come with lots of
practice.
I use a whispering game where
I whisper into a student's ear a sentence using say or tell and the student is
to report to the next person whatever he/she heard... this person is to write
down whatever he/she heard and pass on the message until it reaches the last
person. This can be done in groups. The last students are then asked to compare
their sentences and if the sentences are different, they then check each others
work and figure out the original sentence.
Ask a question about say and tell or how to teach them in the forum