Grammar gambling for present and past tenses

This is a downloadable ESL game to practise the correct form of present and past tenses.

Grammar gambling activity

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Here’s some more info about the activity:

Language point Present and past tenses
Aim To practise the correct form of present and past tenses
Activity Students play a game, gambling on correct sentences.
Organisation Group work
Preparation Make enough copies of the activity for the number of students in your class. Photocopy some money to use as fake cash. Small denominations (for example $1, $5 and $10 bills) are good, to give groups flexibility in the amount of their stake.

What do I do?
  1. Divide students into groups of 3 or 4.
  2. Give the groups equal amounts of money. Keep enough spare for later in the game.
  3. Hand out the activity. In their groups students write down which sentences they think are correct and which they think are incorrect. If they think a sentence is incorrect, they must write down the correction.
  4. Groups must now gamble on the sentences. The more confident they are about their answer, the more money they should gamble!
  5. Groups place their stake for sentence 1 in the centre of the table.
  6. When all the stakes are in, reveal the correct sentence. If a group’s answer is correct, they double their money. If not, they lose their stake!
  7. Repeat for the other sentences. At the end of the game, the group with the most money is the winner!

Grammar Gambling

1. They stay at The Hilton hotel tonight.
2. Which room did you use for the English lesson last night?
3. They established a small company on 1989.
4. When did they open the new factory?
5. Who did win the competition last year?
6. Where do they have the meeting yesterday?
7. They are having the seminar in October this year.
8. How many employees does your company got?

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