Being unproductive (uses of gerund)

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Grammar - gerund

uses of gerund

LESSON OVERVIEW

The main objectives of this lesson are to:

  • get familiar with the different uses of gerund,
  • suggest ways to achieve various goals using gerunds,
  • respond to opinions about weekend and free time activities.

Students learn and apply four rules of using gerund. They do controlled, semi-controlled and free practice while talking about productive and unproductive activities. Students also predict ideas from a video and talk about their days off.

B1 / Intermediate60 minStandard LessonPremium Plan

VIDEO & USES OF GERUND

The lesson starts with a warm-up activity in which students think about their last weekend. They also talk about being productive and unproductive on their days off. Then, students think about why some people don’t enjoy weekends and watch the video to compare their ideas. While watching the video for the second time, students tick ideas that the speaker mentions. After that, students find gerunds in statements and complete notes about the four uses of gerund (e.g. after prepositions, after phrasal verbs).

PRACTICE

Students do a controlled practice activity. They need to complete statements with correct forms of verbs. The statements are about days off and free time. Students also need to say which statements describe how they feel about their days off and give some details. Then, students look at some goals (e.g. improving your physical fitness) and complete sentences to describe how these goals can be achieved. The sentences cover the four uses of gerund. Finally, students choose two goals from a list and think of some productive and unproductive activities that might help them achieve the goals. 

HOMEWORK/REVISION

This lesson also includes an additional task that you can use as homework or revision. In the task, students create sentences to practise different uses of gerund. The task is available in the teacher’s version of the worksheet. You can print it and hand it out to your students. It’s also included in the e-lesson plan.

WORKSHEETS

Comments

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  1. Teacher Cassie

    pg. 20

    “A. creating family memories
    – My family hate… so… ”

    Correction:
    The correct prompt is “My family hates… In this case, “hates” agrees with the singular noun “family.” You use a singular verb form when referring to a collective group like a family.

    1. Justa

      Thanks for the comment! Actually, it could be either depending on whether you want to use BrE or AmE. You can read more about it here.
      In this particular case we think you could consider the family as a group of individuals and therefore treat it as plural. Also, if we were to make it singular it wouldn’t work with the second sentence, e.g. you couldn’t replace ‘They’ with ‘It’ there – it just wouldn’t make sense.

  2. FernandaP07

    Amazing content! Thank you for this lesson.

  3. Владислав

    thanks for this lesson! would be happy to have a similar one for infinitives🤞

    1. Justa

      Hi! Thanks for the comment 🙂 You can check out these two lessons: here and here. They might come in handy!

      1. Владислав

        thanks, I haven’t see the first one!

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