Present perfect continuous: a no-prep mingle activity

When teaching a grammar point it's important to think "When do I actually use this structure in real life?". The present perfect continuous often appears in ESL textbooks in contrived contexts such as "Why are your eyes red? - I've been crying!"... which honestly I don't think I've ever said in my life.

Being in a new town and a new job, I've found myself having the same conversation over and over. Within a few minutes the conversation generally runs to "I work at the language school - Oh, how long have you been working there?"

Teaching this usage of the present perfect continuous prepares students to have a natural, normal, real-life conversation. What could be better?

Procedure

First, have each student take a small piece of paper and write the following items. Stress: not your own name and workplace but a made-up one.

Name Place of work Small number

Example:

Sopheak Hospital 3

Take the papers in, shuffle and redistribute. Model the conversation:

"Hello, what's your name?"

"My name's..."

"Where do you work?"

"I work at the..."

"How long have you been working there?"

"I've been working there for X years!"

Now the students mingle around the classroom to practice the questions and answers using the cues on their paper. To give a motivation for speaking to everyone, challenge them to find someone who works in the same place as them. Obviously this may or may not happen depending on what the students have written, but they will have to speak to everyone to find out!

Happy mingling!