[aikitaiso]

Hi all! I'm Michael and I'm new here. I am currently an ALT in Japan. I hope to make some new friends and meet fellow teachers here. I have a question I hope you can help me out with.
Here's a challenge:
The teachers here have a hard time explaining the future tense verb "will". Does anyone know where I can find tense charts with arrows and opened/closed circles?
More importantly, my English teacher was wondering if there was an activity for this verb tense the students (Junior High level) can do?
Anyone out there taught this to your students? What did you do as an activity to help them understand?
Thank you all for your time and help in this matter!

[Eric]

to introduce the future i first start by eliciting the words "today", "yesterday" and "tomorrow".

then write past, present and future above those words.

once you have those on the board, i then write the year (ie. 2006) under the present column and elicit what goes under the past and future column. then continue to write words under the present column and have them give you the past and future version of that word. use words such as months, days, times, etc...

after this, they should have a general idea of what the future is. then, write a sentence under the present column like 'I study English'. Then elicit the past tense (if you have studied the past tense already, otherwise skip the past tense column for this part) I studied English. And then elicit the future, 'I will study English'.

Do a few more sentences and then start asking students, "What will you do in/on (word from future column)?" they should then be able to answer the question.

at this point most of your students will understand what you mean by 'will'. if some of your students still don't understand, the ones who do can explain it to them.

i like to use survey type activities to practice 'will'. have students go around asking each other what they will do tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, in 20 years...

[lemonzest]

I was just looking for a game on the same topic, and I found something called 'Rummy Sentences' that isn't specifically targeting this grammar point but can work for it. Make a bunch of cards with parts of sentences on them (individual words or phrases, including 'will') and give the sets to each group. Each student gets 5 cards to start, and the rest go in the middle shuffled. The first student flips the top card over and either takes it or the top card from the discard pile, and tries to combine it with something in his hand to make a sentence. If he can make a sentence, he lays the cards out in front of him in order. If he can't make a sentence, he discards 1 card from his hand and it's the next player's turn. You can also take add on to another player's already-laid-out sentences with cards from your own hand. Other than that, just make them say the sentences they make out loud, and the first one to have no cards in his hand ends the game, and you give 1 point for every card laid down and take away one point for every card left in the player's hand, and the one with the most points wins.

If you are a JET who has Team Taught Pizza, there is another game called 'English Mastermind' that uses 'will' specificially on page 121-122 of my 2005 edition. It involves giving a pair of kids a worksheet with multiple choices of subject, verb, and object/phrase combinations that they pick one each of to make a sentence, and the other kid has to guess what words their partner chose. For example, if the first kid picks ROB will STUDY ENGLISH NEXT MONTH (3 points, Rob, study English, and next month), the partner has to guess the correct sentence. If they get any part right, it's one point, but they don't get to know which part they guessed correctly (unless they get all 3 right the first time). They have to keep switching things around until they get all 3 points correct, and should manage to do so within about 10 tries at worst.

Sorry if my explanations aren't very good, if you have questions feel free to ask.

[major]

'Will' can be used in different ways - as a truth or as a prediction. I find that students more readily identify with the latter and it can lead to inyeresting conversations. I usually start with ways of predicting your future like horoscopes, palm reading, crystal ball and then move on to predicting the weather.

[moirainesdi]

A quick warm up would be the simple kids game called "I`m going..." The teacher starts out "I`m going shopping. I will buy a pencil". The first student says "I`m going shopping. I will buy a pencil and an eraser". Each student starts out the same, and has to remember all the previous answers and adds a new one. To make it simpler and faster, each student only has to remember the students answer directly before them. Good game for simple repetition of a sentence pattern for many different sentence structures. You have to teach the meaning first of course, but as I said, it`s a good warm up activity!

"I`m going to eat breakfast. I will eat..."
"I`m going to Kushiro. I will... simple verb"
"I`m going camping. I will bring..."
"I want to see the world... I want to visit...."
The possiblilities are only limited to your imagination and the sentace/grammar point you wish to make!

[jellybeanenglisch]

great ideas. Thank you

[Denis DNT]

Don't forget this form. Using the simple present tense + an adverb of time to talk about actions happening in the future.

"I travel to Japan tomorrow."
"Our team plays next week."

[jellybeanenglisch]

I played a fortune telling game. Print some simple clip art pictures, e.g. a suitcase (for travel), a dollar sign (for wealth), a heart etc.; split the class into pairs - one S picks up a card and "predicts" the other's future using "will" of course. It is interesting to see how creative the students are and what ideas they come up with.

[jellybeanenglisch]

I thought the simple present + infinitive was just for fixed schedules e.g. "the train leaves at 6:15" but not for personal plans?!

[Denis DNT]

Now that's quite an idea for a game.
Thanks for sharing.