(This lesson plan can be downloaded on pdf file here:
15-things-to-do-before-you-die.pdf)

Here is an idea for raising awareness of the pronunciation of the past and past participle forms of regular verbs.

1. Write the following verbs on the board

• Plant
• Write
• Milk
• Appear
• Catch
• Do
• Donate
• Dye
• Have
• Invent
• Meet
• Participate
• Photocopy
• Save
• Visit

2. Write “101 things to do before you die” on the board and tell your students that it is the title of a book. Show them an image of the cover if possible.

3. Tell your students that the 15 verbs relate to things in the book. Give a couple of examples to get your students started and see if they can work out/guess the rest. Write the missing language on the board each time someone identifies what it is.

Answers:

• Plant a tree
• Write a book
• Milk a cow
• Appear on the front cover of a newspaper
• Catch a fish with your bare hands
• Do a runner from a restaurant
• Donate blood
• Dye your hair an interesting colour
• Have sex in an airplane
• Invent something
• Meet someone with your own name
• Participate in a demonstration
• Photocopy your bottom at work
• Save someone’s life
• Visit the 7 wonders of the world

4. Rub out everything from the board, put your students into pairs or small groups and tell them that they are going to play a memory game. Students should work together to remember the 15 activities which they should convert into Have you ever …? questions. Give a couple of examples to start your students off:

Have you ever planted a tree?
Have you ever written a book?

While your students test their memories, circulate and make sure that they have a grasp of the grammar. Make sure they know that they should be using the past participle of the verb in each case.

5. Divide the board into three columns as shown below. Have your students feedback the 15 Have you ever …? questions to you. For each question that is given, write the past participle (i.e. the past participle only, and not the rest of the question) into the correct column as shown. Use this as an opportunity to drill the language - both the isolated past participles and the the full Have you ever…? questions.

6. Ask your students if they can see a pattern for the pronunciation of regular past participles. They should be able to see that when a past participle ends in -ted, an extra syllable is added to the stem of the verb:

Point out that:

• The same applies for past participles that end in -ded (ended, downloaded, attended, defended, pretended, etc). In other words the -ded adds an new syllable onto the verb stem.
  
• For regular English verbs, the past participle is the same as the past form.

I call this ‘the ted and ded rule’.

7. Play ‘the lying game‘. For small classes, everyone (including the teacher) can get involved in this game. If not, put your students into small groups. Here is the basic idea:

• Each group writes the 15 Have you ever…? questions onto 15 pieces of scrap paper. These are put into a hat or box.
• Players take it in turn to be asked one of the questions which is to be randomly pulled out of the hat.
• In response to the question, the player must answer ‘yes’.
• Everyone else in the group should then think of a follow up question to find out if the player on the spot to find is lying or telling the truth.

Student 1: Have you ever done a runner from a restaurant?
Student 2: Yes
Student 1: Where were you?
Student 2: When I was on holiday.
Student 3: Why did you do it?
Student 2: Because the food was really bad and the waiters were rude.
Student 4: Did you get caught?
Student 2: No

• After all the follow up questions, everyone should decide whether the player is lying or telling the truth. Everyone that guesses correctly gets a point.

NB The lying game can be a good way of comparing the present perfect (have you ever …?) with the past simple follow up questions (did you…? or were you…?).