Continuous Aspect Sentences

Guess the year continuous aspect review

Tell your partner about one year in your life, one sentence at a time. After each sentence they can make one guess about what year it was, e.g. “I think I could be 1987” or “It sounds like 1977 to me”.

Continue the game, this time making sure you use sentences only in Perfect and/ or Continuous tenses like those below:

• I had been __________________ for a while.
• I had been working in my then job for ________________.
• I had started the job that I have been doing since then.
• I have been __________ since then.
• I was thinking about_______________.
• I had just _____________.
• I had already _________________.
• I was expecting ____________________.
• I was working ___________________.
• I was/ wasn’t enjoying _______________________.
• I was worrying about/ feeling pessimistic about _______________________.
• I had started ___________________________________.
• I had finished ______________________________.
• I was feeling ______________________________.
• I was studying _______________. I had been studying that for _________________.
• _____________________ was increasing/ decreasing.
• _____________________________ was becoming more/ less popular.
• ________________________ was improving/ getting worse.
• _______________________________ had reached a peak.
• At the start of the year, ______________________________________.
• By the end of the year, _______________________________________.
• I was living _________________. I had been living there for __________________.
• I was trying to ______________________________.
• I had tried to _________________________________, but __________________.
• I was spending a lot of time __________________________.
• My child/ children were _______________________.
• My child/ children had already _______________________________.
• I had already ________________ my (first/ last) boyfriend/ girlfriend/ husband/ wife.
• I had visited __________________________________.
• I was using _____________________________ (quite a lot).
• I had been __________________ for a while.
• I had been _________________________ for ages.
• I hadn’t been _______________________________ for long.
• I hadn’t _________________________________ long before.
• People were ______________________________________.

Use the sentence stems above to find things in common with your partner. Then share one surprising similarity and one surprising difference with the class. Is the same thing true of anyone else? Which was the most surprising difference in the class?