ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS

Ask and answer questions , winner gets 2 points, loser gets 1

points. The first player to score 10 points is the final winner.
1. How often do you travel? Where ? Who with? How long?
2. How often do you wake up in the middle of the night?
3. How often do you go to the dentist?
4. How often do you feel sleepy in the morning?
5. How often do you say "I Love you"?
6. How often do you take your English book to study?
7. How often do you brush your teeth?
8. How often do you buy clothes? Where ? Who with?
9. How often do you eat fast food? Where? With whom?
10.How often do you go out with your friends? Where ? Who with ?
How long?
11. How often do you use the Internet?
12.How often do you feel jealous?

ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS

Ask and answer questions , winner gets 2 points, loser gets 1
points. The first player to score 10 points is the final winner.
1. How often do you travel? Where ? Who with? How long?
2. How often do you wake up in the middle of the night?
3. How often do you go to the dentist?
4. How often do you feel sleepy in the morning?
5. How often do you say "I Love you"?
6. How often do you take your English book to study?
7. How often do you brush your teeth?
8. How often do you buy clothes? Where ? Who with?
9. How often do you eat fast food? Where? With whom?
10. How often do you go out with your friends? Where ? Who with ?
How long?
11. How often do you use the Internet?
12. How often do you feel jealous?

Two teams of students, each person has cards from a set with adverbs of frequency
(sometimes, never, only once, etc). Nobody knows who has which kind of card. (too
many cheetahs!!) One person from team A asks person on team B a question, trying to
get them to respond with the adverb they have on their card. So, if I am on team A and
have the card NEVER, I will ask a student from team B: "How often do you speak
English at home?" Hopefully s/he will say "never" and I will get a point for my team. If
not, OH WELL! Then a person from team B repeats process and so on. I use this with
ESL teens and the winners get a prize like a piece of candy and of course we make the
losers do some terrible deed, like throw the candy wrappers in the t rash or clean the
blackboard, etc. Enjoy! Let me know if you tried it! : )

Jacob: I always have football practice on Saturday morning, so I get

up early and have a big breakfast. After football practice, I go home
for lunch. In the afternoon, I usually do homework, but I sometimes
play tennis at the sports centre. I hardly ever watch IV during the day
the programmes are always really boring. In the evening, I always
go out with friends. We often go bowling. Im usually in bed before
midnight.
Kirsty: I usually get up late on Saturday morning. I never have
breakfast. I watch TV for an hour and then I usually check my emails
or visit a chat room. After lunch, I go shopping. I look at the new
mobile phones, but I never buy a phone theyre always very
expensive. I always go dancing with friends on Saturday evening. Im
often out until two oclock.

Jacob: I always have football practice on Saturday morning, so I get

up early and have a big breakfast. After football practice, I go home
for lunch. In the afternoon, I usually do homework, but I sometimes
play tennis at the sports centre. I hardly ever watch IV during the day
the programmes are always really boring. In the evening, I always
go out with friends. We often go bowling. Im usually in bed before
midnight.
Kirsty: I usually get up late on Saturday morning. I never have
breakfast. I watch TV for an hour and then I usually check my emails
or visit a chat room. After lunch, I go shopping. I look at the new
mobile phones, but I never buy a phone theyre always very
expensive. I always go dancing with friends on Saturday evening. Im
often out until two oclock.

Jacob: I _________ have football practice on Saturday morning, so I get

up early and have a big breakfast. After football practice, I go home
for lunch. In the afternoon, I usually do homework, but I _________ play
tennis at the sports centre. I _________ watch TV during the day the
programmes are _________ really boring. In the evening, I _________ go
out with friends. We _________ go bowling. Im usually in bed before
midnight.
Kirsty: I _________ get up late on Saturday morning. I _________ have
breakfast. I watch TV for an hour and then I _________ check my
emails or visit a chat room. After lunch, I go shopping. I look at the
new mobile phones, but I _________ buy a phone theyre _________
very expensive. I _________ go dancing with friends on Saturday
evening. Im _________ out until two oclock.

Jacob: I _________ have football practice on Saturday morning, so I get

up early and have a big breakfast. After football practice, I go home
for lunch. In the afternoon, I usually do homework, but I _________ play
tennis at the sports centre. I _________ watch TV during the day the
programmes are _________ really boring. In the evening, I _________ go
out with friends. We _________ go bowling. Im usually in bed before
midnight.
Kirsty: I _________ get up late on Saturday morning. I _________ have
breakfast. I watch TV for an hour and then I _________ check my
emails or visit a chat room. After lunch, I go shopping. I look at the
new mobile phones, but I _________ buy a phone theyre _________
very expensive. I _________ go dancing with friends on Saturday
evening. Im _________ out until two oclock.

always

often

usually

never

hardly ever /
rarely

sometimes

two or three
once a week
times a week

everyday

, 1. Verb Guessing, Adverb Clues

Students guess which verb their partner has chosen or been given from clues with adverbs of frequency like I
often do this, My grandmother sometimes does this and I usually do this in the bathroom. This is a good
way of combining this grammar point with the introduction of lots of useful vocabulary.
2. Guess The Person
Students describe a persons routines using adverbs of frequency until their partner(s) guess who they are
speaking about, e.g. This person usually gets up really early and This person rarely faces danger for a
postman.
3. Discuss And Agree
Students try to agree on which adverb of frequency is suitable for each of the slightly controversial gapped
sentences they have been given. These could be about politics (What parents do with their children should
__________ be controlled by the government), language learning (We want to have tests __________), etc.
Alternatively, they could try to agree on descriptions of reality such as Young people in our country often
__________ and Politicians hardly ever __________.
4. Personalised Sentence Completion
Students are given ten to twenty gapped sentences like I __________ think that I chose the wrong job/course
or I often __________ early in the morning that they should complete to make them true. They read out just
the part they wrote, and their partners try to guess which sentence those words were written in.
5. Always More Or Less Often
Give a student a card that says more often or less often on it without their partners seeing it. The other
students ask them How often questions, and they should make sure that all their answers are inaccurate in the
way written on their card, e.g. saying very often and four times a week when the real answers would be
often and three times a week because they have the more often card. Their partners should guess
whenever they feel sure about which of the two cards the person answering the questions is holding, getting one
point for a correct guess but losing two points for a wrong one.
6. Sometimes More Than Sometimes
This is a variation on the game above. A student makes half their answers more often than reality and half their
answers less often than reality, and then their partners have to guess which is which. This works best with four
or six answers, i.e. two or three of each.
7. Taboo How Often Questions
Give students a big list of personal questions starting with How often. Some of these should be normal
questions like How often do you take the underground? and some of them should be more personal ones like
How often do you feel jealous? Students should grade the questions from one point for totally normal
questions to five points for completely taboo ones. They should then take turns choosing a number of points

that they want to answer, e.g. A four point question, please. Their partner chooses one of the four point
questions and the original person gets four points if they answer it properly or no points if they refuse to answer
(probably because they think it is too personal). Their partners can ask them follow up questions like Why so
often?, but they dont have to answer those if they dont want to. The person with the most points at the end of
the game is the winner.

ow to Teach Adverbs of Frequency

1. 1
Use Percentages to Define Adverbs
It can be somewhat challenging to define all the adverbs of frequency at one time with limited
language. One skillful way to introduce all the new vocabulary and provide an interactive feel to the
grammar point is to make a list of all the adverbs the class knows and then add in the ones they
dont. As you create the list with student input, write it out on the board in descending order from
frequent to infrequent. Once you have a substantial list, you can talk about degrees of frequency and add
other interchangeable phrases. In discussing the degrees, you can assign the adverbs a percentage of
frequency to give more concrete definition to the words. Here is an example:

Always, regularly
90 to 100% of the time (every day or several days a week)
Usually
Often
70 to 80 % of the time (one or two days a week)
Frequently
Sometimes
50% of the time (twice a month)
Occasionally
Rarely
20-40% of the time (three times a year)
Hardly ever
Never
0 to 10% of the time (once a year, if at all)
With this introduction, you can then determine the difference between words like often and frequently,
or sometimes and occasionally. It is pretty subjective. You can also add in other adverbs that may have
been overlooked like: seldom, normally, generally, etc. This is also a good time to introduce how many
times per day/week/month/year you do something.

2. 2
Show Placement and Structure
In presenting the placement of adverbs, youll want to show the students and then have them
deduct from your examples, where the adverbs go. There are three options, but the first two are the
main ways to express frequency. You can also point out that it is acceptable to give short answers or
answers that contain x times per week/month/year.

Q: How often do you go to the movies?

A: I occasionally go to the movies.
In between the subject and the verb
Sometimes I go to the movies.
At the very beginning
I go to the movies rarely.
At the very end (never doesnt fit here)
3. 3

How Often Do You?

A reliable way to practice both the vocabulary and the placement of adverbs is to come up with a list of
activities and have the students ask and answer question with How often do you workout/eat
sushi/drive a car
If you provide the students with only the prompts, they will practice formulating the questions, as well
as answering them. A valuable follow-up activity to the how often question is, do you
always/sometimes/ do something. Point out that we sometimes ask questions like, do you always go
skiing on the weekends? This type of question is usually asked when we notice that someone has a
particular habit and we can then ask the person questions about that habit. You can also do a find
someone who activity and provide prompts with adverbs of frequency. For example:
Find someone who.
o
o
o

- Often goes sailing

- Never watches TV
- Always eats pizza.

They can then make sentences about the information like, John eats pizza rarely or Mario watches TV
occasionally. This activity helps students to practice the correct forms of present tense, placement of the
adverbs, and question formation.

4. 4
Truth or Lie Game
The truth and lie game is a fun and fairly simple way to practice adverbs of frequency. Tell
students to think of three facts about their habits, with one fact being untrue. You can also inform
students that the point of the game is to be a good liar. They want to fool the rest of the group. Once
they have devised their 3 facts, they can be written on the board or stated aloud. The class then votes on
which one is the lie.
An example could be:
o
o
o

I never go shopping at Macys

I often go fishing on the weekends
Sometimes I like to go dancing.

You could also have the class ask yes or no questions to try to determine which fact is untrue.

5. 5
Surveys
Surveys are very useful for this grammar point because it enables students to deduce information
from the answers. Create a basic survey about habits and have students talk to one another to get the
answers. If you include things such as likes, dislikes, frequencies, and habits, the students will have to
ask different types of questions.
You could do this as one big group or in pairs. Then you spend time tallying the results of the survey
together as a group. At this point, the students can then make sentences from the information extracted
from the survey. Results could be something like: Everyone in the class always does their homework.
Several students go to the movies frequently.