Odd Jobs

What you do – What you’re doing

What exactly do you do if you are a Wizard of Lightbulb Moments or a Problem Wrangler? (Apparently these jobs exist!) And, if you could be a tour guide for the day, would you be a Safari Guide, a Film Studio Guide or perhaps give a tour of your own special kind of Factory or School?

Here are two different and entertaining speaking activities for intermediate+ level students, both concerning interesting kinds of jobs and both providing the opportunity to use the present simple and present continuous tenses.

First of all “Bizarre Job Titles” looks at some rather unusual job titles (Airport Scarecrow, Pet food Taster and Professional Sleeper are just some tantalising jobs to consider) that have actually been used in CVs by job seekers. Students are invited to establish what the jobs might involve and then, by presenting these job descriptions the rest of the class can try to match the description to the job title in a big game of Bizarre Jobs Bingo!

Then in a role play activity, students have the chance to become tour guides with a great selection of tours to choose from. Once again they will practice using both present simple and present continuous to this time to describe places, people or animals and their activities. This is based on a previous lesson, Company Tour which I shared last year, which was a bit more Business English oriented. This activity should appeal to all learners as there’s a choice of different tours including a safari, a hotel inspection, an archaeological dig and a science laboratory.

I’ve included the Present Simple and Continuous form chart to help learners revise the forms.

Feedback

If you try out any of the resources I’ve posted here on my blog I’d love to hear your feedback. You can post comments on the relevant blog page or send a message.

Previous Blog Posts

If you’ve enjoyed this post, or found it useful, why not check out my previous blogs with a whole range of free downloadable lessons:

Subscribe now!

You can subscribe to Express Yourself in English by email to receive regular blogs with new learning and teaching resources: