A selection of English ESL telling a story printables

A fun and creative exercise your students will love! It can be done as a class activity or for homework. 

Past Simple - Telling a story

A fun and engaging ESL conversation and video-based lesson on Telling a Story about Japanese culture. 



One of many of our lessons to talk about and teach cultural awareness. 

Start the lesson with visual aids: Have students google the words and explain the topic regarding Japanese culture. 



Next, students watch a YouTube video and answer listening comprehension questions, complete a vocabulary matching exercise, discuss some things about Japan, Japanese culture, and world culture and finish with a listening exercise.



This lesson is part of our original Pocket Passport course which consists of 4-levels and 80 lessons. Get access to everything: www.pocketpassport.com



The video link is in the lesson plan or you can get a sneak peek here: 

https://youtu.be/KXs6rz7VuW4

Telling a Story: Japanese Culture

A visual-aid and video-based storytelling lesson for students to practice telling stories using sequencers and talking in the past tense. 



A fun and extremely effective story that uses visual aids to get students to tell a story in the past tense, watch a YouTube video and compare the story that they wrote and told to the story that they watch. 

Then complete discussion questions, grammar, and vocabulary activities.



This lesson is part of Pocket Passport's original course which includes 80 lessons across 4 levels (Beginner, High Beginner, Intermediate, and high intermediate)



Get access to all of the lessons: www.pocketpassport.com



Check out the YouTube video here: https://youtu.be/aX7m64qrtDk



 and subscribe to our channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/LearnEnglishbyPocketPassport

Telling a Story: The Birthday Party

This worksheet may be used to practice any tense you want to :) It may also be used with all the age groups. The learners pick one word and they make a sentence with the word to make a story. 

present simple past simple telling a story

A quick reminder on how to use: simple present, simple past, present perfect and past perfect. 

Watch this video to retell the story.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzNV_LIQLqo



Writing B1 B2 tell a story connectors tense reminder

The students have to fill in the gaps and then classify the verbs. Practice recognizing regular and irregular verbs. Complete the sentences and fill in the charts.

Telling a Story - Practice with Regular and Irregular Verbs in the Past Tense

This is a reading about people's gestures, language and communication. it tells about how a person uses verbal language together with body language.then students have to do some exercises related to the text.

Every Gesture Tells a Story - Reading Passage About Body Language

Creative writing for the students to enhance their creative writing and imaginative skills.

A journey by a train

Nothing fancy, just a useful worksheet I created for linking words to help Italian students in their writing tasks for B2 and C1 levels. Italian natives - let me know if I should change anything! I love working together to make sure we create great, free resources! 

Linking Words and Examples (English and Italian)

This worksheet is designed to inspire children to engage in creative writing based on a provided picture. The picture depicts two kids sitting in a library, surrounded by books.

Picture Composition (Library)

In this worksheet the students are given the beginning of a story. They simply have to continue it. 

There are some words they have to use and questions to help them creating their story.

Scary Story

Students will read a Winnie the Pooh story and determine the parts of the story.  Characters, setting, problem and solution

Parts of a Story (Winnie the Pooh)

Culture, intercultural communication, cross-cultural communication

Adjectives to describe feelings, emotions

Adjectives to describe personality and character

Adjectives: Gradable / Non-gradable adjectives

Articles: Definite or indefinite article (a, an or the)

BE + infinitive structures (e.g. he was to become famous)

Clauses of contrast (e.g.  although, while)

Clauses of purpose (e.g. in order to, so that, so as to)

Clauses of reason (e.g. because, because of, due to, as, since)

Cleft sentences (e.g. It's Joey we're looking for)

Comparison: Comparative adjectives and structures

Comparison: Superlative adjectives and structures

Conditional 2 (second conditional) - would

Conditionals: Conditional phrases (e.g. unless, provided that, as long as)

Conjunctions (aka connectives, e.g. and, but, or, so, then)

Contractions (shortened forms, e.g. don't, aren't, etc.)

Determiners (words that can come before nouns)

Formal and informal English (politeness or colloquial language)

Future perfect continuous (progressive) tense

Future perfect simple and continuous (progressive) tense

Future phrases (e.g. be about to, bound to, likely to, due to, set to + INF)

Homonyms (two words with the same pronunciation - homophones and homographs)

It as preparatory subject (e.g. it's raining, it's nice of you to)

Linking verbs (aka copulas, e.g. I am a student)

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Nouns: Collective nouns (team, class, family, committee)

Nouns: Proper nouns (names of people, cities, companies)

Oxymorons (phrases with words of contradictory meaning, e.g. living dead)

Participles: Past participle (e.g. HAVING DONE)

Participles: Present participle (e.g. DOING)

Parts of Speech (aka word classes, e.g. nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs)

Past perfect continuous (progressive) tense

Phonetics (pronunciation, IPA, phonetic symbols)

Plural nouns: regular plurals with S ending

Prefixes (e.g. A, UN, IM, DIS, MIS, EN, etc. )

Prepositions vs adverbs (e.g. before me, saw him before.)

Prepositions: Double prepositions (e.g. out of)

Prepositions: Participle prepositions (e.g. pending, concerning)

Prepositions: Phrase prepositions (e.g. by means of)

Present perfect continuous (progressive) tense

Present perfect simple or present continuous tense

Present simple tense: S for third person singular verbs

Present simple vs continuous (progressive) tense

Pronouns: EACH OTHER, ONE ANOTHER (reciprocal pronouns)

Pronouns: Possessive pronouns (e.g. my, mine)

Pronouns: Reflexive pronouns (e.g. myself, yourself))

Pronouns: SOMEBODY, ANYBODY, EVERYBODY, NO ONE, NOTHING, etc.

Pronouns: THIS, THAT, THESE, THOSE (demonstratives)

Pronouns: YOU and THEY to talk about people in general

Quantifiers (e.g. some, many, much, any, few, little)

Questions: WH questions (open-ended questions)

Reported speech: reported questions (indirect questions)

There is / there are / there was / there were / there will be, etc.

Verbs: Transitive or intransitive verbs (words that can or cannot stand with objects)

Working with Paragraphs: ordering, titling

Role play, miming, drama activity or improv game

Pictionary (picture dictionary) or picture matching

Writing an opinion essay (persuasive essay)

Learners who are Pre-A1 have just begun learning English and will first learn how to:<ul><li>Say the letters in the alphabet and numbers</li><li>Say hello, talk about names and age</li><li>Name the colors and dates, express likes and dislikes</li></ul>

Absolute beginners who have begun to learn the letters and numbers

Learners taking the A1 Elementary exam should be able to:<ul><li>Introduce themselves and ask and answer questions about personal details such as where he/she lives, things he/she has, people he/she knows.</li><li>Communicate using very basic phrases as long as the other person talks slowly and clearly and is prepared to help.</li><li>Main grammar points to know: common adjectives & adverbs of frequency, going to, how much/how many, imperatives, I'd like, 's – possessive, common prepositions of place and time, present simple & continuous, there is/are</li></ul>

A very basic tourist level, which is enough for buying food and a bus ticket

Learners taking the A2 Pre-intermediate exam should be able to:<ul><li>Understand sentences and frequently used expressions (e.g. very basic personal and family information, shopping, local geography, employment).</li><li>Complete tasks that are routine and exchange information about familiar matters.</li><li>Describe matters of immediate need in simple terms.</li><li>Main grammar points to know: countable/uncountable nouns, adverbs of frequency, future will/going to, much/many, present perfect, past simple, past continuous, common phrasal verbs, common modals: can/should</li></ul>

A tourist who can do basic conversations about the past, present and future

Learners taking the B1 Intermediate exam should be able to:<ul><li>Understand points regarding family, work, school or leisure-related topics.</li><li>Deal with most travel situations in areas where the language is spoken.</li><li>Create simple texts on topics of personal interest.</li><li>Describe experiences, events, dreams, and ambitions, as well as opinions or plans in brief.</li><li>Main grammar points to know: question tags, intensifiers: too/enough, future tenses, past tenses, modals, conditionals, wh-questions in the past</li></ul>

Learners who can deal with both familiar and routine situations, in friendly and work contexts

Learners taking the B2 Upper-intermediate exam should be able to:<ul><li>Understand the main ideas of complex text on both concrete and abstract topics, including technical discussions in his/her field of specialization.</li><li>Interact with fluency and spontaneity that makes regular interaction with native speakers quite possible without difficulty for either party.</li><li>Produce clear, detailed text on a wide range of subjects and explain an opinion on a topical issue giving the advantages and disadvantages of various options.</li><li>Main grammar points to know: perfect tenses, mixed conditionals, modals in the present, phrasal verbs, reported speech, wish, relative clauses</li></ul>

The level where you can be a tour guide for your foreign friends and talk about a lot of topics, even abstract ones, with ease and fluency

Learners taking the C1 Advanced exam should be able to: Express ideas fluently and spontaneously without much obvious searching for expressions. Use language flexibly and effectively for social, academic and professional purposes. Understand a wide range of demanding, longer texts. Produce clear, well-structured, detailed text on complex subjects, using linking phrases (=words that connect ideas between sentences). Main grammar points to know: inversion, mixed conditionals, modals in the past, all passive forms, phrasal verbs (all patterns), wish/if only for regrets

Learners who can smoothly communicate in every walk of life, read long texts and write well

Learners taking the C2 Proficient exam should be able to:<ul><li>Understand almost everything read or heard with ease.</li><li>Summarize information from a variety of sources into a coherent presentation.</li><li>Express themselves using precise meaning in complex scenarios.</li><li>Can express him/herself spontaneously, very fluently and precisely, differentiating finer shades of meaning even in the most complex situations</li></ul>

Get here and you are ready to study in English at university

302 Telling a story English ESL worksheets pdf & doc