Section 1  be and have

page 1

language notes
If you are teaching students with whose language(s) you are not familiar, note that the
apparently simple verbs be and have may not be straightforward for your students.
(See notes on the following pages.)
The grammar of have is complicated (there are uses with or without do, with or without got,
with or without progressives). These points are likely to need some revision.
Pronunciation: the unstressed forms of am, are, was, were, have, has, had and there (in there
is) can be difficult for some students to hear. The ‘Pronunciation for grammar’ exercises will
help with this.

possible further activities

Quotations  The quotations are simply intended for introductory reading. However, if you
want to base an activity on them, you could get students to find some more quotations
(after class) containing be, have, there is on a quotations website (typing “quotations” into
an internet search engine will bring up plenty). In the next lesson, get them to share their
quotations. Or get students to write the quotations on pieces of paper, collect them, cut
them in half and distribute the halves round the class. Then students walk round saying (not
showing) their halves to each other in order to match up the halves. When they’ve done
this, they can read out their completed quotations, vote for their favourite, and perhaps
write them out again and put them up on the classroom wall / notice board.
Another possibility: get students to think of favourite quotations or sayings in their own
language(s) which would be expressed in English with be or have. Ask them to translate
them (help with vocabulary) and share them with the class.

pages 2–3

language notes
Not all languages have a direct parallel to English be, used to connect a subject to a
description or definition. The students’ mother-tongue equivalent of ‘I’m American’,
for instance, might translate literally as ‘I American’.
Those languages that do have equivalents of be and have may distribute them a little
differently – for instance, English speakers are warm or cold, while speakers of some
languages have warm or cold.

possible further activities

Contractions  Write up or say full-form sentences and get students to say them with
contractions.
Vocabulary expansion: personality  Teach some words for personality types and
characteristics. For example:
self-confident, shy, optimistic, pessimistic, warm, sociable, reserved, energetic, dynamic,
hard-working, lazy, critical, easy-going, ambitious, generous, mean (= ‘stingy’ in American
English), calm, excitable, impulsive, radical, conservative, religious
Get students to write some sentences about themselves or other people, saying what they
are or are not. Adverbs of degree will be useful: very, rather, quite, not very, …  

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Oxford English Grammar Course • Intermediate  © Michael Swan and Catherine Walter  2013
Guessing ages  Students each write a sentence to guess your age. (‘I think you’re …’)
Or they can guess the ages of some currently important entertainers, in similar form.
You’ll need to check the ages in advance.
Vocabulary expansion: star signs  Teach students the names of the star signs. Then they
guess your sign. (‘I think you’re Aries.’) You say ‘You’re wrong’ or ‘You’re right’. Then you all
guess somebody else’s; he/she says ‘You’re wrong’ or ‘You’re right’.
Class survey: interests  Each learner writes down three things they are interested in (you
can participate, too). Help with vocabulary. Then they do a class survey by walking round
and asking everyone ‘Are you interested in…?’, and noting down the answers. They report
the results to the class orally or in writing. (‘11 other people are interested in…’).
Mime: physical and mental states  Divide students into pairs or groups of three. Give each
group a card with the name of a physical or mental state. For example:
cold, hot, hungry, thirsty, tired, happy, depressed, excited, sleepy, frightened, calm
Pairs or groups mime their state in turn; the class guess what they are miming and say
‘You’re thirsty’ or whatever.
Possessions  Students each write down six things they have got (beginning ‘I’ve got …’),
and six that they haven’t.
Quiz: past of ‘be’  Learners work in small groups. Each group makes up a test containing
five questions about famous people in the country or the world beginning ‘Who was …? /
Who were…?’. (‘Who were the premier league football champions in 2006? Who was
president in 2009? Who was the first woman in space?’ …) A representative from each
group reads the questions out to the class and the rest of the class tries to answer. Learners
exchange papers and answers are checked.
‘Where were you?’  You begin. (‘Last night at 7, I was at the cinema. Where were you,
Isabel?’) Each learner repeats the previous answers, gives their own answer (true or not)
and nominates the next player. Like this:
isabel: Last night at 7, Ms López was at the cinema and I was at the swimming pool.
Where were you, Jorge?
jorge: Last night at 7, Ms López was at the cinema, Isabel was at the swimming pool, and
I was at the supermarket. Where were you, Ramón?
Once you have done this as a whole-class activity, students can do it in (large) groups,
choosing a different time to ask about.
Lies  Tell the class five things about yourself or your family using be and have got. Include
one or more lies. Students should raise their hands when they think they hear a lie, and
if called upon should correct the lie. (‘Your father isn’t a policeman.’ ‘You haven’t got a
Ferrari.’) Students can then work to write their own sets of statements and play the game in
a group or with the whole class.
Vocabulary expansion: weather forecasts  Revise or teach adjectives for talking about the
weather. For example:
hot, cold, wet, freezing, cloudy, foggy, humid, fine, sunny.
Students write a forecast for the area where they are, using ‘It will be’, ‘It may be’, ‘It might be’,
‘It won’t be’ etc. In the next lesson, check who got it right.
or: Students guess what the weather will be in some other places. (‘I think it will be cold
in Berlin.’) Help them with vocabulary as necessary. Then you/they check on the internet to
see what the official forecasts say. They could also do the activity by discussion in threes.
(‘We think it will be … ‘) 

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Oxford English Grammar Course • Intermediate  © Michael Swan and Catherine Walter  2013
pages 4–5

language notes
There is is complicated and can be difficult to learn, particularly when it is used in more
complicated structures such as those introduced on page 5. Your students’ mother-tongue
equivalent will probably not have a singular/plural distinction corresponding to there is/
are. Note also that the pronunciation of there in there is/are (/ðər/) is quite different from
its pronunciation in, for instance, over there (/ðeə/). Students don’t need to get this right in
speech, but they do need to recognise the word when they hear it. The ‘Pronunciation for
grammar’ exercises for this Section will help.

possible further activities

Guessing game  Bring some unusual things to class in your bag (e.g. a toy car, a picture of a
beautiful woman, a toy bear). Ask students to guess whether named things are in your bag,
like this:
you: A piece of paper.
students: There’s a piece of paper in your bag.
you: A car.
students: There isn’t a car in your bag.
you: A book. / A beautiful woman. / …
etc
Then you reveal what’s really there.
Then (or later, giving students time to prepare some surprises), they do it in groups.
or: You ask ‘Is there a …?’ and they reply with short answers: ‘Yes, there is / No, there isn’t’.
Or they reply ‘I think / don’t think there is; I’m sure there is / isn’t.’ Or they reply using some
of the more advanced structures from page 5 (‘There may/must/can’t be a … in your bag’;
‘There’s likely / There isn’t likely to be …’.
Vocabulary expansion: observation  Students stand at the window for a few minutes while
you teach them the names of some things they can see. They sit back down in groups of
three and write sentences beginning ‘There’s a … / There are two/some etc … in the street /
outside / …’. Who can write most?
or: Students observe as above, but you say what there is/are and isn’t/aren’t, including
some lies and inaccuracies. They say ‘You’re right’ or ‘You’re wrong’.
‘Where was I?’  Tell students they have to guess a place where you were yesterday evening
(this doesn’t have to be true). They can only ask eight questions, all beginning ‘Was there…’
or ‘Were there…’. (‘Were there a lot of people?’ ‘Was there any music?’) They then have to
try and guess where you were. Students can then play the game in groups, taking turns to
be the person questioned.
Predictions  Students extend Exercise 2, saying or writing what they think there will/won’t/
may/might be in the year 2100.
or: Each student goes round asking a different question about the year 2100. (‘Will there
be …?’). They then report to the class. (‘Seven people think there will be banks in the year
2100, 18 people don’t think there will be banks in the year 2100, …’)
Two pictures  Choose two volunteers. Give each an envelope: one contains a suitable
picture; the other is empty. The volunteers go out of the class for a few minutes. When
they come back, each describes the picture (real or imaginary) that was in their envelope.
(‘There’s a man. He’s sitting in an armchair. He’s reading a newspaper. There’s a big bird on
his head. …’) The class decides who had the real picture. 

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Oxford English Grammar Course • Intermediate  © Michael Swan and Catherine Walter  2013
Similar pictures  Give two students similar, but not identical, pictures. (For example two
different advertisements for cars.) Without seeing each other’s pictures, they have to find
three differences by talking to each other. (‘There’s a woman in my picture. She’s looking
at a blue car.’ ‘There’s a man in my picture. He’s looking at a black car.’ …) If you prepare a
lot of pairs of pictures, this can be done with the whole class working in pairs, and passing
pictures round as they succeed in finding the differences.
Houses and rooms  Students write or say things about their homes, their rooms or the
houses where they are living, using there is/are. Help with vocabulary. (‘There’s a bed.’
‘There are two windows.’ ‘There are some posters on the wall.’ ‘There’s a big garden.’
Dream houses  Students describe their dream houses, using ‘I’d like there to be’ or ‘I want
there to be’. (‘I’d like there to be a big garden.’ ‘I want there to be a TV in the toilet.’)

pages 6–7

language notes
Not all languages have a single direct parallel to English have, used to refer to possession
and many other ideas. The students’ mother-tongue equivalent of ‘I have an old car’, for
instance, might translate literally as ‘To/With me (is) old car’, or something similar. Some
languages have different structures for inalienable possession (of things that belong to
you permanently, like your eyes), and alienable possession (of things that don’t, like cars
or shoes).

possible further activities

Possessions: lies  Students mention three or more things they have, including one lie.
The other students answer ‘OK’ or ‘It’s not true’.
or: Students ask the teacher ‘Do you have a/any …?’ or ‘Have you got a/any …?’
The teacher answers with some lies. Responses as above.
Possessions: mime  Write out on cards the names of some things whose possession can be
mimed. Hand them out to groups. Students in groups mime ‘We’ve got a fast car / a dog /
three children / …’. The others guess (‘You’ve got …’).
Past possessions  Students say what they had /didn’t have when small.
or: Students ask the teacher what she/he had when small.
or: Students write sentences about what their parents had when young. Help with
vocabulary.
Future possessions  Students write a few sentences about what they will have when they
are 30, or in ten years, or whatever. They tell each other in groups.
Vocabulary expansion: families  Revise or teach the names for family relationships,
including cousin, great-aunt, brother-in-law and similar words. Note that English kinship
terms may not match exactly with those in students’ languages, which may have different
terms for male and female cousins, for uncles and aunts by marriage or not by marriage,
for father’s and mother’s parents, and so on. Get students to say, for example, how many
cousins / uncles / aunts / nephews / nieces they have. Or get different students to question
the class and establish statistics about one or other relationship (‘People in the class have
74 cousins.’).  

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Oxford English Grammar Course • Intermediate  © Michael Swan and Catherine Walter  2013
Vocabulary expansion: physical appearance  Revise and teach vocabulary used for
describing people’s appearance. Some possible expressions (among many others!):
long/short/thick/silky/curly/straight hair; black/brown/dark/fair/blond/red hair
long/short/delicate/sensitive/stumpy fingers
an oval/round/square face
round/narrow/slanted/bulging eyes
bushy eyebrows
high cheekbones
a prominent/receding chin
big/small/tiny/delicate ears
broad/narrow shoulders
a big chest
muscular arms/legs
a slim waist; slim hips
long/short legs
big/small feet
Then get students to write descriptions of people they know (or themselves) with some of
this vocabulary, using have got as much as possible.

page 8

possible further activities

Class survey  Revise common frequency adverbs and adverbial expressions: often, quite
often, sometimes, occasionally, from time to time, hardly ever, never. Then get students to go
round the class asking how often the other students experience repeated situations, using
‘How often do you have …?’ Possible things to ask about:
headaches, nightmares, colds, flu, accidents, big meals, coffee, eggs for breakfast, holidays,
quarrels, business meetings, a lie in, brilliant ideas, toothache, trouble sleeping, parties at
home, too much spare time, too much work, crazy impulses, imaginary conversations in
your head, trouble with the police, music lessons

page 9

language notes
These uses of have will probably be expressed in other ways in students’ languages.

possible further activities

Mime  Write out on cards the names of some ‘have’ activities and hand them out to groups
of three or so. Each group mimes their action; the class has to guess what they are doing
(‘You’re having a party / a conversation / a shower / …’).

Oxford English Grammar Course • Intermediate  © Michael Swan and Catherine Walter  2013