Here you can find a range of short activities to use in your secondary classroom with students at intermediate level. All of our activities are designed around themes engaging and relevant to secondary learners and can be used to complement your school curriculum, giving students an opportunity to develop their English language and skills in motivating and enjoyable ways. Written by young learner experts from around the world, our activities are easy to use and aim to give your students the skills and confidence they need to enjoy learning English.

When I'm 75

This is a speaking exercise for the future perfect and future continuous forms for intermediate and upper-intermediate students.

Active listening activities

Students are often asked to listen to tapes or to their teacher talking, but it can be just as useful to encourage them to listen to each other in a more active way.

Creating a framework for writing

This is a creative-writing exercise in which the teacher moulds the story but allows plenty of scope for the students' creative expression.

A perfect story

The present perfect is a tense that many students have problems with. Most course books provide only controlled grammar sentences where students choose the correct tense.

Improving paragraph writing

This activity can be used with students of English and also trainee teachers. It is a way to make your opinion or discursive essay writing lessons more interesting and learner-centred.

Research and insight

Browse fascinating case studies, research papers, publications and books by researchers and ELT experts from around the world.

See our publications, research and insight