We’d like to give some more information about the activities F and G in the “El día de San Valentín” PDF. This is a great activity to review and practice the differences between the present perfect and the past simple. You can do this exercise without the handout, this is how it works:

1. After explaining the differences between the present perfect and the past simple, explain to your students that you’re going to play a game.

2. First of all, you need to give them an example. You should then write 2 sentences about yourself using the past simple and 2 using present perfect. Try to provide meaningful examples using things your students don’t know about you, but avoid non-interesting topics such as “he desayunado cereales esta mañana”.

One of your sentences must be a false statement. In other words, it should talk about something you haven’t done.

The “F” activity in the “El día de San Valentín” PDF shows 2 examples, with Javier Bardem and Paz Vega.

3. Ask students to try to guess which statement is not true. You can do this by asking them to rise their hand in turns for each of this statements.

4. Talk about each of your sentences, starting with the ones that are true, until you get to the false one.

5. Ask students to write their own sentences following this pattern. While they’re working, you can check whether they understood the difference between both tenses.

6. Once they’re all finish, they can play with their partners or in small groups. You can even try to set a tournament to find the best liar of the class. If they read their sentences aloud, that will give you the opportunity to ask them questions about what they say in their sentences.