This post “How to Teach Infinitive” is a collection of all the activities which I find suitable for teaching To Verb. Before reading, please bear in mind that this post is designed for Pre-intermediate level. That said, you can always modify the materials to increase their difficulty. All of the materials are free to download.
Topic: Infinitive
Skill: Grammar
Level: Pre-intermediate
Related Topic: Gerund
How to Teach Infinitive
In my opinion and experience, considering Pre-intermediate level, the amount of knowledge that is important to teach is as followed:
- What Infinitive is: To Verb (+) and NOT to verb (-)
- Use Infinitive to indicate Purpose
- After adjective, add infinitive.
- You can also add Infinitive after Wh-word to make a Noun Phrase.
Activity 1 – How to Teach Infinitive
The first use of Infinitive is to indicate Purpose. The thing is that to ask for Reason or Purpose, we can use ‘WHY.’ You will be surprised how many students can misunderstand this. And thus, the first activitity is to distinguish them.
In this activity, students are asked to identify which ones are referring to Purpose, and which are to Reason.
After that, they then need to answer some questions to indicate BOTH purpose and reason.
You can download the activity here (google doc file).
Then the next step is to let them practice using Infinitive to give purpose. The next activity is a questionnaire. Your students will need to interview their friends and write down their friends’ answer. To make the class more active, you can require the students to interview one friend one questions (or two, three…).
You can download the Questionnaire here.
Activity 2: How to Teach Infinitive
Another use of Inifinitive is after adjective. In this activity, the students ought to interview their friends (yet again, but it is necessary). The questions are about personal preference. They will give an adjective to complement an activity, and then use infinitive to connect it with the asked activity.
For example:
You can download the activity here.
Activity 3: To Use Infinitive after Question word
The next activity is to (1) get the students familiar with infinitive after Wh-word; then (2) understand the context of combining Question word with Infinitive; and lastly, to make sentences with these noun phrases.
For example:
You can download the Worksheet here.
Activity 4: To Use Infinitive after certain verbs
In this activity, the students need to (1) identify the infinitive and underline the verbs before those infinitive. After that, they need to make a story using all of the aforementioned verbs.
If they need an explanation, tell them that our brain remember things better when they are connected.
You can download the Worksheet here.
Activity 5: Review Infinitive
This activity is to let the students remember everything that has been taught. This activity requires the students to (1) identify Infitive; (2) give the reasons why these Infinitives are used; and finally (3), interview questions and answer with Infinitive.
You can download the activity here.
Infinitive Activity Links
Here are the links of the Infinitive Activities:
- Activity 1: Distinguish Reason and Purpose and Questionnaire.
- And activity 2: Asking for Preference Using Infinitive.
- Activity 3: To use Infinitive after Question Words.
- Verbs followed by Infinitive: Activity 4
- And finally, Review Activity
- I hope you have a great time teaching. If you wish to share your activities with me, please feel free to do so in the comment sections. Thank you for reading!