Level: Low Intermediate and Up
Pair with the Songs: 
“Don’t Stop Believin’” (Journey, 1981)
“She’s Leaving Home” (Beatles, 1967)
“Killing Me Softly with His Song” (Roberta Flack, 1973)
Recommended Videos:
“Don’t Stop Believin’”: Journey’s live 2016 performance in Manila, featuring Journey’s new lead singer, Arnel Pineda; Live in Houston, featuring Journey’s original lead singer, Steve Perry
“She’s Leaving Home”: the Beatles’ live 2008 performance in Moscow
“Killing Me Softly with His Song”: the official video and the official audio-only video

Participial phrases are common in everyday speech because, as the British Council explains, they “enable us to say information in a more economical way.” The topic of participial phrases (also called participle phrases) is usually not addressed until the upper levels, but I have done the worksheets below with high-beginning students (without using any grammatical terms), and they quickly caught on to the pattern. The chorus of “Killing Me Softly with His Song” is a list of participial phrases used to describe the guitarist–“strumming my pain with his fingers, singing my life with his words,” etc. Students could complete the worksheets below and then listen to the song. For more activities, please see the Lesson Plan for “Don’t Stop Believin’” and the Lesson Plan for “She’s Leaving Home.” 

Worksheet #1. In the worksheet below, students create shorter sentences by reducing adjective clauses to participial phrases. Permission is granted to reproduce for classroom use.

participial phrases, part 1.docx          participial phrases, part 1.pdf

participial phrases, part 1 (webpage)

Follow up by asking students to describe one another based on where they’re sitting. For example:
Who’s Eric? He’s the guy sitting next to Alberto.
Who’s Jenny? She’s the woman sitting behind Eric.

Worksheet #2. In the worksheet below, students combine two sentences to make one sentence with a nonrestrictive participial phrase. Permission granted to reproduce for classroom use.

participial phrases, part 2.pdf          participial phrases, part 2 (webpage)

Activity. This activity, called the “Alibi Game,” is for higher-level students. Set the game up this way:

1. Tell students there has been a crime. Here are two examples:

At 4 o’clock yesterday afternoon, there was a bank robbery.
Yesterday between 2 and 4 PM, a candy bar went missing from the teacher’s desk drawer.

2. Working as a class, students come up with possible alibis for the suspects. All alibis should be in this form: At ____________ (time), we were ____________ (place), ____________ (participial phrase). For example:

At 4 o’clock, we were at a café, eating pie and drinking coffee.
At 4 o’clock, we were on an airplane, flying to New York City.

3. Write the alibis on the board. Students choose the best alibi.
4. Two students volunteer to be the suspects. They leave the room.
5. Working together, the remaining students (the detectives) make a list of questions they’ll ask the suspects when they return. (For example: What is the name of the café? What kind of pie did you eat?) Meanwhile, in another room, the suspects try to guess what the detectives will ask them and decide on a story to make sure they have the same facts.
6. One at a time, the suspects return to the classroom. The detectives ask each suspect the same questions and record their answers.
7. The detectives compare the answers given by each suspect and decide if the suspects are guilty or not guilty, based on how well their stories match.