Passing game

For this, first, drill the question with the whole class repeating it three times after you. Then take a piece of paper with the profession written on it, or use a picture. Show the card. “Doctor.” Hand the card to a student and ask: “What do you do?” The person answers you with “I’m a doctor” and takes the card. Demonstrate this a couple of times. Now the student passes the card to the student next door, asking, “What do you do?” The other student takes the card and answers, “I’m a doctor.”

Repeat with the next student along with the whole class watching. Now you are sure everyone knows what to do, so that card goes on its way around the class with everyone practising the question and answer. In the meantime, you give the first student a different profession card to pass around, asking, “What do you do?” ‘and answering “I’m a mechanic” (or whatever is on the card.)

Once students are busy passing the cards and practising, clap to stop the activity – all those students with cards stand up and do a forfeit, like answering a general knowledge question, or, for kids, do a silly dance or something fun.

After that, you can have the class draw a grid with NAME and PROFESSION, and students go around asking the others, “What’s your name?'” and “What do you do?” and fill in the chart.

Group activity

Then ask students to get into groups of similar professions, but don’t tell them what they should be – leave it up to the students. Students group together in different parts of the room, so you might have service jobs in one part of the room, people who work with their hands elsewhere, creative jobs, sales jobs, and so on. Then compare notes and see why students thought their professions were related. You might have to use L1 for this if you have complete beginners.

Fill in Drill

The game is in my teen and adult ESL games book, and you can read how to play it here: Fill in Drill. This activity is great for using professions, the question and answer, and general English for fluency.

First, write out some simple English appropriate for the level of your class. 

An example of a text you could use would be this:

“Hello there, I’m Paul. What’s your name?”
“Hello, I’m Jane. Nice to meet you.”
“What do you do for a living?”
“I’m a surgeon” (insert one of the professions you have been using).
“Wow, that’s interesting. Do you like it?”
“I like it apart from the fact that you have to cut people open.” (put in something relevant to the profession)
“Oh, I see. Mmmm that could be difficult.”
“What do you do?”
“I’m a _____________”

That should be long enough since the students will memorize the whole dialogue during the game.

Finally, you can ask them to write it all out from memory, swap papers, and check each other’s spelling.

Introduce the third person

Now you have worked on this; it’s time to introduce the third person question form: What does he do? What does she do? Get the class to ask the question with you. Point to a pic of a man doing a job. (Use my professions flashcard set, which can be purchased here as downloads.

Alternatively, have students draw pictures or find some in magazines or your textbook.)
So, ask, ‘What does he do?’ Choose one student to answer. Now switch to a female for, ‘What does she do?’ and have students respond. Jump back and forwards between men and women, so students get used to switching from he to she.

Play with rhythms

Say the question in different rhythms, pausing on another word each time, and have students copy your rhythm. Speed it up, slow it down. That’s an excellent excuse to have students repeat the sentence several times but in a varied way.

Music

If you are musically inclined, this activity should make some students smile. Demonstrate by singing up an arpeggio ‘What does he dooooooooo?’ Next, have all students sing that with you, and then, have some hold the base note on ‘What.’ Others hold the remaining notes in the chord in turn. Then point at a picture, and the class answers, ‘he’s a gardener’ or whatever the profession is. If you have kids, this will take some training. But once your students know how to hold a chord as a class, you’ll be able to use this musical interlude for any sentences.