James Bond – Mission Accomplished

James Bond is an icon of western culture, and he has been the perfect secret agent for a long time. Writer Ian Fleming created James Bond in 1953, and his character has been a successful agent in all his missions since then. The novels and films that he has starred have accompanied our leisure time, and we have always had a great time with him. Now James Bond is going to check your skill in English verb tenses with some tests and stories. Verbs are actions, and James Bond is an expert in bold and difficult actions, as he shows us when he tries to catch spies and criminals all over the world.

In the improbable case that you don't know James Bond, here is a video which shows the main features of this famous character and all the actors who have starred James Bond's films. He is so perfect that you may want to know how to be James Bond. :-)

Our story

James Bond - Mission Accomplished is a simple and funny story created as an excuse to help students like you to manage English verb tenses. This activity has three parts:

1. The easy part, where you have to choose the correct verb tense from a list. This will help you to work out the correct answers.
2. The hard part, where you have to type the correct answers that you saw before on page 1 using the same story.
3. The creative part, where you can write the next James Bond's mission using the beginnings of some stories.

Before you start, let's revise verb tenses with James Bond. The story The Enemy Drone will help you warm up for your hard mission. Press the START button.

You can revise English verb tenses on this blog with these activities:

• Repaso de tiempos verbales en inglés, which is a formal approach.
• Robots from a Distant Planet. Revision of Verb Tenses, a futuristic story with activities similar to this one.

And, of course, you can search on the Web. Word Reference is a good dictionary.

1. The easy way

You have to choose the correct verb tense from each drop-down list. After each test, read the correct text to learn or revise the verb tenses.

Now you have to accomplish your special mission. Go for it!

2. The hard way

Here you have to face the difficulties like James Bond does in every mission, and your mission here is to type the correct answers that you have chosen in the easy part of this activirty. So, use your memory and your knowledge of English. If you are fit, like James Bond, you will be able to say: "Mission accomplished".

Be careful with the spelling, and remember that the apostrophe is not an accent. This picture shows where the apostrophe is in the keyboard:

Now it's your turn to write the story of a new mission for James Bond.

3. Write the next James Bond's mission

1. Did you like the activity? It wasn't as hard as it seemed, was it? But now you can write your own story about James Bond's next mission. If you don't find inspiration, we can give you the beginnings of some stories. In the next activity, you will find three different missions with two possibilities for each story. Choose the story that you like best and write your story in the text area below. Press the START button.

2. As an example, here is a full story that you can read after you order the sentences. Pay attention to the sequence adverbs and the conjunctions, because they help to order the text: yesterday, later, then, while, when, but, and, because. Order the story by clicking on a number and then on the text on the right column.

Your stories

3. Now write your short story or sketch on the Padlet wall below. Doubleclic on the background image and a text area will appear for you to write a short story. Your story will be published after it is approved. Some of my students have already published their funny stories with a bit of my editing. We hope you like them.

Created with Padlet

I have used Strip Generator web application to create the comic strips in this activity. You can use this funny tool to create your own comics and stories.

You can also write a story by:

• Writing a comment in this post.
• Writing a text in this editor and then sending it to your teacher or printing it.

My tribute to James Bond and to Anacleto, agente secreto,
beloved characters for kids and teenagers from other times.

Resources used in this activity:

1. I have used Hot Potatoes to creat the tests and Quandary for the action mazes. They are excellent twin tools for interactive exercises.
   
2. I have drawn the comic strips at Stripgenerator.com, a very good and funny web service, where you can publish your drawings in a gallery.
   
3. The text areas are two resources that I created using PHP and the TinyMCE HTML editor.

(Entrada publicada originalmente en El tinglado)