Wish You Weren’t Here! The Holiday from Hell

Teach the past simple through travel disasters with “Wish You Weren’t Here! The Holiday from Hell,” a comprehensive Pre-Intermediate ESL lesson on holidays, travel and tourism from ESL Stages. Students build practical travel vocabulary and practise regular and irregular verbs, negatives and questions through reading, video, speaking and writing activities.

From missing luggage to a rain-soaked boat trip, relatable situations give students plenty to discuss while learning to describe finished events. This past simple—or simple past—lesson includes editable Google Slides, printable A4 worksheets and additional speaking games. British and American English versions help teachers choose materials that suit their classes.

This multi-skill resource includes:

• Reading & Vocabulary: An adapted BBC News report about a family’s missing luggage, supported by comprehension questions and definition matching. Illustrated suitcase and backpack activities introduce 20 travel essentials, including a passport, boarding pass, toiletry bag and power bank. Students reinforce the vocabulary through sentence gap-fills and a playful “banana” guessing activity.

• Grammar Practice: Clear explanations of past simple affirmative and negative sentences, questions and short answers. Regular verb spelling rules cover -ed endings, changes from -y to -ied and doubled consonants, alongside common irregular verbs. Gap-fill and sentence-building exercises help students apply the forms accurately.

• Listening & Video: A three-minute Zero Stars clip follows comedians Sara Pascoe and Roisin Conaty on a boat trip in Albania. Prediction questions, accessible comprehension tasks and follow-up discussion encourage students to understand and retell what happened.

• Speaking: Twelve question-building prompts develop past simple questions and encourage detailed answers about holidays, travel problems and everyday experiences.

• Writing: A guided 80–100-word paragraph task invites students to describe their worst real or imaginary holiday. Planning prompts and sequencing expressions help them organise events before sharing their stories.

• Teacher Materials: British and American English lesson versions, presentations with answers and a separate teacher’s answer key support preparation and classroom delivery.

Exclusive Premium Features:

• 48-Pair Irregular Verb Game: Printable infinitive and past simple matching cards, plus positive, negative and question symbols for sentence-building practice.

• “Did You?” Past Simple Game: Two pages of question strips and a page of positive/negative symbol squares encourage students to give short answers and expand with details. Includes an instruction page.

• Printable Conversation Cards: Twenty past simple discussion prompts, supplied on matching colour and black-and-white pages for flexible printing.

• Interactive Conversation Flipboard: The same twenty questions appear on a clickable board for whole-class speaking practice.

Bring together grammar, travel vocabulary and personal storytelling in one coordinated lesson pack—ready to choose, print and teach.