How To Teach Wishes - 3 ESL Lesson Plans

Teaching wishes to your ESL students can be an enjoyable and thought provoking lesson for intermediate and advanced students…

If you’re looking for ideas to teach wishes, hopes or aspirations to your ESL students, you’ve come to the right place. We have 3 lesson plans designed for you to teach wishes to your ESL students. They can be adapted for beginner, intermediate and advanced students. You’ll find them under our Conditions&Wishes category on our Teacher tab. Here’s a quick summary of what you’ll find:
C6.1 – Wishes in the Present – 1
This is our introductory lesson to get you to teach wishes to your ESL students. We start with the simple construction of wishes in the present (I wish + that + he + spoke + German). A point of confusion for some students is that we use the past simple (spoke) to make wishes about the present. We make special note that we often use the verb to be (was or were) to make wishes in the present. We finish the lesson with lots of picture based lessons where the student can make sentences about wishes based on different images:

C6.2 – Wishes in the Future and Past – 2
In the second lesson plan in our series designed for you to teach wishes to your ESL students, we cover wishes in the future and past. We start by explaining that we use the verb to wish to express desire or want, for something that is unlikely to happen in the future (I wish you would be quiet!). The distinction between wishes about the future and true statements (often in the present) is an important learning concept. We also outline the use of would/could with wishes (I wish you could come with us). We finalize the lesson by explaining wishes in the past to express regrets:

C6.3 – Wishes in the Past, Present and Future – 3
In our third lesson designed for you to teach wishes, we mix up wishes in the past, present and the future. This is a great lesson for more advanced students that need practice with expressing wishes. We review the concept of regrets and introduce to wish to express complaints (e.g. I wish you would close the window, it’s freezing in here!). We finish with some freer practice for your students to express their own wishes under different scenarios: