An interview with your future self:

speaking / writing activity

The aim of this activity is to provide students with a context to revise present, past, and perfect
tenses. I planned it with my teenage students in mind and the inspiration came from this article. It
might be executed as a speaking or writing activity. Suitable for levels intermediate and higher.

The Task

Step 1
Start by showing your students two pictures of Stoney Emshwiller side by side, as featured here.
One shows him as an 18-year-old, the other is his current photo at the age of 56. Ask your students
what they think these two men have in common. They will hopefully be able to guess it is the same
exact person in two different points in his life.

Step 2
At this point, you might either summarise the idea of Emshwiller’s project yourself or let your
students read the short article on the website. If you choose the second option, make sure not to
reveal the photos that follow the text.
Find out what your students think about this project. Does it sound like an interesting idea? Why
would anybody decide to do it?

Step 3
Ask your students:
What kind of questions do you think the 18-year-old Stoney asked his future self?
You might narrow it down to several categories: personal life, professional life, and trivia.
Students take some time to come up with 3-5 questions. They work alone or in pairs. Elicit some
examples from your students and, if necessary, provide them with some actual questions
that Emshwiller asked:

 Are you rich?

 Are you married?

 Are you a superstar?

Step 4
Work on a sample answer to one of the questions together. Ask your students to provide some
background information, no yes/no answers allowed. Look at a variety of grammar tenses that would
be suitable here: Past Simple, Past Continuous, Past Perfect, Present Perfect etc. Point out that the
choice of grammar depends on how old the future self is (the older the interviewee, the more
narrative tenses are likely to occur).
This is a good moment to see which tenses your students struggle with or aren’t sure about. It will
help you monitor the activity and suggest corrections later.
Step 5
Tell your students to imagine they are starting a similar project and want to interview their future
selves. First, they need to decide how old their future self is and write down questions. Ask them to
write questions about something that really interests them about their future lives. Students work
individually.

Step 6: If you choose to use it as a writing activity

 students come up with around 4 questions;

 they choose 2 to answer in writing in class;

 allow ample time to complete the activity and try to monitor it closely;

 ask a volunteer to share one question with the group and then ask the group to speculate about
the student’s answer. After that, the student might share their actual answer with the class or, at
least, say whether their guess was more or less right;

 try to get each student share their 1 or 2 questions with the group. Volunteers might read out
their complete answers to chosen questions;

 ask your students what they thought about the questions asked in the interviews and choose the
most interesting one;

 discuss which students came up with the most interesting life story;

Step 6: If you choose to use it as a speaking activity

 students write down their questions on separate pieces of paper;

 collect the questions and put them in a container;

 sit or stand in a circle, students draw questions at random and answer accordingly;

 once you are out of questions, try to choose the most interesting questions / the person with the
most interesting life together;

OR (for bigger groups)

 divide your students into smaller groups or pairs;

 collect the questions and divide them among the groups/pairs;

 students interview each other;

 once they are finished, try to choose the most interesting questions / the person with the most
interesting life together;

Step 7
Show your students the video to give them the feel of what the project is all about.