Teaching English Tenses through Teaching

the Way of Thinking

This article deals with teaching grammar, the tense forms in particular, from the point of
view of of their contrast in meaning with the native tense forms. It concentrates on the
differences of languages in teaching grammar and gives some advice on overcoming
difficulties.

As my experience shows, when teaching English its important to stress the difference
between English and English learners verbal systems mostly as the difference between
various ways of thinking and ways of reality perception. In this case the learner of English
stops asking such rather stupid questions as Why dont they (the English) have just three
tenses as we have in Russian?

I usually start explaining the English verbal system with a table of tense forms in the
Active Voice.

The table demonstrates the Simple, Continuous, Perfect and Perfect Continuous forms as
groups of tenses showing various interpretations of processes expressed by verbs. The
table also presents the main meaning characteristic of each group of tense forms.

Thus, the Simple forms are considered to present facts, the Continuous forms denote
activities at a particular point or period of time. The Perfect forms are the most complex for
the Russians because we are not very good at meeting deadlines. So, its rather hard to
realize that the general meaning of the Perfect is the action completed by the so-called
present moment, or some moment in the past or future. And the Perfect Continuous forms
are associated with activities continuing to take place in the present, past or future after
being started some time before.

Only after the tense groups general meaning are understood you can check it while
making your students translate some trivial sentences into their native language should
you pass over to the peculiarities of meaning and use of each tense form.

Im sure the table presenting tense form formulas and their general meanings helps to
realize the way of process description specific of the English and facilitates its perception
as it is clear and systemic.

You come into grammar class full of excitement and enthusiasm.

 You present your students with the days lesson, and clearly explain how to form the future
progressive tense. They seem to understand, can do the exercises and dont ask any
difficult questions. They must have it, right? So why dont they use the future
progressive correctly in the days to come? Its because a good grammar lesson
includes more than just how to put words together. Without knowing how to form a
grammatical structure, what it means and how to use it, your students wont be getting all
the grammar they need.
3 Essential Pieces to Every Grammar Lesson
1. 1

Method

The first piece you need for every grammar lesson is probably the most
obvious.Your students need to know how to do something, how to form a tense,
what helping verb to use, what elements are necessary for a clause. This
is method. This is the rule of grammar. If you were teaching a lesson on the future
progressive, for example, you would explain to your students how to create that
grammatical form. You would show them how to combine the subject of the
sentence with the future form of the helping verb be and the progressive form or
second form of the verb. This combination Subject + be(fut) + V(2nd form) = the
future progressive tense. Your students can now form this tense with any subject
and any verb you give them. But that is not enough. They need to know what this
tense means.

2. 2

Meaning

Knowing how to create a particular grammatical structure will only take you
so far if you do not know what it means. After all, language is a way to express
the ideas and mental images in our minds. Without the meaning, we have nothing.
Method without meaning is like memorizing a math equation without understanding
what it does. (How many people really know the meaning behind the equation
e=mc2?) For the future progressive example, your students need to understand
that the future progressive is used for actions that will be in progress at some
 future time. They need to know what an action in progress entails. They need to
understand what a future time might be. When they understand the meaning of the
future progressive tense, they can create a mental image of an action happening in
the future and being interrupted by another action.

3. 3

Function

Once your students are comfortable creating the form and know what that
form means, it is time to talk about function. In grammatical terms,
the function is what the target structure is for. Why do we use that particular
grammatical structure? This third piece of the grammar lesson would show students
that the future progressive tense is used to talk about an event that will be in
progress in the future. That that event may or may not have already started at the
present moment. That it may or may not continue after that point in the future. Your
students will understand that the function of the future progressive is to describe a
scene and what is happening at a point of time in the future whether that point in
time is an actual moment or another event is irrelevant.

When your students understand what to do for a specific structure, what that
structure means and when to use it, they will have full understanding of the
grammatical concept you are teaching.
All three pieces of information are necessary if your students are to be successful language
learners. If any of the three is missing, you will see that your students will not know why
they should use a particular structure or what it means when they do, or they wont
understand what they mean even when they can follow the correct grammatical formula.
For most teachers, teaching the how or form of grammar is obvious. Teaching the meaning
and the function may not come through as clearly. Thats why the best grammar teachers
make a point to spend time teaching all three pieces in every grammar lesson. When you
spend equal time teaching method, meaning and function, your students will know
not only what to do, but why to do it and how. And when they know that, they will be
better language learners and speakers all around.