Page 248 - Teaching English as a Foreign Language for Dummies 2009
P. 248
Chapter 16
Feeling Tense? Sorting Out Verb Tenses
In This Chapter
▶ Naming the tenses
▶ Getting comfortable in the past and present
▶ Being perfectly content with continuous and perfect tenses ▶ Focusing on the future
For most new teachers knowing the grammar is one of the most fear inspiring parts of the job. In this chapter you find out how to break down each tense, one by one, and you get ideas for teaching them in context.
With all tenses, you have to know what it looks like. It is never enough to
say past tense, present tense or future tense. Actually the tenses are always labelled past/present/future and then simple/continuous/perfect/perfect continuous. In this chapter, we also find out what these terms mean and how we use verbs to put each tense together. Then we discover why and when we use each tense.
I Speak, I Spoke, I’ve Spoken: Identifying the Tenses
Whereas the terms past, present and future are quite logical in meaning, tenses can be simple, continuous and perfect in the past, present and future as well. So you don’t refer to a sentence as just present tense but you say that it’s present simple, present continuous, or present perfect.
These tense forms aren’t so obvious to decipher, but these pointers can help you:
