Teach English in LianAn Zhen - Shanwei Shi

This unit teaches about the past tenses in its forms, usages, common mistakes, and sample activities for the activate stage. Just as the present tenses, the past tenses have four aspects: the simple, the continuous, the perfect, and the perfect continuous. First, the past simple has two forms of verbs. One is the regular verb, which is formed by adding -ed or -d to the base form of the verb. The other is the irregular verb; those verbs do not take -ed or -d at the end, so they need to be memorized as they differ from their base form. To form negative statements and questions in the past simple, it is necessary to use the auxiliary \"do\" in the past, which becomes \"did\". We need to pay attention when students practice with questions and negatives as they fall into making mistakes in their structures. The past simple is used to talk about completed actions at a definite time in the past; the time could either be mentioned or not. Another aspect of the past tenses is the past continuous. It is constructed with the past form of \"be\" (was / were) according to the subject used plus the present participle (main verb plus -ing). Some of its usages could be to talk about interruptions in the past, compounded with a past simple sentence. In addition, we can use the past continuous for gradual development actions without mentioning the time. The common mistake presented in this tense is that students forget to include the verb \"be\" or the -ing after the verb; also students forget that non-action verbs do not take the continuous form. The next aspect is the past perfect, which needs the helping verb \"had\