Teach English in Siba Zhen - Wuwei Shi

Unit 4 is mainly devoted to discussion of the four Present Tenses. These tenses are present simple, present continuous (otherwise known as present progressive), present perfect, and present perfect continuous. I discovered from this lesson that there has been some debate as to how many tenses there actually are in the English language. The authors of this course say that there are really only 3 tenses (the past, the present, and the future). Nevertheless, they also state that there are four aspects of each of those tenses; simple, continuous, perfect, and perfect continuous. The various combinations of these can form 12 tenses in all. Secondly, Unit 4 teaches what is meant by form and usage. Along with that it gives examples of typical student errors (and why those occur) and offers some great suggestions for how to teach present tenses in the Activate stage of an ESA lesson (e.g. ?Find Someone Who,? ?making observations about a picture,? and ?20 Questions.?) The ?Present Simple? tense is said to be the most common tense used in the English language. It is mainly used when talking about ?something that is done habitually? and ?routines? or when speaking about ?permanent situations or facts.? The ?Present Continuous? (also referred to as the Present Progressive) is used when we talk about actions in progress ?at the time of speaking? or ?around the time of speaking.? When speaking/writing in the present continuous tense we must use the ?present participle? (or the ?ing? form of the verb). Teaching ideas included using such things as pictures showing actions taking place. The students can work in groups or pairs to construct sentences using the present continuous tense. Another suggestion is having a student to mime what is taking place. The other students need to guess what action is going on and to practice making sentences in the present continuous form. The ?Present Perfect? tense will use the ?past participle? form of the verb. The main function of this tense is ?to relate something from the past to the present? (e.g. indefinite past actions) or ?past actions with present results.? A teaching idea might be to have the student to work in small groups. The students are given various prompts. The students should form a question in the present perfect tense relating to the prompt. Another idea is to give two pictures which show changes and then describe the changes by making sentences in present perfect tense. While teaching this lesson it is important for the teacher to also keep in mind the importance of explaining about ?irregular verbs?, as well. The ?Present Perfect Continuous? tense combines the Present Perfect and the Present Continuous into a tense that shows ?an action continuing from the past until the present point in time?. To do this we use the auxiliary verbs have/be and has/been. The focus is on the action and the fact that is ?has been ongoing and leading up to the present time? (incomplete and ongoing activities) and ?recently finished activities with present results?. Using cards to compare and contrast the tenses were suggested for this lesson. ?(this tense concentrates mostly on the duration of the action). Lastly, the importance of the ?Appropriateness? of every lesson should not be underrated. Such things as ?Timings? (is the activity to short or too long), ?Age Level? (e.g. You ng Learners or Adults), ?Language levels? (i.e. Are the students Starters or Intermediate level?), the ?Size of the Class,? and the ?Culture and Interest of the Students? are very important things to consider when planning the activities. The main goal of the Activate part of the ESA lesson is to maximize the student talk time. This will usually depend on how appropriate the lesson was in the first place.