Teach English in Fangcun Zhen - Xuzhou Shi

Teaching multiple tense is not an easy work, especially for teaching non-native English speakers. In English, we have twelve tenses that we commonly use in our daily life. They are divided into three different categories: past tenses, present tenses, and future tenses. In these tenses, we even need to know how the verbs should be changed in different tenses. It is difficult for non-English speakers to understand and memorize that much tenses, especially for those whose mother languages don’t have that much tenses. As I mentioned above – the difficulty of teaching multiple tenses, we need to find a proper way to teach the tenses. Here come the questions: How could we teach them? Do we teach them one tense by another, or we can teach some of the tenses together? Do we have some good ways to help them understand the different tenses? How could we teach multiple tenses for non-native English speakers? Do we use their mother languages or use English to teach? We should use English to teach them. When I was a high school student, I started learning tenses. Our English teacher used Chinese and some sample sentences to explain the tenses for us. After that, she used quizzes, mid-term exams and final exams to check if we could understand the tenses and use them correctly. It is still really common in China that most schools use this method to teach the students multiple tenses. It is an easy and direct way for students to understand and memorize. After three years’ study, I almost understood the tenses. But six years later, when I studied abroad, I felt little bit difficult to use them. When I talked with local people, I still need to think in Chinese. The things he/she said happened in the past, I need to use past tense. Then I need to translate in English and told myself to change the verb to the past simple. It is a double work and is really easy to miss other conversations. That’s why I said we need to teach tense in English. It helps students think in English and speak in English. Do we teach them one tense by another or we can teach multiple tenses together? How do we teach them? When I was a student, our teacher taught us one by one, started from present simple tense, to present continuous tense. After finishing the present tenses, we learned past tenses, and future tenses. Through this method, students can easily understand and memorize the tense one by one. But, when several tenses put together, students are really easy to get confused. When I came to Wall Street English – an institution that teaching English for non-native English speakers. I learned a really good method to teach multiple tenses – time line. We can draw a time line with a word now in the middle to help the student understand the concept – present (now), past (before now), and future (after now). Then we can tell students, the things happen nowadays, you can use present simple tense. The things will happen in the future, you can use future simple tense. The things already happened in the past, you can use past simple tense. So do the other tenses. After that, we can elicit the tenses by filling the blanks. Then we can do the concept check to make sure if students really understand. At the end, we can give students some sentences to let them change to the different tenses. After class, we can also leave students some homework to let them practice more about tenses. We can tell them to write an article to share their own stories by using different tenses. We can also ask students to prepare a speech about themselves with different tenses. They have to make a speech in front of the class at the beginning of their next class. In a word, I think we need to teach multiple tenses in English with a time line. That not only can help students develop the habits of thinking and communicating in English, but also make them understand the different tenses and know how to use them accurately. We can let them write about themselves or make a speech to introduce themselves to practice their writing and speaking skills of using different tenses.