To Master English, Study Tense (Part 1)

To Master English, Tense is a Must-Read (Part 1)

Many people believe that grammar is the most difficult part of learning English. When I ask them which grammar items they find the most challenging, many answer in unison that it is tense. This is expected, as tense is a common source of error for many Hong Kong students. From the second grade of primary school until the end of the third year of junior secondary school, students are drilled on tenses every year through textbooks and exams. Unfortunately, this does not benefit most students; instead, it often brings frustration and fear. Ironically, it is not just students who are confused; even university students and working professionals who have undergone nine years of free education struggle to grasp the application of tenses and cannot even name how many tenses exist in English.

Having studied various Asian and European languages, I have found that verbs in most foreign languages have tenses: Korean, Japanese, and German all do, while Chinese is the exception. For Chinese speakers, learning tenses is indeed not easy, but it is not impossible. The timing, structure, and examples used in teaching are crucial. In reality, choosing the appropriate tense for a verb is not as simple as imagined; it involves other key concepts such as active voice, passive voice, singular, and plural. Users must have a certain understanding of all these concepts, as none can be left out. I have found that because these various concepts are intertwined, the probability of choosing the correct tense for any given verb is only 1 in 48, which explains why students frequently 'stumble' here.

What is the appropriate time to teach?

Many schools now start teaching tenses to students from Primary 2, and some even attempt to introduce this concept as early as Primary 1 or kindergarten. Most local curriculums start with the Present Tense, but I believe this is a difficult approach because the cognitive abilities of students at the Primary 2 level or below have not yet reached this stage. In Hong Kong, children have to navigate two different linguistic structures simultaneously—Chinese and English—and not everyone can easily master trilingualism and biliteracy. I believe that haste makes waste, and the optimal time to learn tenses should be after Primary 4. You might wonder if it is too late to start after Primary 4, but I can assure you it is not. A Secondary 1 student once told me she did not know how to use different forms of the Future Tense, saying that her teacher had spent two weeks of class time explaining them one by one, yet she still did not understand. Coincidentally, I had the relevant notes with me, and a three-minute explanation completely cleared up her doubts. In fact, if the method is correct, it only takes about 30 hours, or even less, to master all the tenses. It is regrettable that our education system keeps students entangled in aspects that could be learned in a very short time.

To find out what disruptive, non-traditional methods I use to teach tenses, please stay tuned for the next column.

Teacher Rowena
With 25 years of experience teaching English, I have witnessed the varying degrees of fear and difficulty many students face when learning the language. To enhance students' interest in and quality of English learning, I have published books and developed the 'Double R Amalgam' method (see www.doubleramalgam.com for details), a system tailored for Chinese learners to help them master English more effectively and systematically.