To Master English, Study Tense (Part 2)

Mastering English Tenses (Part 2)

Teacher Rowena

With 25 years of experience teaching English, I have witnessed many students facing varying degrees of fear and difficulty in learning the language. To enhance students' interest and the quality of their English learning, I have published books and developed a method suitable for Chinese speakers called the Double R Amalgam (see www.doubleramalgam.com), which enables students to learn English more effectively and systematically.

Last time, I mentioned that many people consider Tense to be the most difficult part of English, feeling they cannot master it despite spending a lifetime of effort. I pointed out that this phenomenon is inseparable from teaching timing, curriculum design, and examples. Having already analyzed the importance of appropriate teaching timing—it is not always the case that starting earlier is better—this issue focuses on another key factor: curriculum design.

Teaching Tenses with a Subversive Method

Every time I teach tenses, I always use the following chart so that students understand how each tense is formed.

Most English textbooks teach tenses in a fragmented way across different grade levels: learning two in second grade, such as the simple present and present continuous; learning the past and future in third grade, and so on. Simultaneously, the content focuses only on teaching the usage and form of individual tenses. This arrangement hinders students from making direct comparisons between each tense.

Why is "Direct Comparison" So Important?

I have asked many Form 6 students about the differences between the present perfect, simple past, and past perfect. Even after reading numerous grammar books, they remain unclear about the distinctions. It is understandable that students feel confused, because all three tenses can describe past events; only by knowing how to compare these tenses can one truly use them correctly.

Every English verb must be used with the appropriate tense to express meaning. Being "appropriate" means selecting the correct verb that fits the meaning and the time frame from a set of choices. In my experience, most students can distinguish the usage of the present, past, and future tenses because they belong to non-overlapping time frames. However, when they learn other tenses, confusion often arises, which is the result of not knowing how to choose.

If I am to teach continuous tenses, I explain the continuous form for each time frame (past continuous, present continuous, future continuous) horizontally. This design lets students know there is not just one continuous tense, deepening their understanding of what "continuous" means. At the same time, I show how each continuous form is constructed (is going, was going, will be going). With careful observation, one can immediately tell the tense of any verb and check for incorrect conversions, because [is] expresses [present] and [+ing] expresses [continuous], making it [present continuous]. If you write [was went], it becomes [past past], a tense that simply does not exist.

Subsequently, I compare each form vertically (simple past vs. past continuous), allowing students to learn how to pick the correct one from similar time frames. I can confidently tell you that many students, even after at least 9 years of primary and secondary education, may not be able to name how many tenses there are in the English language.