Must-Know Tenses (Part 2)

Must-Know Tenses (Part 2)

Teacher Rowena

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

Last time, I mentioned that many people consider English Tenses to be the most difficult to master, feeling that even a lifetime of effort is insufficient. I pointed out that this phenomenon is inseparable from teaching time, arrangement, and examples. Having already analyzed the importance of appropriate teaching timing—which is not necessarily "the earlier the better"—this issue will cover one of the other two key factors: arrangement.

Teaching Tenses with a Method that Disrupts Tradition

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

Most English textbooks teach tenses in a scattered way across different grade levels: second graders learn two, such as the present tense and present continuous; third graders learn the past and future tenses, and so on. Simultaneously, the content focuses only on teaching the usage and form of individual tenses. Such an arrangement hinders students from making comparative connections between each tense.

Why is "Comparative Analysis" So Important?

I have asked many Secondary 6 students what the exact differences are between the present perfect, past simple, and past perfect tenses. Even after reading many grammar books, they are still unclear about the distinctions. It is understandable that students feel confused because these three tenses can all express past events; only by learning to compare them can one truly use them correctly.

Every English verb must use the appropriate tense for expression. Being "appropriate" means selecting the correct verb from various choices that fits the meaning and the timeline. Based on my experience, most students can distinguish the usage of the present, past, and future tenses because they belong to non-overlapping timelines. However, they often become confused when learning other tenses; this is a direct result of not knowing how to choose.

If I am to teach the continuous aspect, I explain each continuous tense horizontally (past continuous, present continuous, future continuous). In terms of arrangement, this lets students know that there is more than one type of continuous tense, deepening their understanding of what "continuous" means. At the same time, I show how each continuous tense is formed (is going, was going, will be going). With careful observation, one can see at a glance what the tense is and whether there is an incorrect transformation, because "is" expresses "present," and "+ing" expresses "continuous," which together form "present continuous." If you were to write "was went," it would mean "past past," a tense that simply does not exist.

Subsequently, I use a vertical approach to compare each form one by one (e.g., simple past vs. past continuous), allowing students to learn how to choose the correct one among tenses of similar timelines. I can say with certainty that many students, after at least nine years of primary and secondary education, still may not be able to state exactly how many tenses there are in English.