Springville, Michigan TESOL Online & Teaching English Jobs

In this lesson, I learned about present tenses in english. I learned about the usages of the various forms, the typical mistakes students make with each one and good activities to use to teach them to students. The present simple form (i.e. I eat) is generally used to describe habits or routines, facts, commentaries, directions or instructions, stories or historical sequences. The present continuous, or present progressive tense is made up of the present simple tense and adding the -ing ending. It is used to discuss actions that are in progress, temporary actions that are not necessarily in progress at the time of speaking, frequent actions, background events in stories and developing situations. Activities that effectively present the present continuous tense include things like miming, picture dictation, pictionary, and drawing out time zones. The present perfect tense relates past activities to the present and uses have/has with a past participle. It is used to talk about finished actions that happened at an indefinite time, things that began in the past and are still true and past actions with present consequences. To activate the tense, I've learned about activities like changing the room, asking what students have done today and playing the U2 song "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For." The present perfect continuous tense (i.e. have been eating), like the present perfect tense, relates past activities to the present but the PPC implies that the actvities are ongoing or will continue in the future. Using surveys or an activity that prompts students to discuss activities that they have done that produce a certain result is a good way to activate this tense.