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For anyone studying English verb tenses....

Mr English

Mr English

Recycled toy cars
After almost twenty years of teaching English as a second language, I'm still amazed at how English verb tenses are taught. I've figured out my own system, which I've attached as a JPG picture. If you're not studying English yourself, you might know someone who is, so please feel free to pass it on.

I call it a map. The standard procedure is to start with the present simple tense for a while before moving on to the past simple, and so on. The problem is that a student never sees the big picture, never knows how far away the end is......the procedure is like a drip feed, one drop at a time, as separate elements.

The English verb tenses are contained in a very simple system of regular combination. My map won't help anyone to understand why and when to actually use the various tenses (that's for the classroom) but it cheers up my students when they see it. It doesn't look like a lot, and it isn't, but I promise them that's all there is to it and they all seem relieved to see it as it is.

"Might", "may", "ought to" and "must" are not included in the map at the moment. I should put them in really, but the idea is to get the student to see how the tenses are put together, just like Lego blocks are.


This link takes you to a downloadable higher-resolution BMP image, better for printing:

https://www.box.com/s/oz3pukl2rhdbh1p4htg4



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  • English verb tense system.jpg
    English verb tense system.jpg
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Being a native English speaker, shouldn't I find that this makes sense to me? It doesn't. I am particularly baffled by the upper left box.
 
Being a native English speaker I am very confused by your presentation of past, present and future verb tenses.
 
Hi!

Native speakers aren't usually aware of the fact they are using the present perfect continuous tense, for example. We don't think about it, it's all ingrained in our soft drives.

The upper left box contains all the elements we use to construct tenses (as I wrote it should include "might", "ought to" and "may" but I left these out since they follow the same patterns).

So something like "I would have been working yesterday"..............in that box you'll see the words would, have, been, a first form (1) and the suffix -ing.

It's a very simple system. I've developed my own way of presenting this to students, which I can't upload here :). The map diagram is only half of it, but it shows how we construct specific tenses from very few elements. The map is a presentation of the elements used to construct tenses, and not an explanation of the tenses, as I wrote.
 
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The aim is to have a student see the whole thing, a finite system in which the same words are used in a range of combinations. Many are under the impression there'll be a never-ending stream of new stuff to learn, and there isn't.

Why not show them everything when they start, and then work through it all? Other than verb tenses, the rest of English is a walk in the park....just add an 's' somehow for a plural, adjectives don't change. The Polish language has seven declensions for a noun in both singular and plural, and adjectives have to match the noun.

We've got it easy!
 
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Mr English said:
After almost twenty years of teaching English as a second language, I'm still amazed at how English verb tenses are taught. I've figured out my own system, which I've attached as a JPG picture. If you're not studying English yourself, you might know someone who is, so please feel free to pass it on.
Click to expand...

It's very interesting, and it's going to take me awhile to get my mind around it. Fortunately for me, being a native English-speaker, I don't think too much about the rules, I just apply them as seems best, and that is usually correct.

The interesting thing to me is how well Americans recognize American English when others use it incorrectly. A recent news story about a young man who allegedly revealed some government secrets and then decamped to Russia was updated with an alleged statement made by him on a website called Wikileaks. It was immediately detected as a fraudulent statement, because Americans innately realized that Americans don't 'talk like that'. Non-native American English speakers apparently cannot tell why Americans realized that it was not written by an American. :) I find it all very fascinating.
 
Mr English said:
The aim is to have a student see the whole thing, a finite system in which the same words are used in a range of combinations. Many are under the impression there'll be a never-ending stream of new stuff to learn, and there isn't.

Why not show them everything when they start, and then work through it all? Other than verb tenses, the rest of English is a walk in the park....just add an 's' somehow for a plural, adjectives don't change. The Polish language has seven declensions for a noun in both singular and plural, and adjectives have to match the noun.

We've got it easy!
Click to expand...

The Russian language is the same. Nouns decline in 6 cases. Adjectives have to agree. Plus, all nouns are either male, female or neuter. Verbs conjugate depending on 1st person, 2nd person or 3rd person and don't even get me started on tenses. It's a complicated grammar.
 
The fun part, which they don't get in school. is explaining how native speakers can reduce "I would have been" to "adabin" :), where 'a' is 'I', 'd' is 'would', the second 'a' is 'have' and the 'bin' is 'been'

I know a lot of Poles who have gone (have+3) to England clutching their English certificates and been surprised (implied have with be+3....that's an A+B) how hard it is to understand what people are saying.
 
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Mr English said:
No choice, it's in their books. Polish students learn British English at state schools, and 'ought to' is correct British English. Is it otherwise in the US?
Click to expand...

'Ought to' is fine. Americans say it quite often. In fact, we generally use that form, and not the singular word 'ought', which is more common in British English. For example, "One ought be punctual." We would say "You ought to be on time."
 
Sandy G said:
Come to NE Tennessee..We'll Learn ya Inglish like it was MEANT to be spoke....(grin)
Click to expand...

Sandy, When I got my first real job in the '80s with a fairly large IT company it meant a move to one of their accounts in Kansas City. One of my new co-workers at the office was a gal from the Ozarks. Ozark English dialect has some similarities to Appalachian English. I had never been around someone that conjugated verbs the way she did and at first I was quite surprised a big corporation would have even hired someone that sounded so 'uneducated'. I got over that misconception and came to realize she was quite smart. Funny as heck to listen to though. :)
 
Seems to me that students are prepared by the system only to get a piece of paper, and not to be able to use their second language out in the real world. I find this extremely saddening - all those years in a classroom at school, the tests, the homework, the cost of private lessons if they can afford them.................then they go abroad for the shock of their lives.


Gotta sleep now...........

:)
 
Mr English said:
Seems to me that students are prepared by the system only to get a piece of paper, and not to be able to use their second language out in the real world. I find this extremely saddening - all those years in a classroom at school, the tests, the homework, the cost of private lessons if they can afford them.................then they go abroad for the shock of their lives.
Click to expand...

I believe the hardest aspect of American English for any non-native speaker to absorb is idiom. A classic example was in the movie "2010," when a native Russian speaker was attempting to use American idiom.

Max: Hey, piece of pie.
Curnow: Cake, piece of cake.​

Max: Easy as cake, yes?
Curnow: Pie, easy as pie.​

Read more at www.Explore-Science-Fiction-Movies.com: http://www.explore-science-fiction-movies.com/2010-movie-quotes.html#ixzz2YEVwhzeR
 
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