[Note: "Narrative Tenses" is a term used by some textbooks to include the past simple, past continuous, past perfect, and past perfect continuous. Narrative tenses are distinguished from the general category "verb forms to refer to the past" because narrative tenses do not contain forms like the perfect aspect--e.g. "I have seen that movie before."]
Showing posts with label past perfect. Show all posts
Showing posts with label past perfect. Show all posts
Saturday, September 28, 2024
Wednesday, September 25, 2024
Model Text for Past Perfect and Past Perfect Continuous
(TESOL Materials--Past Perfect, Past Perfect Continuous)
Notes: The model text is from HamiltonHouseELT Youtube Channel. I've made up a slideshow and worksheet to accompany it.
Staging follows like this:
Lead-in: Slide 1 of the slideshow. Elicit from students what the pictures represent (trouble when travelling), then confirm on the animation. Go to slide 2. Students talk to a partner about a problem they had when travelling.
Orientation to the Text: On slide 3. Establish the names of the characters: Mark and Betty
Gist Question: Gist Questions comes up on animation: What problems do they have?
Play video from 0:27
Specific Information Questions: Use the questions on the first sheet of the worksheet, and slide 5.
Noticing Activity: On the second page of the worksheet. Students listen and fill in the gaps.
For clarification of meaning, use 6 to 12. Use concept checking questions to confirm understanding.
Clarification of form is slides 13-14.
No slides for clarification of pronunciation, but teacher can drill sentences.
Slides 15 and 16 link to 2 controlled practices contrasting Past Perfect and Past Perfect Continuous: Board Race and Kahoot.
https://youtu.be/VvOsqhcB5c8?si=GhSu5rdtK813JKZq&t=26
What had Mark and Betty decided to do?
What did Mark forget to do?
Why were the roads to the airport blocked?
What did Mark leave at home?
When they landed, what did Becky realize?
Write in the missing words
Narrator: Mark and Betty ______________ to go skiing. Mark ______________ to set the alarm and ______________ up very late.
Mark: Oh no! I forgot to set the alarm! We'll miss our flight!
Narrator: The roads to the airport were blocked because it ______________ all night. When they got to the airport Mark ______________ that he ______________ the tickets at home. Mark went back to get the tickets. Betty was mad.
Mark: Oh no! I left the tickets at home. I'll go back to get them.
Narrator: Mark brought the tickets and they got on the plane. When they landed Betty ______________ that they ______________ on the wrong plane. They wanted to go skiing but they would go surfing instead.
Betty: I don't think these are the Swiss Alps. We got on the wrong plane
Narrator: Mark and Betty had decided to go skiing. Mark had forgotten to set the alarm and woke up very late.
Mark: Oh no! I forgot to set the alarm! We'll miss our flight!
Narrator: The roads to the airport were blocked because it had been snowing all night. When they got to the airport Mark realized that he had left the tickets at home. Mark went back to get the tickets. Betty was mad.
Mark: Oh no! I left the tickets at home. I'll go back to get them.
Narrator: Mark brought the tickets and they got on the plane. When they landed Betty realized that they had got on the wrong plane. They wanted to go skiing but they would go surfing instead. I don't think these are the Swiss Alps. We got on the wrong plane
Betty: I don't think these are the Swiss Alps. We got on the wrong plane
Sunday, September 22, 2024
Board Race for Past Perfect and Past Perfect Continuous
(TESOL Materials--Past Perfect, Past Perfect Continuous)
[Notes: This is a board race using sentence skeletons as prompts. The purpose is to contrast the Past Perfect and the Past Perfect Continuous. The sentences are taken from English Grammar in Use by Raymond Murphy (A).
I used this in my classes, and it worked relatively well, although I discovered that the students needed a lot of feedback on why the sentences were past perfect or past perfect continuous. It helps to look at the sentences before class, and perhaps prepare explanations ahead of time.
I believe some cases are more clear cut then others--i.e. there are some cases where one verb form is clearly correct, there are some cases where one verb form is preferable but the other one is still acceptable, and there are some cases where you could make a case for either form. I tried to take this into account when awarding points in my class.]
Saturday, April 20, 2024
Past perfect simple vs past perfect continuous by Romulo Pielli.
This is a Kahoot game. I used it in my class when teaching a lesson on the past perfect and past perfect continuous.
Friday, November 30, 2018
And Even More Past Perfect Problems
(Grammar Questions I Couldn't Answer)
I've written about Past Perfect problems twice before (HERE and HERE). But another grammar question has come up.
This one comes from a grammar worksheet gapfill on the past perfect. The students have to answer each gap with a form of the word in brackets either in the past simple or the past perfect:
Although looking at it now, it looks to me more and more like it should be past perfect.
I've written about Past Perfect problems twice before (HERE and HERE). But another grammar question has come up.
This one comes from a grammar worksheet gapfill on the past perfect. The students have to answer each gap with a form of the word in brackets either in the past simple or the past perfect:
I had been warned about the dangers in Peru, but no one (1/tell)______ me how incredibly beautiful it was.The teacher scheduled to teach this lesson was asking around for the answer, and none of us could decide.
Although looking at it now, it looks to me more and more like it should be past perfect.
Monday, June 25, 2018
Past Perfect Board Race
(TESOL Worksheets--Past Perfect)
Google: slides, pub
(I used this lesson to supplement English World 6 Unit 5, and it follows their format of always having the past perfect embedded in the "that" clause.)
Google: slides, pub
(I used this lesson to supplement English World 6 Unit 5, and it follows their format of always having the past perfect embedded in the "that" clause.)
Tuesday, September 05, 2017
Past Perfect Dictogloss
(TESOL Worksheets--Past Perfect)
Google: docs, pub
[This is still in rough draft form. I made it as an example to show another teacher of what a past perfect dictogloss would look like. For directions on how to use a dictogloss, see here.]
Google: docs, pub
[This is still in rough draft form. I made it as an example to show another teacher of what a past perfect dictogloss would look like. For directions on how to use a dictogloss, see here.]
Morning. The alarm that I had set went off at 6 AM. I got out of bed and drank the coffee that I had made the night before. Then I ate some bread and cheese that I had bought last week. I took a shower, and then put on clean clothes that I had washed yesterday. I went to work and read the report that my boss had written. Then I worked on the project that my co-worker had started yesterday.
Saturday, June 17, 2017
More Problems with the Past Perfect
(Grammar Questions I Couldn't Answer)
This is a follow-up of sorts to the previous post.
Right about the same time I was experiencing problems with the past perfect in my own class (see previous post) a colleague approached me with his own questions about the past perfect.
His questions were based on an exercise from the textbook Life Intermediate lesson 3B Return to the Titanic p.36-37 . The lesson contained grammar exercises on the past perfect, which included the following sentence:
This ship and several others _____________ (sink) in 1671 when they _____________ (hit) rocks.
The students were supposed to put the verbs in brackets in the correct tense.
My own native speaker intuition was telling me that the past simple would be the most natural in both cases, but that if one of them had to be in the past perfect, then it would be the second verb.
The answer key to these exercises (located in the back of the textbook and in the teacher's book) said that the correct answer was "had sunk" and "hit".
In other words, the sentence was supposed to read:
This ship and several others had sunk in 1671 when they hit rocks.
I told my colleague that my best guess was that the publishers of the textbook had simply made a mistake. Other than that, I didn't know how to explain the sentence.
This is a follow-up of sorts to the previous post.
Right about the same time I was experiencing problems with the past perfect in my own class (see previous post) a colleague approached me with his own questions about the past perfect.
His questions were based on an exercise from the textbook Life Intermediate lesson 3B Return to the Titanic p.36-37 . The lesson contained grammar exercises on the past perfect, which included the following sentence:
This ship and several others _____________ (sink) in 1671 when they _____________ (hit) rocks.
The students were supposed to put the verbs in brackets in the correct tense.
My own native speaker intuition was telling me that the past simple would be the most natural in both cases, but that if one of them had to be in the past perfect, then it would be the second verb.
The answer key to these exercises (located in the back of the textbook and in the teacher's book) said that the correct answer was "had sunk" and "hit".
In other words, the sentence was supposed to read:
This ship and several others had sunk in 1671 when they hit rocks.
I told my colleague that my best guess was that the publishers of the textbook had simply made a mistake. Other than that, I didn't know how to explain the sentence.
Friday, June 16, 2017
Problems Teaching the Past Perfect
(Grammar Questions I Couldn't Answer)
I recently had some frustrations teaching the past perfect in my class.
While I was in the midst of it, vague memories started coming back to me from years gone by, and I starting realizing that I had done this all before.
I've taught the past perfect before in Japan, Cambodia, and Vietnam, and, if memory serves, I think I've gone through the same steps each time.
Step 1)
The students don't understand how to use the past perfect, and start panicking.
Step 2)
I don't understand why the students are so confused. "Look, guys, it's perfectly simple," I'll say. "You have two verbs in the past that are in the same sentence. They're both in the past, but one of them happened before the other. The one that happened first gets put in the past perfect, while the one that happened second gets put in the past simple. That's it. That's all there is to it."
Step 3)
We go over some sentences that use the past perfect, and I try to show my students how simple it is. I use this worksheet on comprehension of the Past Perfect that I made a few years ago, and it seems to do the job.
After completing this worksheet, the students usually understand the Past Perfect receptively.
Step 4)
But then the students start using the past perfect in their own production, and I realize that things are actually much more complicated than I originally thought. The students are following the rules that I taught them, but they're using the past perfect in a lot of contexts where it is not obligatory, and in many cases where it sounds strange.
In a sentence reading: "I went to the supermarket, bought some books, and then I visited my best friend" , my students wanted to change it to "I had gone to the supermarket..."
"She had eaten her breakfast, and she went to school" one student said (when describing her partner's morning).
It sounded wrong to me, but why did it sound wrong? Thinking on my feet, I explained, "When you join to independent sentences together with 'and' , you don't need the past perfect. It's only when they are both in the same clause, or when one is in a subordinate clause."
But I just pulled that explanation out of my hat, and I'm not even 100% sure it was right.
But even in subordinate clauses, I got the sense that my students were over-using the past perfect.
A student wrote in her homework: "When the sun rises, I went to school and I felt happy, delight". During all class-feedback, I tried to elicit from the students the mistakes, and get them to correct the sentence. I was intending to elicit "When the sun rose, I went to school". However they wanted to put it into the past perfect. "When the sun had risen, I went to school."
At best, I thought the present perfect was unnecessary here. I explained to my students that the past perfect wasn't strictly necessary in cases where the verbs were already in chronological order, and that in this case the use of the past perfect was optional, but not obligatory.
But in my head, I actually liked better the version with the simple past ("When the sun rose, I went to school") for reasons I couldn't quite put my finger on.
Another example from a student's writing:
When we had gone there, we saw a lot of cows, goats, and many kinds of vegetables.
Again, my native speaker intuition tells me that "when we got there" was preferable than the past perfect.
Another example.
A student was writing about an embarrassing moment, and describing how she mistook someone on the street for an acquaintance, but then after she greeted him, he turned to look at her, and it was a complete stranger. She wrote:
"But when that person had looked at me, I realized that I didn't know him."
And although I didn't have time to write down all the examples (and so have consequently lost them), there were a lot of these kind of sentences being produced in my class the day after I taught the past perfect--sentences using the past perfect that sounded wrong to me, but that followed the rules I had given my students.
I recently had some frustrations teaching the past perfect in my class.
While I was in the midst of it, vague memories started coming back to me from years gone by, and I starting realizing that I had done this all before.
I've taught the past perfect before in Japan, Cambodia, and Vietnam, and, if memory serves, I think I've gone through the same steps each time.
Step 1)
The students don't understand how to use the past perfect, and start panicking.
Step 2)
I don't understand why the students are so confused. "Look, guys, it's perfectly simple," I'll say. "You have two verbs in the past that are in the same sentence. They're both in the past, but one of them happened before the other. The one that happened first gets put in the past perfect, while the one that happened second gets put in the past simple. That's it. That's all there is to it."
Step 3)
We go over some sentences that use the past perfect, and I try to show my students how simple it is. I use this worksheet on comprehension of the Past Perfect that I made a few years ago, and it seems to do the job.
Etc.
1. He had been a newspaper reporter before he became a business man.
(First he was a newspaper reporter and then he became a business man).
2. I felt a little better after I had taken the medicine.
(First ________________, and then _______________________.)
After completing this worksheet, the students usually understand the Past Perfect receptively.
Step 4)
But then the students start using the past perfect in their own production, and I realize that things are actually much more complicated than I originally thought. The students are following the rules that I taught them, but they're using the past perfect in a lot of contexts where it is not obligatory, and in many cases where it sounds strange.
In a sentence reading: "I went to the supermarket, bought some books, and then I visited my best friend" , my students wanted to change it to "I had gone to the supermarket..."
"She had eaten her breakfast, and she went to school" one student said (when describing her partner's morning).
It sounded wrong to me, but why did it sound wrong? Thinking on my feet, I explained, "When you join to independent sentences together with 'and' , you don't need the past perfect. It's only when they are both in the same clause, or when one is in a subordinate clause."
But I just pulled that explanation out of my hat, and I'm not even 100% sure it was right.
But even in subordinate clauses, I got the sense that my students were over-using the past perfect.
A student wrote in her homework: "When the sun rises, I went to school and I felt happy, delight". During all class-feedback, I tried to elicit from the students the mistakes, and get them to correct the sentence. I was intending to elicit "When the sun rose, I went to school". However they wanted to put it into the past perfect. "When the sun had risen, I went to school."
At best, I thought the present perfect was unnecessary here. I explained to my students that the past perfect wasn't strictly necessary in cases where the verbs were already in chronological order, and that in this case the use of the past perfect was optional, but not obligatory.
But in my head, I actually liked better the version with the simple past ("When the sun rose, I went to school") for reasons I couldn't quite put my finger on.
Another example from a student's writing:
When we had gone there, we saw a lot of cows, goats, and many kinds of vegetables.
Again, my native speaker intuition tells me that "when we got there" was preferable than the past perfect.
Another example.
A student was writing about an embarrassing moment, and describing how she mistook someone on the street for an acquaintance, but then after she greeted him, he turned to look at her, and it was a complete stranger. She wrote:
"But when that person had looked at me, I realized that I didn't know him."
And although I didn't have time to write down all the examples (and so have consequently lost them), there were a lot of these kind of sentences being produced in my class the day after I taught the past perfect--sentences using the past perfect that sounded wrong to me, but that followed the rules I had given my students.
Thursday, September 22, 2016
Doraemon PowerPoint Game for Past Perfect
(TESOL Worksheets--Past Perfect)
Google: drive, slides, pub
The PowerPoint template was designed by Kyle Ludeke. Half of the questions come from English Grammar in Use by Raymond Murphy (A) and half of the questions come from Life Pre-Intermediate Textbook 10A Holiday Stories p.118-119
Google: drive, slides, pub
The PowerPoint template was designed by Kyle Ludeke. Half of the questions come from English Grammar in Use by Raymond Murphy (A) and half of the questions come from Life Pre-Intermediate Textbook 10A Holiday Stories p.118-119
Thursday, June 12, 2014
Past Perfect: 2 Truths and 1 Lie
Write 3 sentences for each question. Write 2 sentences that are true and one
sentence that is a lie. Try to mix up
the order.
1. What had you down by 6pm yesterday?
I
|
had
|
V3
|
by
|
6 pm yesterday.
|
2.
What had you done by 9 am this morning?
I
|
had
|
V3
|
by
|
9 am this
morning.
|
3. What had you done by last Sunday?
I
|
had
|
V3
|
by
|
last Sunday.
|
4. What had you done by the time you went
to bed last night?
I
|
had
|
V3
|
by
|
the time I went
to bed last night.
|
5. What had you done before you came to
school today?
I
|
had
|
V3
|
before
|
I came to school
today.
|
Now, read the sentences to your
classmates. See if your class mates can
guess which sentences are true and which sentences are a lie?
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