Tense Tension

A tutor asked a grammar question that got me thinking recently. He said, "I was having trouble explaining when to use the simple past tense vs. present perfect... A lot of the textbook's examples for when to use "have done something" would sound OK if you replaced it with the simple "did something" instead... What are some good ways to explain when you need to use this tense?" Good question.

The best book to answer technical questions about tense is Betty Schrampfer Azar’s Basic English Grammar and its companion books.  The books, which I call the English Teacher’s Grammar Bible, have companion websites that I’ll share with you now.  This website lets you search for worksheets and other materials: http://www.azargrammar.com/materials/index.html

This website has a Q & A feature that might partially answer the problem you described for me: http://www.pearsonlongman.com/ae/azar/grammar_ex/message_board/archive/index.html.

In the Q & A feature the instructor called it “a retrospective present,” meaning that it starts at the present and looks backward.

One cue that tells you a lot about how Present Perfect works is that, adding a word that makes the sentence exclusively about the past, e.g. the words yesterday  or five years ago, makes the sentence sound wrong. Take this example:  “I have hung out the laundry last Sunday” -- wrong.  The Azar grammar book has diagrams that explain what period of time is covered by various tenses. The diagrams look like an X,  Y axis grid with NOW at the center where the axes meet. The present progressive has a dot at the present and a series of dots  going back into the recent past.  It might work better if you saw it in the book. But not everybody’s mind takes immediately to graphs. We’re all different. I thought of something different, in fact, namely a game to practice present perfect tense.

You might or might not like the example, but do you know a game called “I Have Never?”  When alcohol is involved, the goal is to get people to tell revealing stories about their own past histories. The player holds a beer and says something like, “I have never ____ [e.g. “lied when my girlfriend asked me if her jeans made her look fat”]  Any other person in the room who has done what the first player said he hasn’t done then drinks. Everyone laughs.  But you can play it clean, which is to say Rated G to PG and don’t even talk about drinking.

Instead of drinking beer you can use a stack of ten pennies. You put a penny in someone’s cup if you have done something that they haven’t. For instance,  you can say “I have never traveled to Mexico. Have you?”  If your learner has, she can put a penny in your cup and then say, “Yes I have, but I have never been to Germany.”  If you have been there you give her a penny. The winner could be the one who has gained the most coins—or Skittles, or M&Ms. 

Tense, Past Tense, Pup Tents

Before you begin this week’s tutor tip, have a joke:

One day an English grammar teacher was looking ill. A student asked, "How do you feel?"

"Tense!" answered the teacher.

The student paused, then continued, "How did you feel? How have you felt? How will you feel?"

Many millions of people have studied English as a second language. Most of them have the same complaint. “Oh, the tenses!” they moan. We do have some complicated tenses, to be sure, and a major part of the problem is the irregular verbs. Below I’ve put about 100 verbs, helpfully provided by ESL Teacher Catalina Thomsen. According to a table she provided from a grammar text, these irregular verbs appear in order of how frequently they are used.

The only way to learn irregular past tense and past participles is to memorize them. How you and your learners go about memorizing them is up to you. One way that has been discussed in this space before is to make concentration cards, that is, pairs of cards with the present tense and past tense forms of a verb. If the learner finds the card with the word said, he or she then has to find the card with say to make the pair.

Another way is a sort of spoken drill. You, the tutor, say a verb, say, “say.” Then the learner says “Say, said, said.” You say “Go” and the learner is supposed to say “Go, went, gone,” and so on. Either go straight down the list in order of frequency or try grouping the verbs by how they transform. There is one group, for instance, that never changes from infinitive to simple past to past participle. This group includes mostly short words that end in ‘t,’ such as hit, cut, set, let, put, shut, hurt. Then there are some verbs that end in ink or ing. They change the vowel from short ‘i’ to short ‘e,’ as in sink - sank, sing - sang, drink - drank, fling - flang. Okay, my spell checker informs me that last verb is technically a misspelling, but I like it better the wrong way.

The last two letters of the verbs fly, throw and blow transform with –ew - -own, as in fly - flew - flown. More below the table…

Infinitive (1st part)	Simple past (2nd part)	Past participle (3rd part)
say	said	said
make	made	made
go	went	gone
take	took	taken
come	came	come
see	saw	seen
know	knew	known
get	got	got
give	gave	given
find	found	found
think	thought	thought
tell	told	told
become	became	become
show	showed	shown
leave	left	left
feel	felt	felt
put	put	put
bring	brought	brought
begin	began	begun
keep	kept	kept
hold	held	held
write	wrote	written
stand	stood	stood
hear	heard	heard
let	let	let
mean	meant	meant
set	set	set
meet	met	met
run	ran	run
pay	paid	paid
sit	sat	sat
speak	spoke	spoken
lie	lay	lain
lead	led	led
read	read	read
grow	grew	grown
lose	lost	lost
fall	fell	fallen
send	sent	sent
build	built	built
understand	understood	understood
draw	drew	drawn
break	broke	broken
spend	spent	spent
cut	cut	cut
drive	drove	driven
buy	bought	bought
wear	wore	worn
choose	chose	chosen
seek	sought	sought
throw	threw	thrown
catch	caught	caught
deal	dealt	dealt
win	won	won
forget	forgot	forgotten
lay	laid	laid
sell	sold	sold
fight	fought	fought
bear	bore	borne
teach	taught	taught
eat	ate	eaten
sing	sang	sung
strike	struck	struck
hang	hung	hung
shake	shook	shaken
feed	fed	fed
shoot	shot	shot
drink	drank	drunk
hit	hit	hit
arise	arose	arisen
fly	flew	flown
spread	spread	spread
sleep	slept	slept
cost	cost	cost
beat	beat	beaten
light	lit	lit
bind	bound	bound
cast	cast	cast
hide	hid	hidden
swing	swung	swung
blow	blew	blown
swim	swam	swum
bend	bent	bent
wake	woke	woken
stick	stuck	stuck
sweep	swept	swept
shut	shut	shut
steal	stole	stolen
tear	tore	torn
hurt	hurt	hurt
ring	rang	rung
lend	lent	lent
sink	sank	sunk
freeze	froze	frozen
shine	shone	shone

Of course, these rules don’t always work. You can say, “Take, took, taken,” but not “make, mook, maken” (This is really bugging my spellchecker) Well, life’s hard, and then you learn a second language. I’m just trying to make things easier—easy isn’t always going to happen. If ya want easy, learn Esperanto. See how far that gets you.

Thanks again to Catalina for providing this very helpful chart. She had another insight, for those of you who have read this far. She simplifies the terminology by saying "first part, second part and third part" of the verb rather than "infinitive, simple past and past participle." Using simple, everyday terms makes it easier to use English to talk about English than using the technical linguistic vocabulary. Any questions? Please feel free to comment on the blog. I'll be glad to reply to your questions.

And thanks to all of you who teach English to people who need it. You folks are great.