Banding Together: Practice with the past perfect and past perfect progressive

I’m just about ready to post the second part of my YouTube lesson on the past perfect and past perfect progressive. As I think about what form of additional practice we can offer advanced students, I find myself gravitating to an activity that is similar to the one in my video. The final exercise online has several items that form a narrative. Students must choose the correct verb forms to complete sentences. At this level, I feel students can only grasp the meaning and appropriacy of the verb forms if we go beyond isolated sentences. They must consider how the forms work within a reading or a conversation.

In my Banding Together_handout, students can work individually or with one another to sequence the lines from a story about a music band. The process should force them to consider what each verb form expresses, particularly the past perfect and past perfect progressive. However, we cannot have a story written entirely in the past perfect. Use of other verb forms is both necessary and natural. I hope the activity works well for you! Please let me know about any good ideas for modifying it.

Mystery Movements: An activity to practice the present progressive

How have you practiced the present progressive with basic level students? Over the years, I’ve relied on some old favorites, for instance, talking about who’s wearing what today, having students pantomime actions for others to describe, and describing actions seen in photos and film. In a post back in 2009, I suggested that photos from cell phones could even be used in this manner.

Today, in preparation for my next lesson with Natasha, I was thinking of pulling photos together with a theme or a narrative. I came up with a short activity that could easily work one-on-one or in a classroom setting. Please take a look at my Mystery Movements_handout.

Film Plots and Teasers: An activity to practice the present progressive

In my latest YouTube series, my goal is to help intermediate and advanced students rid themselves of confusion over verb tenses. By reviewing the uses and examining the differences, hopefully learners will feel more confident in their choices of verb tenses when speaking or writing. Practice, of course, is key. Watching an instructional video alone cannot lead to miracles.

One activity that I posted three years ago can offer a context for practice with verb tenses. My Prequel-Sequel Activity encourages use of multiple tenses, but students can primarily stay in the simple present, especially if they write a plot summary for a sequel. One variation is to have students themselves write plot summaries for movies they’ve seen, exchange texts, and write a plot summary for a sequel to the movie they just read about. Both texts can be short (4-6 lines), and both texts can mostly be written in the simple present.

If students respond well to this kind of creative writing and are ready to contrast the simple present with the present progressive, consider the Film Plots and Teasers_handout. This group activity can serve as follow-up to Lesson 3.

Timely Tales 1 [past]: A review of verb tenses through student-generated stories

I love  a good story, whether I’m the one telling it or hearing it.  I believe students enjoy stories as well, and with enough support they are willing to step into the role of the narrator. I’ve already suggested a number of activities based on storytelling. This post and the next one will offer a set of  gapped narratives that can serve as a review of verb tenses (past, present, and future). The approach will be the same in all three: write > share > study.

Today’s tale is called An Unsolved Mystery and it reviews the past tenses. Click here to view and print out Timely Tales_handout 1.

Chilling Cinematic Scenes to Teach Verb Tenses

I’ve always enjoyed working Halloween themes into lessons. The holiday has always encouraged three loves of mine: candy, creative costumes and decorations, and scary movies. Yes, I’m one of those people who enjoy being thrilled by ghosts, goblins, and paranormal activity. I don’t care for gore. I like suspense and chills. Would you consider showing a few exciting scenes to illustrate verb tenses as part of a review? The clips promise to be memorable (with no gore). Here are my picks:

• Present Progressive. Film: The Others. (1) Use the trailer and ask students, “Who is living in the house? What are the mother and daughter arguing about?” (2) If you own the DVD, show the scene near the end of the movie where the truth is revealed. Have the students form the present progressive to complete these sentences: The daughter’s ghost is whispering. She‘s telling the medium the truth about their deaths. The mother (Nicole Kidman) is watching it all with great anxiety.

 

• Simple Past and Past Progressive. Film: The Sixth Sense. Use the trailer and ask students, “What happened at the beginning of the clip? Who got hurt? Was the woman badly injured? Where was the woman standing while the boy was talking to his mother?”

 

• Simple Present. Film: The Sixth Sense. Show the complete trailer and ask students, “What is the problem? What does the boy complain about? What kind of relationship does he have with his mother?”

 

• Simple Past, Past Perfect (Progressive), Future with “going to”. Film: The Shining. Use the chilling yet classic scene where Wendy discovers that her husband (Jack Nicholson) has written page after page of “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”  Ask students, “What did the wife discover? What had her husband, a writer, been typing?/ What sentence had her husband typed over and over again? What do you think Wendy is going to do with the baseball bat?”

 

• Simple Present and Present Perfect. Film: Poltergeist. (1) Use the trailer and challenge students to list verbs in the simple present tense as they are spoken. Thanks to a partial narration done slowly, the task is manageable. In the trailer, the couple mentions disturbances they‘ve experienced (or: been experiencing). (2) If you own the DVD, use examples of those “disturbances” and have students summarize the situation using only the simple present and present perfect (progressive). Example: There is strange activity in the house. Furniture has moved by itself. Lights have gone off and on by themselves.

TESOL – 2010 – Grammar Highlights

Yes, there’s still more to write about last week’s TESOL Convention in Boston. How could there not be when each day was full of workshops, presentations, demonstrations, planned meetings, and – my favorite – chance meetings.

I love learning about grammar and ways of teaching grammar, so I made certain I caught a few sessions in this subject area. I’ll share some ideas, impressions, and gratitude below.

• Kudos to Nancy Schoenfeld of Kuwait University for her successful presentation titled Alice: Using Animation Software to Teach Grammar. She demonstrated to a large audience of peers that simple and modest efforts can lead to great results. Her down-to-earth humor powered her message that you don’t have to be a tech guru to bring technology into the classroom. Having discovered software called Alice, which is made available online by Carnegie Mellon University, Nancy learned to use computer animation to illustrate grammar concepts, in particular verb tenses. She professed her love for traditional grammar books like Betty Azar’s series (a love I share!), but pointed out that black-and-white instruction on paper sometimes needs a visual boost and a personal touch. The short animations Nancy demonstrated (much to our delight – Can you imagine a cow answering a cell phone or placing a chicken in outer space?) certainly would inject a component in a grammar presentation that would be engaging and memorable.

 

• Three cheers for Hong Wang of Mount Saint Vincent University for fitting in so many suggestions for teaching conditional statements within the terribly short period of 20-minutes. TESOL created Teaching Tip sessions this year with the best intentions, but I personally felt that 20-minutes wasn’t enough. It didn’t allow sufficient time for questions and discussion.  Even so, everyone walked out with at least one new idea for communicative practice. Hong outlined a “Mingle” activity in which each student gets the “if” statement of a third conditional. [Example: If I had been born in Australia…] By mingling and showing their cards to one another, they prompt classmates to complete the statement by supplying the result clause. I like the idea, but I might modify it to make this Step 2 of a 2-phase activity. Step 1 = controlled practice. Step 2 = communicative practice. Step 1 would be similar, but it wouldn’t be open-ended. The idea would be to reinforce the structure and meaning before requiring student production. In Step 1, beginnings and endings would be distributed, and students would have to find the most logical matches.  To make it more challenging, each student could have both a beginning and an ending, but no student would start off with two cards that created a complete and logical sentence. They’d have to “mingle” to find two matches to make two separate statements.

Musical Chairs: An activity for verb tenses

This is a simple concept that allows the teacher to choose songs and verb tenses that are most appropriate for a given group of students, depending on their age and language level.

STEP 1 – Select a song for your students. Distribute copies of the lyrics. NOTE: It may not be ideal to use the entire lyrics of a song. Sometimes a single verse will work best.

STEP 2 – Play a recording of the song. Discuss any new vocabulary to help students comprehend the lyrics.

STEP 3 – Place three chairs in the front of the classroom. Designate one PAST, one PRESENT, and the third FUTURE. (Index cards can be used as labels on the backs of each chair, or you can place the chairs near the board and write a time periods above each chair.) Explain that three different students will take turns reading the lyrics in the three different chairs. One student will be able to read the lyrics as written, but the other two students will be required to make changes to suit the tense designated by the chairs they are sitting in.

STEP 4 – After the lyrics are changed correctly to a different tense, the class can discuss the changes in meaning.

VARIATION:

With lower level students, you’ll have covered fewer verb tenses. In this case, use only two chairs to contrast the tenses the students already know (e.g., the simple present and the present progressive) with newer tenses (e.g., simple past and the past progressive).

MODEL: (Demonstrate for the students)

First lines of I’ve Been Working on the Railroad

(As is – Present: present perfect progressive)

I’ve been working on the railroad

All the livelong day

I’ve been working on the railroad

Just to pass the time of day

= I started working early this morning, and I’m probably still working.

 

(Past: change present perfect progressive to past perfect progressive)

I’d been working on the railroad

All the livelong day

I’d been working on the railroad

Just to pass the time of day

= I was working up to some point in the past, and then something else happened.

 

(Future: change present perfect progressive to future perfect progressive)

I’ll have been working on the railroad

All the livelong day

I’ll have been working on the railroad

Just to pass the time of day

= I will work until some future point in time.

 

Other Song Suggestions:

John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt

I Fall to Pieces

It’s Only Love

Makeover Games Make Great Language Practice

Oh, the things you can find online these days! For teens, tweens, and ESL learners, much fun can be had doing Cool Makeover Games. This site has a number of games, each with the potential of being the basis of a communicative activity. Take Colors of the Rain, for example. You can change the clothes of a couple. The man can wear a casual plaid shirt or a variety of trendy shirts and coats. The woman can wear a floral skirt or sleek black pants. There’s a lot to choose from. If you give them an umbrella to share, it starts raining. This is wonderful for reviewing clothing vocabulary and practicing the present progressive.

• Option 1: Students work in pairs at computer stations during the lesson. Student A makes choices for the male model, and Student B describes the finished picture. “The man is wearing jeans and a sweater. He’s holding an umbrella. It’s raining.” Then they switch. Student B makes choices for the female model, and Student A describes the finished picture. “The woman is wearing a black dress and pink boots. She’s carrying a white purse.” The activity can repeat if new clothing choices are made.
• Option 2:  You can “dress” the models yourself on one main computer if there is a screen large enough for the class to see. As you make selections, have students describe what they see.
• Option 3: Students can do the activity at home. Have them print out their finished pictures and write 3-4 sentences about each person using the present progressive.

Other games include changing the facial appearance of an animated character: hair color, hairstyle, eye color, etc. This could be used to contrast past and present tenses. Example: “She had blonde hair. Now she has red hair.” / “She was wearing a white and blue shirt, but now she’s wearing a pink shirt with stars.”

Need something more appealing to the guys? Try the Simpson Dress-Up game. Mr. Simpson (a.k.a. Homer) needs clothes, accessories, and a setting. This activity can help students practice describing physical appearance using the present progressive.

Don’t want to talk about fashion and physical appearance? Try designing the exterior of a house. This activity makes for a meaningful exchange between two students using prepositions of place.  You can also highlight the order of modifiers: “There is a large door in the middle of the house.  Above the door there is a small round window.”

The Power of Photos: A visual approach to teaching verb tenses

With a few good photos and a whiteboard, you can help your students better understand verb tenses. A common practice is to use a timeline, moving from left to right to show the passage of time. Dots or Xs usually mark completed actions or periods of time, and wavy lines often represent an action in progress. 

Example:             PAST                      PRESENT                              FUTURE

                                __X____________________________>

                                2001

                                In 2001 Jennifer moved back from Russia to the U.S.

What if instead of dots, Xs, and wavy lines, you made use of photos? In advance you can prepare photos that clearly show an action or state. To make the presentation more personal and memorable, you can use snapshots of yourself at home or the students around the school. You can duplicate each photo so that you have sets of three or four. Let me share just one possible model using a set of four (all of the same image).

Teacher (T)/ Class (C)

T:            Here’s a photo of Paul and Anna. [T tapes all four copies in a row, writing a time marker above each one from left to right: last month, last week, today, next week. This photo shows something that happened at least twice in the past, at least once today, and it will likely happen again next week. Who can tell me about Paul and Anna based on this information? Give me one sentence. [T may have to prompt C by providing first statement.]

C:            Paul and Anna talk a lot./ Paul and Anna see each other often. / Paul and Anna spend time together./ Paul and Anny are friends./ etc. [T writes suggestions on board.]

T:            Good. You all used the simple present: talk, see, spend, are… We need the simple present to show that something is true throughout time and that actions are habitual, that is, repeated often. Now what if I change the time markers like this? [T takes down one photo and writes above the remaining three photos from left to right: 3 years ago, last year, last month.] What you see in the photos is something of the past. It doesn’t happen anymore. How will our original statements change? [T may have to prompt C by providing first statement.]

C:            Paul and Anna used to talk a lot./ Paul and Anna used to see each other often. / Paul and Anna used to spend time together./ Paul and Anny used to be friends./ etc. [T makes changes on board.]

T:            Wonderful. So we need used to + the base verb to show that something happened regularly in the past, but no longer takes place or is no longer true in the present.

There are many other possibilities. For example, by taping two different photos one above the other and marking times of the day to indicate one event in progress (yesterday from 4:00pm to 5:00pm) and one at an exact time (yesterday at 4:45pm), you can help students perceive the differences between the simple past and the past progressive or the simple past and the past perfect progressive. Instead of words, think first in images. So get out the digital camera and start snapping!

 

Teaching Verb Tenses: Using News Headlines

News headlines are known for concise wording, and this provides a unique opportunity to teach differences among verb tenses in an authentic context. Fleshing out the simplified grammar forces students to remember the form and understand the meaning of a given verb tense. Consider this sequence for intermediate and advanced students:

STEP 1:  Select several headlines from a current news source (approx. 3). Present them one at a time. Example: Buried Under Snow. Ask students to make a prediction about the content of the article. Examples: “I think it’s about people who were buried under snow.”/ “It might be a weather report. Maybe a city or state will have a lot of snow soon.”  As they offer predictions, note the verbs they are using on the board: were buried, will have, etc.

Suggestion: If the class is slow to offer predictions, prompt them with one verb in 3-4 different tenses (WHO/WHAT + was buried, is buried, has been buried).

STEP 2: Ask students to skim the article to find out if any of their predictions were accurate. Conclude what time frame the headline refers to based on the content of the article.

STEP 3: Write a one-line summary of the article that incorporates the headline and identify the verb tense used. Example: Time frame = past. > Many parts of England were buried under snow last week and much activity had to stop. = simple past. Discuss alternative verb tenses and why they may or may not be appropriate. Example: Many parts of England have been buried… = present perfect; only appropriate if the country is still under snow.

As time allows, you can also have students compose their own headlines. The sequence of steps becomes reversed:

STEP 1: Have students name several current events (approx. 3) that they are aware of. As you list them on the board, try to elicit past, present, and future events.

STEP 2: In pairs, students should create a headline for each event. Encourage use short phrases (e.g. passive voice without the verb to be). Note other helpful tips such as the omission of articles in headlines.

STEP 3: Have volunteers share their headlines and discuss any variations.