Teach English in Jinxia Jiedao - Shantou Shi

This unit introduces the structure and usage of four different present tenses: Present simple, Present Continuous, Present Perfect and Present Perfect continuous tense. The lecture reminds me to pay special attention in students' progress in learning negative and also question forms of the tenses as they can be sometimes confusing. As an English tutor, I have encountered alot of students who easily mix up negative form while practising present simple and continuous for the negative. They tend to fill in the blanks with 'isn't'/'arent' while they attempt to answer the questions in present simple negative form. Also, it is observed that they tend to mix up these two tenses while forming questions, e.g students may form question 'what is your father do' instead of 'what does your father do'. And this unit helps me to build up effective interactive strategies in reinforcing their knowledge on the topics, such as doing 'interview' or picture description etc. Also, present perfect and present perfect continuous tense are not commonly taught in low levels as they require knowledge of past participle form of verbs, also relate to concept of linking past action to the present. Hence, I'm suggesting that the four types of present tense should be taught in different levels instead of introducing them together. Also, in my opinion, it is easy for native speakers to use present perfect continuous tense as it occurs in daily conversation easily, however teachers should never overlook the importance in explaining the usage of the tense as students in L2 might not understand the usage clearly as the tense can be rather easily mixed up with present perfect tense.