Teach English in Ebu Zhen - Shanwei Shi

This unit explained past tense. There are different types: Past simple, past continuous, past perfect, and past perfect continuous. Past simple takes on the general structure of adding -ed or -d to the base of the verb. For example: I watched, I walked. Past simple has several irregular words, which students will have to memorize, practice, and be exposed to frequently through hearing proper English being spoken (i.e from their teacher). Past perfect takes on the general structure of \"subject + had + past participle\"). For example: Gemma had walked to Emily's house. Past continuous form takes on the general structure of \"subject + was/were + verb-ing\". For example: Lisa was cooking. Lisa and Gemma were cooking. Lastly, past perfect continuous has the general structure of \"subject + had been + verb-ing\". For example: Gemma had been working on her homework this morning. I believe it is important that students have a lot of study time to practice the different, and many, usages of these past tenses, while also having plenty of exposure to their usage. I believe this because when learning your Native language (at least I personally do not recall this), you are not given formal lesson instructions on tenses such as this. Most of our knowledge base grows from listening/exposure/reading development, and gentle, consistent correct from adults and teachers. A good way to help students remember the different usages for the different past tenses would be to create games, post anchor charts as a consistent visual reinforcement to refer to, and to practice in the form of flash cards or easy, engaging reading material.