Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Teaching the Simple Past

After the present tenses (Simple Present and Present Progressive), the Simple Past tense (also called the Past Simple) is usually the next verb tense ESL students are taught. The Simple Past tense has “regular” verbs and “irregular” verbs.

Regular Simple Past tense verbs are formed by adding “-ed” to the end of the base form of the verb (eg., walked, dressed, called, etc.). For verbs that already end with an “e,” just add a “d” (e.g., cared, raced, decided, invited, etc.).

As with teaching all verb tenses, three things are essential to teach students learning English as a Second Language: (1) verb conjugation, (2) verb form, and (3) verb function. (See Fundamentals of Teaching Verb Tenses.)

Simple Past Verb Conjugation (using miscellaneous common verbs, for example)

Verb conjugation of the affirmative Simple Past is pretty easy. There is only one form of the verb no matter what the subject is.

1. I talked. I walked. I danced. I cared.
2. You talked. You walked. You danced. You cared.
3. She/He/It talked. She/He/It walked. She/He/It danced. She/He/It cared.
4. They talked. They walked. They danced. They cared.
5. We talked. We walked. We danced. We cared.

Simple Past Verb Form (five forms the ESL student must learn)

1. Affirmative Usage (e.g., She talked.)
2. Negative Usage (e.g., She didn’t talk.)
3. Yes/No Questions (e.g., Did she talk?)
4. Short Answers (e.g., Yes, she did. No, she didn’t.)
5. WH- Questions (e.g., When did she talk?)

The tricky thing for ESL students conjugating the Simple Past is remembering to use the correct “helping” or “auxiliary” verb “to do.”

Simple Past Function (when to use the Simple Past aka Past Simple)

The Simple Past verb tense has one primary function: to express an activity or situation that started in the past and ended in the past at a particular time. For example, “I finished my homework last night,” “I traveled to Spain in 1985,” “I got up at seven this morning.”

ESL Student Challenges

Besides remembering to use the correct helping verb (“to do”), students studying English as a Second Language also have to memorize irregular Past Tense verbs (irregulars don’t follow the general rule of adding “-ed”) and they also have to learn about changing the spelling of verbs that end with “y” (e.g., "study" becomes "studied") and some consonants (e.g., "drop" becomes "dropped").

For a more thorough explanation and Simple Past exercises (as well as every other verb tense and lots of grammar tips), see Azar's Understanding and Using English Grammar.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I THINK THE PROBLEM IS NOT WHAT THE PAST SIMPLE IS; THE PROBLEM IS HOW CAN IT BE TAUGHT INDIRECTLY AND EFFICIENTLY.