Sunday, May 31, 2009 By Ela Newman Instructor in Developmental
Writing and in ESL University of Texas at Brownsville Timelines
and lists of time adverbials commonly used with specific tenses
definitely cleared up some of my confusion. Still,
differentiating between the two Present Perfect tenses, for
example, was a Herculean task. Can I blame my puzzlement on, as
Ralph Walker points out, “the nature of these two tenses, which
are neither wholly present nor wholly past, but paradoxically
both present and past”? (http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/er
icdocs2sql/content_storage_01/0000019b/80/33/e5/f1.pdf ) Going
Beyond Tense Pairs Teachers often use activities which contrast
two related tenses, but it seems that tasks requiring students
to use three, four, or even five tenses can do the trick more
effectively. Students not only practice the forms and
demonstrate an understanding of the meaning of each tense, but,
by having to switch tenses, they learn when each is
appropriately used. Five Tenses: Sample Activi