 And now we'll take a look at the past tenses, first focusing on the past simple tense. Here, the past simple tense is used to express completed actions in the past, whether the past be a few seconds ago, or whether many years or ages ago, doesn't matter. To make positive sentences, we have our subject, and the subject could be anything from I, you, we, they, it, he, she. And now we conjugate. We change our verb, most often by adding ed. For the negative sentences, rather than changing the verb, we add the auxiliary verb. In this case, the auxiliary verb is do. So I've changed do to did to indicate the past, and it results in a sentence structure such as I did not work. Now did not is the full form. Obviously, we can contract this into didn't. Here we have did I work? Again, you can see the inversion of the position of the auxiliary verb and the subject to help us create our question. When we use did, we can use it for any of the subjects in our sentence, from I, or he, or she, etc. In terms of spelling these conjugated verbs, of course there are some issues that we need to have a look at, especially when considering some patterns. So again, we have our y changes to dropping the y and adding ied. And when we have a consonant vowel consonant, we double the consonant in question and finally add ed. These aren't irregular verbs, they're just irregular spellings for some verb conjugations. Our irregular verbs change their form altogether. So a few examples would be, b, changing to was or were, depending on the subject of the sentence, go to went, have to had, give to gave, write to wrote. As previously mentioned, the usage for the past simple tense is when you want to talk about completed actions in the past at a definite time frame. So we have sentences like Mark worked last night. He worked in the past, when was it? Last night. We can also ask questions. When did Mark work? Although the time isn't mentioned in the question, what we're implying is the time will be mentioned in the answer. And by saying when did Mark work, we're indicating that it is in the past rather than saying when does Mark work, which would bring us back up into the present. And now let's have a look at some teaching ideas for the past simple tense. Here we have one of our more basic activities. It consists of a series of pictures that the teacher would have cut out before class. The teacher will then put students into pairs and ask them to create a story about somebody's day that they had in the past, yesterday or last weekend. So the students, using their own imagination, will put the pictures in any order they choose. And then the teacher will ask them to piece it together, making statements in the past simple. So they could start off with, she woke up and had a cup of coffee, then she wrote a letter to her friend, so on and so forth, until probably ending up with, and then she went to bed at nine o'clock. In this version of the activity we previously looked at, we have more complicated verb structures, especially with the irregular verbs such as wake and see. Again, we'll challenge our students to have a look at the various prompts and to order the pictures so as to make a story. Here the focus will be on making a narrative story using the past simple tense. Hopefully, after a certain amount of time, our students will be able to create their own story and then present it to the class. If we have a higher level group of students, we could have the option to erase the prompts, simply give the students the pictures, perhaps a title to the story as well, and leave it to them to create a story all on their own. In this mill drill activity for the past simple tense, we'll be using a two-stage activity. Basically, first we'll have our students guess how many people did a certain thing in the past. Our first example here is to find out how many people watched television last night. Number three, find out how many people used the internet yesterday. So again, we'll have our students guessing the number of people who did that in the class. Once that's finished, we'll have our students get up and go around to polling the class, asking how many people watched television last night, how many people used the internet yesterday, so on and so forth. For the feedback, the teacher will gather the students up and chart the results. For our adult students, looking at the past simple tense, we can have them creating resumes or CVs. Here, they would be writing down personal information, such as where they were born and where they went to school. Of course, they would be adding in their work experience, such as I managed or I filed or I calculated. Then we would pair up our students once the CVs are made, putting them into an interview setting, basically asking what they did in the past and what would qualify them for their job. For a feedback session following this, we could get our students into small groups sharing their CVs together. Now let's have a look at the past continuous tense. This tense is used to indicate that a certain action was in progress at a particular time in the past. We form the positive form by using our subjects, the auxiliary verb to be, plus the verb plus ing, also known as the present participle. So it results in sentences such as he was cooking last night or we were cooking last night. In order to form the negative sentence for the past continuous, we add the word not in between the past form of the auxiliary verb to be and our main verb, which here is cooking. So of course we have, he was not cooking last night and we were not cooking last night. In order to form the question form of the past continuous tense, again we're going to invert a subject and the auxiliary verb. So we start our question with was or were, depending on our subjects, and we keep our present participle form of the verb, which is our main verb in the question. So, was he cooking last night or were you cooking last night? The usage for the past continuous tense is expressing actions in progress at a time in the past. So one example could be I was cooking at 6pm last night. I was cooking. It was an action that began, occurred and finished at a particular point in time in the past, 6pm last night. Now, I could also say I was cooking when you called me. It's the continuation of an action that happened at a particular time. That particular time needs to be conjugated into the past simple tense, as it wasn't continuing, rather the cooking was continuing. Now we'll look at a teaching idea of past continuous. As we mentioned earlier, the continuous tense is quite conducive to using pictures and talking about actions. Here, what we'll do is we'll switch it back to the past. In this activity, we'll cut up our cards before class and give each pair of students a group of these cards. What they'll do is flip over a card at random. They'll need to choose a time and then create a sentence that the teachers were doing at that time. So if they pick up this card here, a possible sentence might read at three o'clock yesterday, he was studying. Bear in mind that the same activity can be used for different purposes. We could use the same activity we just saw with students who are more comfortable with the past tenses and contrasting them. Here, we might compare and contrast the past simple to the past continuous. Again, we would cut up our cards have our students turn the cards over at random but now they'll make sentences such as while I was studying yesterday, I received a phone call. While she was swimming, she saw a shark. Very similar to presenting a picture with activities to students and having them report what the people are doing at the present time using the present continuous tense. What we'll do here is have the students do the same thing with them two or three minutes to look at the picture and try to remember what the people are doing before we turn the picture over and then ask the students to create sentences about what the people were doing in the picture. Hopefully, the students would be able to create sentences such as a woman was bringing flowers to her mother a man was pouring water a doctor was showing an x-ray to the patient. Remember that most activities can be varied so as to increase interest levels. If you've got a nice competitive group of students who feel confident about their grammar you could create the same activity but make it into a competition. So after the two minutes of memorizing the picture, you turn the picture over and challenge each group of students to come up with more sentences than the other groups. At the end of it you'll see which group came up with the most incorrect sentences and obviously give them their due congratulations. Working off our previous MIME idea for the present continuous now we can use the same idea for the past continuous. The key difference here will be that while a student is doing the MIME the students in the audience are not able to guess what the person is doing. Rather, you'll have them stop first then have the group making sentences for the past. So a student may get cards such as drawing, driving or cooking. They do their MIME of the action and they stop. Only then can we have the rest of the students make their guess using the past continuous tense. And now for the past perfect tense. This tense is used to talk about a past action and a related past action before that. In this case we're relating two past actions to each other. We do so by using auxiliary verb to have but because we're talking about the past we need to conjugate that auxiliary verb into the past. So we'll consistently use had no matter what our subject is for the sentence. The other critical part of the formation of this tense is the fact that the main verb needs to be put into the past participle form. Here we've used a regular verb to finish and we've added ed. The results of sentences like su had finished negative su had not finished we can contract had not and we can ask the question by saying had su finished as mentioned the usage for the past perfect is to relate past actions that are in the past. So we always add the past perfect tense for the action that happened before the past action that we're talking about. So I want to say that we arrived in the past but I also want to let you know that something happened even before we arrived so I use the past perfect tense. Again our auxiliary verb to have conjugated into the past as well as our past participle form of the main verb. The resulting sentence could be something like the concert had started by the time we arrived. Now let's take a look at some teaching ideas for the past perfect tense. As we said, the past perfect tense is used to relate to past activities to each other. Here we'll ask our students to describe what the person had just done before the photo was taken. Down below we have some prompts for our lower level students who may need some additional help. Here we see be assassinated. Hopefully our students will be able to read this, match it up with the current picture and make a statement such as he had just been assassinated when the photo was taken. Please bear in mind that this activity is quite western centric. You'll have to adapt the activity for students outside of these areas which can be done quite easily. Here we have another teaching idea for the past perfect tense where we'll ask our students to finish a statement made. We'll have cut these pieces out before our class and distributed them to pairs or small groups. The students will randomly turn their card over and they'll read the beginning of a statement and be challenged to finish it in a logical way. Here we have I couldn't sleep because the student could finish it however they like. Perhaps I couldn't sleep because I had seen a scary movie. The students will continue on and finish the activity perhaps getting some feedback of their various sentences. And now let's take a look at the past perfect continuous tense. We'll obviously be talking about the past we'll be talking about two actions and we'll be focusing on the fact that one of those actions had been continuing at another point in the past. In order to form this tense what we need are two auxiliary verbs. We need our auxiliary verb have conjugated into the past so it turns to had. We use our auxiliary verb be with our present participle form of the main verb which is the verb plus ing and be being conjugated into the past as well. So for positive sentences we would start with our subject. Here it's su su had been cooking and negative sentence would be su had not been cooking and in order to ask our question again that inversion of the subject and had so it comes out had su been cooking. And now the usage for the past perfect continuous tense it is as follows. Using it to communicate a continuing action in the past up until an additional action in the past. Here we have su had been cooking for three hours before we ate lunch. The action that had been occurring up until that point was su had been cooking for three hours before the other action we ate lunch. Now we have some teaching ideas for the past perfect continuous tense. Very similar to the idea for the past perfect tense we'll be using an activity where we have a prompt for a student. It will encourage them to finish the prompt in a logical way. Now using the past perfect continuous tense. So if they read a prompt such as I didn't go out perhaps they could say I didn't go out because I hadn't been feeling well. She failed the exam because she hadn't been studying enough. You may have noticed that these types of sentences can be finished with the past perfect tense. That's okay. However we will encourage our students to finish the past perfect continuous tense as that is the language point being explored. This idea for teaching the past perfect continuous tense is simply an adaption of the same idea used to teach the present perfect continuous tense. Here we'll have a student come up in front of the class receive a certain prompt make an announcement and the rest of the class will guess as to what the person in the past. Now here, yesterday you were crying because you had been watching a sound film. Our student would simply come up read the prompt correctly as yesterday I was crying because and allow the rest of the group to guess as to what was happening. Some example guesses may include you were crying yesterday because you had been fighting with your boyfriend or you were crying yesterday because you had been chopping onions. So on and so forth. Let's now have a quick review of the past tenses. Here we have four very similar example sentences each using a different past tense. This should allow us to be able to look at the differences in usage between these tenses. First example When I arrived, John cooked. When I arrived John was cooking. When I arrived, John had cooked. When I arrived, John had been cooking. In the first example when I arrived, John cooked. If we look at John cooked this is the past simple. The structure is quite simply the subject plus verb in the past tense. The past tense verb is usually formed just by adding ed to the end of the base form. However, again there are many irregular verbs such as go would change to went, be to was or were no to knew. Again there are no rules for this and they just have to be learnt individually. The past tense here as we can see is used for completed past actions. I arrived in the past and John cooked in the past. They give us the order in which past events happen. I arrived first and then John cooked. I woke up and then I got up. I had a shower, I had breakfast and went to work. So the past simple is very useful for ordering actions. The second example sentence when I arrived, John was cooking John was cooking is in the past tense. Here the structure is subject, John the verb to be in the past tense which is was or were, plus the verb with an ing at the end. The past continuous tense is used to describe an action that was in progress at a specific past time. Here in the example sentence the cooking was in progress at the time I arrived. This differs from the first example sentence where I arrived first and then John cooked. In this example the cooking had already started and was still in progress at the time I arrived. In the third example when I arrived John had cooked John had cooked is the past perfect tense. This has the structure subject here John plus had plus past participle here cooked. Past perfect is used to express the past in the past. In other words an action that happened before another past action. When I arrived John had cooked I arrived in the past and I want to say what happened before that past time so I have to use the past perfect. The fourth example sentence when I arrived John had been cooking is using past perfect continuous tense. John had been cooking this has the structure subject John auxiliary verb had another auxiliary verb been and then the verb plus ing. The past perfect continuous tense is used to express the duration or continuity of a longer action in the past before another past action. As we can see here when I arrived John had been cooking the cooking had continued for a period of time before I arrived. It doesn't express whether cooking is still continuing or completed. So let's have a look at the four sentences together again. When I arrived John cooked I arrived first then John cooked when I arrived John was cooking the cooking was actually the progress at the time I arrived when I arrived John had cooked the cooking had finished before I arrived and when I arrived John had been cooking expresses a longer action that had been happening up until the time I arrived. Here now are some tips on the successful completion of your three tense units first when identifying a sentence's tense focus on the structure of the sentence rather than its usage the structure is what dictates the tense used for example if a sentence lacks the auxiliary verb to have it cannot be a perfect tense sentence. Similarly if a sentence lacks the present participle used as the main verb in the sentence it cannot be a continuous tense sentence. This can also be helpful for creating sentences once you've created a sentence you feel is appropriate have another look and analyse that sentence's form before looking at its usage when asked for reasons why you've identified a specific tense be sure to list a usage if you're able to do this correctly your answer will most likely be correct. When asked to explain something to a low level student be sure to word your answer as if you're really explaining it to the low level student rather than your tutor be sure to use basic language and be as clear as possible finally when asked to give an activate stage idea please bear in mind the aims of the activate stage these are one to maximise student talktime be sure that your activity allows for the students to speak as much as possible secondly be sure that the students are using the language freely and in an open-ended way so as to maximise or improve fluency three focus on the target language we always want to be ensuring that our students are using the very language point that we've been explaining finally keep in mind that these shouldn't be worksheet based activities where the worksheets are more useful for the study stage rather than the activate stage