 We'll begin our examination of all the tenses by first looking at the present tense. There are four present tenses and we'll begin with the present simple tense. It's the most common tense in the English language as it talks about things in general, general facts, routines, habits. Those are usages that we'll look at in a little while, but first let's focus on the form of the tense. Here we've got our subjects. I, you, we, they, and the base form of the verb followed by the rest of our sentence. Here for the he, she, and it subjects, we have to conjugate our verb and in this case we've added an es for teachers followed by the rest of our sentence. With subjects I, you, we, and they, The pattern stays the same throughout. We use the base form of the verb. However, with subjects he, she, and it, we have some patterns for verb conjugations that we need to have a look at. First, and most common, we added simply an s for verbs like work, play. This is what we typically see within our language. However, when we have verbs with spelling patterns such as ending in ch, sh, z, s, and our shorter verbs do and go, we have to add our es. Then for verbs that end in a consonant and y, we drop our y and add our i-e-s. Finally, we have our irregular verbs b and have. For subject I, we use am. For the subject he, she, and it, we use is whereas with you, we, and they, we use are. Finally, we have have which stases have for these subjects i, you, we, and they but for he, she, and it we change have to has. For statements in the negative form, what we have to do is add the auxiliary verb to do. For subjects I, you, we, and they, we simply leave do as do, use the word not and keep the base form of the verb now for the negative statements. However, for he, she, and it, we have to conjugate our auxiliary verb into does. We still use not and we still keep the base form of the verb. The pattern for forming questions is very, very similar to the pattern for forming negative statements. However, what we've done is invert our subject and our auxiliary verb so that the questions read the auxiliary verb first. Of course again, we use do for i, you, we, and they and use does for he, she, and it. In both cases, we've left our verb form as the base form of the verb as there's no need to change it. The two most common usages for the present simple tense are habits and routines as well as general facts and truths. Our example of routine would be I teach every Monday. We've used our subject i, our base form to teach and every Monday speaking about the routine that I have. We also have our general facts. The sun rises in the east. Here the sun would follow under the pronoun it, so we've had to conjugate our verb per our pattern and finish our sentence. We can also talk about general truths such as likes or dislikes. I like football or he likes football. Of course, there are other usages, but these are the two most common. For following usages that aren't as common, perhaps you won't be using them in the classroom as often. You can have a look in your materials. Before looking at specific teaching ideas for the present simple tense, let's first look at some considerations for teaching ideas in general. We have to remember that these activities will be used in the activate stage of your lesson. Here, the focus will be on building fluency and using the language in a bit more of a free-flowing way, yet still focusing on that class's language point. We also have to consider the appropriacy for a number of factors, timings, whether the activity will be too short or too long. We want to look at ages, making sure that the activity is appropriate for young learners or for adult learners. We also have to take into consideration our language levels. Will the activity be appropriate for our starters or our pre-intermediates or our intermediates? Will the activity be appropriate for a small class or a large class? And last but not least, certainly we have to take into consideration our students' culture and their interests, making sure that the activity is appropriate for either one. And finally, we need to make sure that we're maximizing our student talk time. Are the students using the language as much as they possibly can while they're still in the class? Remember that the more appropriate the activity will be, the more student talk time we'll get. Our first example of a teaching idea for the present simple tense will be a classic activity called Find Someone Who. Here, we'll be trying to find someone who has a general truth, such as the ability to play a musical instrument, or the fact that they have a brother and a sister. This results in students going around the room asking questions in the present simple tense, such as, do you play a musical instrument? Are you a teacher? Do you have a brother and a sister? The answers resulting will also be in the present simple tense. They will be generally, yes I do or no I don't. The students will go around trying to find somebody who fits the general truth, and when they do, they will write their name in the appropriate space. The students will mill around the room for generally five to eight minutes, depending on your timing of your class. When the teacher feels it's appropriate, he'll have the students sit down and begin feedback. Feedback will also be in the present simple tense, resulting in questions such as, who goes to bed before 11 o'clock? Students will raise their hand and also report in the same tense, saying the name of a student in the class such as, Jim goes to bed before 11 o'clock. During the feedback, the teacher can also expand upon these general truths. When the teacher hears that Jim goes to bed before 11 o'clock, the teacher can ask, why do you go to bed before 11 o'clock? Do you always go to bed before 11 o'clock? The same can be done for musical instruments. What musical instrument do you play? Here's a teaching idea that focuses on two very specific aspects of the present simple tense, one of which will be making statements about a habit and a routine. The other will be conjugating the verb into the he, she, or it form. Here we'll present students with a picture. They will see various objects in the picture. Based upon the presence of these objects in someone's room, the students will have to make an observation, such as, she drinks coffee, she plays the guitar, she watches television, she doesn't smoke. Again, it's very specific, used for the he, she, or it form and habits and routines. At the end of the activity, the teacher will have the pairs or the small groups report back their various findings. Another idea for the present simple tense would be the classic 20 questions. The teacher could frame this into the context of, what's my job? Who am I? Or even what am I for objects? In order to set this activity up, the teacher will ask a student to come to the front of the room and the teacher will give him or her a card. For jobs, the card will obviously have jobs such as doctor or architect or even teacher. From that, the students will have to ask questions to find out the person's job. These typical questions might be, do you work Monday through Friday? Do you work in an office? Do you work with people? The student at the front of the room will also be answering with present simple short answers. Yes, I do. No, I don't. The teacher will give a time limit for each student at the front of the room. Perhaps two minutes. At the end of those two minutes, the students in the room will be asking, are you a doctor? Are you an architect? Or even, are you a teacher? Hopefully, by the end of those two minutes, based upon the information given, the students will be able to guess what that job was. The same can also be done for famous people. Who am I? Of course, that famous person would still have to be alive as, have they passed away, we would speak about them in the past tense. You can also use it for objects as well. Now let's take a look at the present continuous tense. The continuous tense is used to talk about actions in progress at the time of speaking, or around the time of speaking. The first thing to notice with the continuous tense is that we must use the verb plus ing form, also known as the present participle. You'll see it in any continuous tense, especially with the present continuous. We have three different forms of this tense. First, we have the subject, I, used with am, teaching. Then we have you, we, they, are, teaching. Finally, we've got he, she, it, is, teaching. The am, are, it, is, teaching. The am, are, and is are forms of the verb to be. And here with this tense, it's used as an auxiliary verb, or a helping verb. In order to form negative sentences, we simply add the word not between our helping verb and our main verb plus ing. To form the questions for the present continuous tense, again what we've done is inverted our helping verbs here and our subjects here, resulting in questions like, am I teaching? Are you teaching? And is he teaching? The two most common usages for the present continuous tense as it relates to speaking about things in the present. We have actions in progress at the time of speaking, specifically right when it's being said. So I can say, I am teaching right now. However, we also have actions in progress around the time of speaking. I'm reading a good book. Now of course, I'm not reading a book just now, but I started reading a book in the past. I am reading it perhaps today at some time, and I'll finish reading the book at some point in the future. Again, I'm not doing it just now, but around the time of speaking. There are additional usages for this tense, but they're not as common as these two, and I suggest you have a look in the materials for those further usages. And now we'll take a look at a few teaching ideas for the present continuous tense. The present continuous tense is quite a visual tense. We use it to describe actions that are happening at the present moment. So we could give our students a picture such as the one seen here. It is important that in the picture there are many activities going on. The teacher can give a time limit to pairs or small groups. In that time limit, the pairs or small groups will make various sentences based upon what they see in the picture. These sentences may include, he is taking a picture, he is throwing a boomerang, they are playing with the ball, he is digging a hole. At the end of the time limit, the teacher will ask for some feedback and get feedback from the pairs and the groupings to see what different sentences they were able to come up with. Hopefully at the end, the students will have made statements using as many of the pronouns as possible. In this case, at least he, she, or they. Here's another teaching idea for the present continuous tense. Here now, we'll ask our students to compare two different photos with a number of activities going on in each one. These will be paired up in student A and student B. The teacher will give the pairs a time limit in which to make statements about each one's picture, hopefully in the process identifying differences. What we'll have the students do is make statements such as the man is looking at the statue. Student B will then find a man near the statue and say, oh, in my picture, a picture of the statue. They'll pan the room, find the various differences and make a note of them. At the end of the time limit, the teacher will gather the students up and ask them to report their findings and their differences. In this activity, remember it's absolutely crucial that the students don't show each other their pictures, but rather describe them verbally. Another idea for the present continuous tense focuses on the action of miming. Because it's in the present continuous tense, it'll be critical that the student who is doing the miming continues to do the miming as the students guess what he or she is doing. In order to do this, the teacher will ask one student to come to the front of the class and present them with a card. The card at low levels will just be one word, such as sleeping, surfing, eating or playing. As soon as the student is able to mine any one of those actions, the students continue to guess with you are sleeping, you are eating, you are surfing. Now, at higher levels, what you could do is continue on from the base of the action and include something like you are playing football or you are playing video games, you are eating spaghetti or spicy food. Once the student at the front of the room doing the miming has successfully gotten their fellow students to guess the action, he or she then has a seat with the rest of the group and somebody else will come up to do another mine. Hopefully by the end of the class, at least all of the students will have had a chance to come up and mime a certain action. Now we'll have a look at the present perfect tense. The form for the present perfect tense is again, our subjects here and here, our auxiliary verb or our helping verb, in this case it's to have. For subjects, I, you, we and they, we leave the auxiliary verb as have. For he, she, and it, our auxiliary verb needs to be conjugated or changed into has. Following these helping verbs, we have our main verb in the past tense form, more specifically the past participle form. Here, we have the verb to play. To play is a regular verb. So for regular verbs, we simply add ed. The result is sentences such as I have played football today or he has played snooker today. As mentioned earlier, to form this tense we have to use a special form of the verb. Technically it's called the past participle form. With irregular verbs, of course these past participle forms change quite a bit from its base form of the verb. Here are a few examples. Go, moves to gone. B, moves to bean. Right, to written. Speak, to spoken. And read, although very confusing for the non-native speaker, doesn't change its spelling, but does change its pronunciation. Resulting in read going to read. Of course, these are only five examples of our irregular verbs. There are many more, of course, and I suggest you reference the materials, or perhaps even go online for an entire list of the irregular verbs. As mentioned earlier, our example sentence has used a regular verb to play. With the regular verbs, we simply add P. This spelling pattern changes for words that end with a consonant and a Y. Cry goes to cried. Try, to tried. Another spelling pattern we have to be aware of is our consonant plus vowel plus consonant. In these instances, we double the consonant used. Shop needs the double P. With these spelling patterns, and most spelling patterns in general for the English language, there are always exceptions to the rules. So, we have to be aware of those exceptions. We also have to impart those exceptions onto our students. We can do so through various exercises and various activities to end our class. To form the negative sentence here, again our subjects or in the beginning of the sentence, we keep our helping verb, whether it be have or has, and between our helping verb and the main verb in our sentence, we of course add the word not. For forming the question of the present perfect tense, again we're going to follow on with our form of inverting the subject and the helping verb. Now, we'll begin with have or has. So, we end up with questions such as have I played football today? Has she played football today? The main function for the present perfect tense is to relate something in the past to the present. We can do so in a number of ways. First, we have indefinite past actions. I have been to Italy twice. We're not concerned with when it happened. We just simply want to say that it has happened in the past. It's a fact of something I've done in the past, but yet it's still true in the present. Unfinished past actions. I have lived here for three years. I started living here in the past, and it's still true now. With this usage you will typically see time expressions. Finally, we have past actions with present results. I have lost my keys. It's implied that I still haven't found them. I lost them in the past. I don't have them now. I've lost my keys. There are further usages. They're not as common as these three. I suggest you look in your materials for those further usages. Here now is a teaching idea for the present perfect tense. If you'll remember back, one of the main usages of the present perfect tense is to talk about past experiences at an indefinite time. Here, we'll be having students work in small groups. Each small group will receive a prompt. This prompt has various past experiences, however not conjugated into the question. The challenge for the students will be to take one of these prompts and to create a question based upon it. For example, here they see win and a competition. One at a time the students will take turns forming the question have you ever won a competition? The other people listening to the question in the small group will exchange their past experiences, either yes I have and perhaps tell a bit about the competition or simply no I haven't. At the end of a certain period of time the teacher will ask all the students to stop and share some of the experiences included on this prompt. Then based upon having done this with the aid of a prompt the teacher can then challenge each group to come up with their own questions for other past experiences not seen here. Again, each student will take a turn forming their own questions at the end of a certain period of time the teacher will ask the groups to stop and again share their feedback. All of the sentences created whether they be questions positive or negative statements will of course be in the present perfect tense. Here's another teaching idea for the present perfect tense. If you'll remember the present perfect tense can be used to talk about present results of past actions. Oftentimes these will be changes. In this picture here you'll see that there have been many changes made in picture B versus picture A. You can tell your students that in this picture it's 9 o'clock. Yet in this picture it's 10 o'clock. Now, we'll ask our students to make sentences based upon the changes that have been made. Here as a prompt the students have been asked to make sentences using these words. The teacher will give the students a time limit in order to make those sentences and of course ask for feedback at the end. Here we can see that the sentences would be he's done the ironing. He's hung up the towel. Now, this is just one idea using this particular picture. After starting with the basics we could ask our students to do something a bit more complicated such as perhaps even bringing in a picture of themselves from years past. You could make sentences based upon the changes that have happened in the appearance of the student. You could also talk about changes within the local town or even perhaps within the country. And now we'll have a look at the present perfect continuous tense. As its name suggests what we're going to do is combine the present continuous usages and the present perfect usages into a tense that basically expresses the fact that we've got an action continuing up until today. For the form of this tense again we're going to combine the various aspects of both the perfect and the continuous tenses. If we have a look we always begin with our subjects. Then we have our two now helping verbs. The helping verb to have for the perfect tenses as well as the helping verb to be for the continuous tenses. For we and they we leave have as have for he, she and it we conjugate it to has. Because it's a continuous tense of course we need to use the verb plus ing. This results in sentences such as I have been teaching quite some time or she has been teaching for 15 years. The negative form of the present perfect continuous remains the same as the positive form and we simply add not in between our two helping verbs have and be. In order to make the present perfect continuous questions again following with that pattern of inversion what we've done is put the auxiliary verb have at the beginning of the sentence followed now by the subject. Have I been teaching for five years and again we're going to conjugate our verb to has for he, she, it resulting in has she been teaching for five years. The usages for the present perfect continuous tense are very similar to that of the present perfect tense but here the focus is on the action and the fact that it has been continuing for some time leading up to the present. Let's have a look. We've got incomplete and ongoing activities with duration. I have been teaching for 10 years. Then we have our recently finished activities with present results. So our recently finished activity is chopping trees but the present result is he is tired. So results in a sentence reading he is tired because he's been shopping trees. Here's another idea for teaching the present perfect continuous tense. However, in this activity what the students will be doing is comparing and contrasting this tense with the present perfect tense. This is something that a teacher will want to do after they've explored both tenses and because both tenses are quite confusing we'll ask the students to compare and contrast the two making sure that they can tell the difference. In this activity the teacher will have cut out each individual card. The teacher will distribute the cards to the students and ask them to have a look at both sides. After a minute has gone by the teacher will then ask the students to fold their cards over and get into a pair. One student in the pair will then present a certain result and ask the student to form the question. Here with the prompts, why be you hungry? The student will of course ask why are you angry? The other student will then flip over the rest of the card and read wait for you since 6 o'clock and hopefully come up with a statement because I've been waiting for you since 6 o'clock. However, with this card we won't be using the same tense again we'll be asking why are you hungry? The student will have to answer because I haven't eaten all day. Hopefully by the end of the activity the teacher will be able to recognize that the students are correctly deciding which tense the activity needs to be put into. Here's another activity for comparing and contrasting the tenses focusing here in this activity on the present perfect and the present perfect continuous. So in the activity students will start at the start and roll a die. Perhaps they could roll a five though they will read something you've been learning for a long time. The appropriate sentence may be I've been learning English for a long time. The next student may go and roll a four. They read a beautiful place you've visited. Then rather than the present perfect continuous present perfect tense I've visited Paris. You can encourage students to even ask follow-up questions which would also include other tenses. What was so beautiful about Paris? Now this activity will be particularly good for your more advanced students who are capable of using various tenses accurately. It's also good in the beginning of your course when students perhaps don't know each other very well and they're using this as a way to learn about their past experiences. Now here's a teaching idea for the present perfect continuous tense. If you remember we use this tense to talk about actions that had been continuing up until the present moment or very recently. In this activity you'll be giving a student a card. That card will include the past activity as well as some results. This card says you've been driving in the rain on your motorbike. You're all wet and your clothes are too. The results are you're all wet and your clothes are too. You'll present that information to the rest of the class and therefore it's up to the class to guess the action that was occurring up until the certain point in time. What will happen in this activity is the student at the front of the room will express the present results. Clothes being wet. I'm all wet. The students in the group then will form their questions obviously in the present perfect continuous tense such as have you been swimming? Have you been playing golf in the rain? The student at the front of the room will form his answers in the similar tense no I haven't been or yes I have been. If there are troubles guessing the activity the teacher could perhaps prompt the student in the front of the room to use a mime and they will obviously mime in this case the driving of the motorbike. Eventually the idea will be to guess that activity that again had been happening up until the certain point. You've just seen a few ideas for teaching the present tenses. Please bear in mind that these are just a few ideas and then of course there are many more. You'll find them online and of course you can create your own to better suit your class. We've seen the present tenses in isolation now let's look at them together. Our first example is I play football every week. This is the present simple tense and it has the structure subject I plus verb play. This is quite a simple tense for students to form however to be aware of the third person singular form he, she or it which usually adds an S or an ES to the end of the base form of the verb. I play football but he plays football. Also the question and negative forms using the auxiliary verb do or does. Do you play football? I don't play football. She doesn't play football. The present simple tense is used to talk about habits, routines, facts and general truths and as such it's probably the most commonly used tense within the English language. Our second example sentence I am playing football at the moment is the present continuous tense. This has a different structure has the subject I the verb to be in the present tense and is or are plus the verb with an I in G on the end so here I am playing football at the moment whereas the present simple tense is used to talk about habits, routines and facts the present continuous tense is used to talk about actions in progress at the time of speaking or around the time of speaking. Our third example sentence is the present perfect perfect I have played football twice this week here the structure is the subject I auxiliary verb have or has plus the past participle the past participle is usually formed just by adding E D on to the end of the base form of the verb however students need to be aware of the many irregular verbs such as no would change to known go to gone understand to understood and so on unfortunately there are no rules for this and they just have to be learnt individually the present perfect always relates the past to the present this can be through the unfinished past where we're expressing duration such as I have played football for 10 years the indefinite past expressing experience in your life such as I have been to Italy and Spain and also to show the present result of a past action I have broken my leg I broke it in the past and it remains broken in the present our final present tense is the present perfect continuous tense our example sentence here I have been playing football for 10 years has the structure subject plus auxiliary verb have or has a second auxiliary verb here been plus verb ing I have been playing very much like the present perfect tense the present perfect continuous relates the past to the present but more focus on the continuity or the duration of the action it can also be used to express the unfinished past such as the example here I have been playing football for 10 years an action that began in the past and still continues in the present we can see that this particular usage of the unfinished past can be used for both the present perfect and the present perfect continuous where we've got action verbs we usually prefer to use the present perfect continuous however there are state verbs which don't usually go into the continuous form such as no we would say I have known her for 10 years not I have been knowing her for 10 years so when we have the state verbs such as no, be, seem and appear we would usually put these in the present perfect but with the action verbs such as play, cook work we will use these in the present perfect continuous normally we also use the present perfect continuous fairly frequently with words such as just or recently to express a recently completed action with the present result for example, I am tired because I have been playing football here now are some tips on the successful completion of your three tense units first, when identifying a sentence as 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 have created a sentence you feel is appropriate to look and analyze that sentence's form before looking at its usage when asked for reasons why you have identified a specific tense be sure to list a usage if you are 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 are really explaining it to the low level student rather than your tutor 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 1. to maximize student talk time be sure that your activity allows for the students to speak as much as possible 2. be sure that the students are using the language freely and in an open ended way so as to maximize or improve fluency 3. focus on the target language we always want to be ensuring that our students are using the very language point that we have 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