Learning through activities! Present simple Vs. Present Continuous!
Present Tenses!
Teaching a new language is not so easy. If you want your students to learn what you are teaching effectively, you always need to find some different ways of teaching. As an English teacher, I do my best to use different activities or materials to do my best. Present simple and Present continuous are two main tenses in English. After teaching these two tenses, it is time to compare and learn the differences between them.
If you want to use my idea about teaching these tenses, you need to make sure that your student already know the structures and aims of these tenses. When they know how these tenses function, it is pretty easy to teach them differences between them. Here is the way of my own teaching. As I am already working in a private school, I have already done this in my own classes.
Let's read!
If you want your students to notice the differences between the tenses, it is a good idea to let them read something where they can see how the phrases are used, so you won't need to give extra explanation about the tenses, they will get it by themselves. This following text can be a good one to teach them the differences.
Reading
The weather is terrible in New York. Maria is a young accountant. She normally works in the office, but today she is working at home. She usually goes to work by her car, but it impossible as there is too much traffic in city today. She hardly ever watches tv, but it is a boring day today, so she is watching a new program on tv now. She always drinks some coffee in the morning, but today there isn't any coffee. Therefore, she is drinking some tea while watching.
Time to set the rules!
When your students are done with reading, you may ask them to complete the following rules by using the suitable words. They may keep an eye on reading so that things can be easier for them. You might provide these sentences to make them understand the exercise.
Present simple or Present Continuous.
Please complete the rules with suitable tenses and give one example with each tense.
We use..... to talk about things that happen all the time. The most known words / phrases we use are ...............
We use.......... to talk about that things which are happening at the moment. The most known words/ time phrases we use are......
Practice!
When they set the rules, it is time to practice what they have just learned. The best ways of practicing these tenses is to write dialogues or questions so that all students can join in activities. You can give some words to your students and expect them to form up some sentences to see how good they are at using the tenses you have just taught them. Check the following example.
Let's write some questions with suitable tenses by using the following words. Our subject is you!
a) read / book / every day? Do you read a book every day?
b) watch / tv / now? Are you watching tv now?
You might write more words to lead them in making questions and asking each other. This is the best way of practicing these two major tenses in English language.
Creativity!
When you give some tasks which can urge your students to be creative, they will surely be more interested in doing homework. I think, we also need to be creative if we want to present them some meaningful tasks!
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