Using Timelines to Teach Verb Tenses

[Music] [Applause] [Music] in this session we're going to take a look at using time lines to teach grammar time lines are a visual tool that we provide or we build for students so that they can better understand that actions that are represented by the different verb tenses in English so in this session I'm going to start by giving you some tips or just some ideas for how to get started when you're drawing your time lines for students then we're going to take a look at each one of the verb tenses in English in turn and what time lines for those verb tenses might look like so let's get started a time line is simply a way that we can represent how an event looks in terms of time with a particular verb tense so a time line starts first of all by placing by creating a single point in time that we use as our reference point and that point is always now so we're gonna start with indicating on the board now here's where now is happening and then we draw a horizontal line that indicates the passage of time and then over this side we're going to label our past and over this side we're going to label our future so here's now here's the past and then here's the future that's the first thing we do when we're constructing any time line so so far we've represented our three elements of time on our time line we've got our past we've got our now or a present and we've got our future the next thing that we have to represent is the aspect aspect if you recall is the type of event that is occurring and there's three main types of events that we need to represent visually somehow on our time lines the first of these is a single event of a specific point in time so the easiest way to represent this on time line is with an ex okay some people like to represent it with an up and down line on top of the line but this unfortunately can get confused with our representation of the present or the now so this is actually not that good of an option so an X to represent a single specific time he's a good way to go the next type of event that we need to represent somehow is a progressive continuous or ongoing event so this is our continuous aspect yeah there's a few different ways that we can represent this visually the one I like is we start with a straight up-and-down line but then we just do a squiggly line so this indicates that the event is ongoing another way to represent this is to have a line and then just a straight line with an arrow so these are the two clearest ways to indicate we've got this event that's ongoing now the final aspect that we need to represent some house a little bit more challenging and this is the perfect aspect if you recall the perfect aspect links one event usually in the present with an events that happened in the past so we're linking time somehow so the easiest way to represent this type of event or this type of action is I'm gonna draw another line here just to represent my past in my future having two recent used to have an event happen but then to draw an arrow linking it back or if it links to the future I'm going to link it into the future somehow or if it happens in the past but it's important now in the few in the present I'm gonna have an arrow that shows that linkage so these are the three aspects that we have to visually represent a specific event an ongoing event and an event that somehow links through time so that's the second thing to put into your timeline the next thing that we need to represent somehow on our timelines is whether we know when an event takes place or whether we don't know it so the easiest way if we know so for example I've got a specific event that's already finished and I know when it happened so I'm going to put that time on to my timeline I'm gonna indicate that I know when this even happened if I don't know when something happened I'm just gonna put a question mark on top of it so that tells me I know when this event happened versus I don't know when this event happened another piece of information that we might need to put on our timeline is duration so how long an event takes place over what time lapse we're talking about duration is easiest to represent simply by indicating a starting point and then a finishing point and then putting the time period underneath so maybe this is 16 years for example okay so this tells me I've got some kind of duration going on we can also use color in our time lines to make things jump out so the background of our timeline is black on white so if I even just use color for a single event that event really jumps out so if I want to illustrate he called last night I'm gonna use orange to make a bright orange cross or X on my timeline and then I'm going to label the event is called so that jumps out much more than if I just use black okay however I can also use color if I've got two events happening at the same time and I want to illustrate those two events and have them easily distinguished one from the other so if I've got the sentence he called while I was eating dinner so I've got two events he called and me eating dinner so I already got he called on there and that's in orange so I'm gonna use green for eating dinner so I don't actually know when I started eating dinner but I do know that it was going on when he called okay so I'm using my green to illustrate the second action happened in this sentence so these are two ways to use color one simply to get it to jump out and then the second way is to contrast two events happening at the same time and just a couple of final quick tips for making timelines to remember the first one is pretty obvious but it's important to remember try to make sure that your lines are straight I have a tendency unfortunately to make my lines go up this way so I always have to be careful and I'm making time lines that I've actually got straight lines up and down and the second thing to keep in mind is make sure that your words and your labeling is big enough so that students right at the back of your class can actually read it so there's no point in having this little teeny tiny timeline if your students at the back can't read it so two final tips to keep in mind let's take a look at each of the verb tenses in turn in how we might represent those verb tenses on a time line it's really important to remember that we've got form when it comes to our verb tenses so how we make them and then we've got use how we use them or why we use them time lines illustrate the use they obviously don't illustrate the form so sometimes with verb tenses we actually have multiple timelines because we use those verb tenses in different ways and simple present is an excellent illustration of this simple present is quite simple to make but it is actually more difficult to learn in terms of its use and we actually have to use multiple timelines to illustrate the multiple uses of simple present we obviously wouldn't teach all of these timelines to our students all at once but as a teacher we need to know them I'm just gonna do a few of the timelines for simple present and I'm gonna leave you to figure out the rest so simple present is most often used to talk about habit or routine so these are things that I do often or frequent Lior rarely and so on so how do we represent this visually on the timeline it's not an event that happens now it doesn't happen in the past and it doesn't happen in the future so what do we do because we can't just have a single event here or a single event here or a single event here because this doesn't capture the idea that we do this over and over again what we do is we put multiple events at regular intervals to illustrate so for example every morning I eat yogurt for breakfast so I do it in the past I did it in the past I do it now and I probably will do it in the future so every morning I eat yogurt for breakfast so these X's at regular intervals illustrate the usage of simple present I eat yogurt every day so I have put my sentence I eat yogurt every day and then I've Illustrated it with my events happening at regular intervals we also use the simple present for general truths so for example the Sun rises in the east and sets in the west we can actually illustrate this exactly the same way on our timeline because every single day the Sun rises in the east and sets in the west so we've got this event happening all the time across our three pieces of time past present and future so we can use it for general truths as well so the Sun rises every day in the East for example okay so this is how we can illustrate the general truth the same thing if we want to talk about the temperature that water boils at or what things are made of and so on it doesn't matter it's a general truth we can illustrate it the same way because every time this event happens it happens the same way another use of the simple present is to talk about a regularly scheduled event for example the train leaves at 7:30 p.m. so I'll put that up here train and this is a regular event so probably tomorrow the train leaves at 7:30 p.m. tonight it leaves at 7:30 p.m. probably last night at left at 7:30 p.m. as well so I'm going to illustrate it first of all by putting my main event there so it's not 7:30 p.m. yet but when 7:30 p.m. comes around that train is leaving and probably the night after at 7:30 p.m. the trains leaving again and probably yesterday the train left at 7:30 p.m. yeah probably the day before the train also left at 7:30 p.m. so this is how we would illustrate simple present to talk about a regularly scheduled event that is coming up soon so the train leaves at 7:30 p.m. one last simple present use that I like that all illustrate as a timeline because this really shows the power of timelines he's using simple present for sports commentary so if you're Canadian you're very familiar with he shoots he scores and this is any commentary that tells listeners the exact events happening right now so this would go right here so this exact moment in time he shoots and then at the next exact moment in time he scores so this is a really interesting use of the simple present for commentary he shoots he scores this is placing these events at this exact moment in time so this is simple present for ongoing sports commentary these are just a few examples of using time lines to illustrate some of the uses of the simple present there are more as I mentioned so try those on your own figure out time lines for the other uses of the simple present the next verb tense that we'll look at is the simple past this one's a little bit easier than the simple present because there are not quite as many different usages of the simple past so generally we use the simple past to talk about a single finished event that occurred in the past at a specific time this is very simple to show on a time line so here's my event and then above that I'm going to put the time at which the event happened so I watched a movie last night so that's my sentence I watched last night okay so here's my event watched and then my time I'm going to label yes last night so single event that happened in the past its complete and it happened at a specified time last night there are a couple of other interesting uses of simple pass that we can illustrate with a timeline as well so one of them is actually a habit or routine in the past so we've already seen the simple present to describe an ongoing habit but we can use the simple past to use to describe a habit that occurred in the past so for example if I have a sentence I studied French when I was in high school or I studied French in high school let's make it a bit simpler because it's pretty obvious I'm not in high school anymore so I studied French yeah high school my writing is getting worse here so I'm going to put an event here and my time frame is in high school and I studied French so I don't study French anymore but back in the past when I was in high school I studied French another way that I could possibly illustrate this let me just grab another marker here yes I might want to show a little bit of a time span so instead of using an X I'm going to use a duration and I wanted to label that duration in high school so this shows me that it's not a single point in time by the time span okay so we can choose two different ways to illustrate I studied French in high school and we'll look at one last use of the simple past we can have a series of events in the past that occurred one after the other and they're all finished so for example last night I finished work I ate dinner and then I watched TV so I finished work I ate dinner and then I watched on TV so I finished work ate dinner and watched TV so I've got event number one finished work event number two dinner and event number three watched TV so I can use the simple past for this series of completed events in the past [Music] now let's take a look at the simple future remember with the simple future we have two choices we have the simple future using will and the simple future using going to for these examples I'm just going to use will and some of the uses of will are very different from going to and some are the same so I'm just gonna stick to will for this demonstration and you can figure out going to on your own so the first use of the simple future with will is to make a prediction so for example I will finish my degree next year so I'm predicting based on all the evidence that I will finish my degree next year so here's my sentence I finish my degree next year okay so we're done with the past so we need to move over to this part of a hard time line and here's my event that's going to be finishing my degree and my time yes next year okay so that's how I would illustrate that use of the simple future the next use of the simple future is to make a promise so for example I could say I will call you tomorrow so that's my sentence you tomorrow okay so my event is going to happen tomorrow so I'm going to label that as tomorrow and the action that will happen is to call so this is an illustration of a timeline for the future simple to make a promise and we'll do one more example of the simple future and this one is offering or volunteering to do something so let's say the phone is ringing now I'm sitting really close to the phone so I say I'll get it or I will get it so here's my sentence I'll get it okay that means this one is gonna be pretty close to now because right now the is ringing I don't want to ring it I don't want it rain for too long so my events going to happen right here so I will get the phone and it's really close to now so this is an example of volunteering to do something that's that needs doing right in the immediate future so these are some examples of the simple future and the timelines that would go with them there are other uses of the simple future both for will and going to so try those months by yourself [Music] now we're going to move on to another aspect so we've looked at the simple aspect now we're going to look at the continuous or the progressive aspect so we're going to start with simple continuous or simple progressive so this is a type of event that's ongoing and we want to convey to our listener that this is an ongoing event and then we need to visually represent it with our timeline so right now I am talking on the phone okay so my sentence is I am talking on the phone so how do I represent this well it's an event that's happening right now so it gets a big X in the now but we don't really know when it started and we don't know when it finished so if we want we can also use our wiggly line to indicate that this is an ongoing action okay so there's a couple of different ways we can do this we can do it just with a big X in the middle or we can do it with both an X and a wiggly line or if you want you can just do it with a wiggly line going through now so I am talking on the phone a few different ways we can represent that [Music] our next verb tense is another continuous one and this is the past continuous yeah we use the past continuous we want when we want to indicate something was going on when another event happened possibly interrupting it so how do we represent this one visually so for example I was eating dinner when he called so my present continuous is I was eating dinner so I was eating dinner when he called okay so my past continuous is I was eating dinner so we don't really know when it started but we know that it was happening we don't know when it's finished either so if I want I can put little question marks here okay so that is my was eating dinner okay and then while that was happening something else happened hang on I'm just gonna get another color marker and so I was eating dinner and then BOOM right in the middle of that he called okay so this shows that we've got two events happening one is ongoing and then one happened right in the middle of it if we want to make it even clearer we can actually label these so I was eating dinner I'm going to label as event number one and he called I write to label as event number two so this makes it even clearer to my students that I've got two events going on one is ongoing and then one happens right in the middle [Music] and our future continuous is fairly similar to our past continuous except instead of happening in this part of our timeline it happens over here so I'm going to use a similar sentence so we will be eating dinner when you arrive so we've got two events okay so I'm gonna label my events first so we will be eating dinner easy net number one yeah and I'm gonna use my blue just drop my markers there or event number two okay and my ongoing event because it's got the future continuous is eating dinner so I don't know when it started okay but it's ongoing and I don't know when it's going to finish but I know that it covers some type of time span so this is my first event eating dinner you know I'm gonna label that isn't that number one then event number two happens you decided you're gonna arrive at my house at six o'clock and you've told me that and I warn you look we will be eating dinner when you arrive so you arrive right here that's event number two that is your arrival so this is a way to illustrate the future continuous using a time line [Music] now we're moving on to one of the trickier verb tenses in English this is the present perfect and it's tricky because there are similar to the simple present there's actually a lot of different uses of the present perfect and I'm just going to give you a few of them as examples and then you can try making time lines for the other ones on your own so we use the present perfect very generally in order to indicate that an event happened in the past at an unspecified time and somehow that's important to the conversation we're having today or the position we're in today so here's an example I have b2 I have been to France this is true actually it's a great country ok so I have been to France my present perfect is right here so I have be to France okay and this event happened in the past but given the information in the sentence we actually don't know when this happened okay so we have to put a question mark here okay and then somehow the fact that I have been to France is relevant to what we're talking about right now so I'm just going to make an arrow to indicate this relevance so maybe we're talking about plans for our upcoming vacation and we can't decide where to go and you suggest France and I'm like no I have been to France I want to go somewhere else or I have been to France and I want to go again so somehow it has relevance to our present situation and the other important thing is we don't know when in the past it happened so it happened at an unspecified time another use of the present perfect is to talk about an event that happened multiple times in the past yeah we still don't know when they happen but this is relevant once again to our conversation right now so for example I have seen and that's our present perfect I have seen movie five times hey so I'm going to put it on my time line one two three four five and we don't know when I saw it so we're gonna have to put question marks in here and we're gonna join these together with an arrow too now because somehow the fact that I've seen this movie five times is relevant to what we're talking about now so for example we're trying to decide which movie to see and you suggest a movie and then I say I've seen that movie five times and I want to see it again or I don't want to see it again okay so somehow our conversation is relevant to what we're talking about now so multiple events finished in the past we don't know when and relevant to what we're talking about now and we'll do one more example of the present perfect I love this verb tense yes I'm a complete camera geek and this one illustrates yet another use of the present perfect so we're going to use the sentence he hasn't finished his homework yet okay so I'm gonna write it out I won't use the contraction he has not finished his [Music] homework yet okay so he has not finished that's my negative present perfect so we can't actually put this on the timeline because it's not it's an event that hasn't happened yet but we can illustrate the expectation that he's going to finish it so it's not finished yet but I expect really soon he's gonna have it finished so he's working on some work and then he hasn't finished it yet but he will finish okay so if you want you can use a squiggly line to illustrate okay he started it and it's not finished yet okay by expecting the very near future it will be finished so this is a use of an event not completed but we expect it to be it to be completed fairly soon or in the immediate future so here's where it will be finished and he's working on it right now so this is a little bit of a different use of the present [Music] now let's take a look at the past perfect muse the past perfect to place two events in the past in a specific order so we want to place one event before another event so for example I can say he had eaten dinner before I arrived okay so we've got two events so I'm just gonna grab another marker and let's label them so we've got event number one had eaten dinner and then event number two I arrived and event 1 finishes before event 2 so we're just placing one further back in time on the other so event number 1 goes here yeah and event number 2 goes here so that's the use of our past perfect it places one event before another event in the past I'll show you one more use of the past perfect because it's kind of a fun one so we can use the past perfect as well to illustrate something happening right up until a second event happens so for example he had had I love the head habit can get that confusing he had had the car for 10 years so that's my duration event before he crashed it sorry that's kind of a negative example isn't it ok so we've got two events one is a duration event and one is a single event so our duration event he had had the car for 10 years okay and then our single event he crashed it so how do we put this one on our timeline so we're gonna have we're gonna have our squiggly line to show our duration okay and then that hops that occurred right up until he crashed it I forgot to leave on my event so event number 2 and then duration number 3 we can actually indicate this was 10 years so that's number 1 so this is another use for this verb tense we've got a duration which stops with the occurrence of a second event [Music] now let's take a look at the future perfect so the future perfect allows us to talk about one event which will occur before a certain point in time in the future so we're in this part of our timeline so here's an example sentence I will have graduated by April next year okay so we're gonna put we have to do two things here we have to put our time frame on our timeline so I'm going to use a straight up line because this is not an event okay but this is April next year and sometimes before that time frame I will graduate so I'm going to color we're gonna use our means buddy so my graduation let's say it's gonna happen right here right but I don't really know when all I know is it's gonna be before April next year so the Future Perfect allows us to take one event graduation one right here that happens before a specific point in the future we can also use the Future Perfect to place one event before another event in time but this time in the future so I'll use the graduation an example again so I will have graduated by the time my parents arrive probably not a happy example because parents usually like to see graduation but that's the one that came to mind so we've got two events happening so we've got graduation is event number one and my parents arriving is event number two so I need to place these in order in the future so event number one he's going to go before you vent number two okay so I graduate and then my parents arrive not the best timing that we want to have happen so and you'll notice that this the parents arrived that's in the simple present so we've got our future perfect paired with our simple present and it places our two events in time in the future [Music] now we're moving on to the really interesting verb tenses the perfect plus the progressive so present perfect progressive we take two types of action and combine them together somehow to get some really interesting grammar and some interesting timelines so present perfect progressive for example I have been walking for four hours so I'm gonna put it over here to give me some space I have been wrong for four hours okay so there's my present perfect continuous so how I put this one on a time line I know that the total duration we're talking about is four hours and that four hours is right up to now so I'm gonna do a duration thing going on here and this is four hours okay yeah and just to emphasize the fact that has been going on for a long time I'm gonna put my squiggly line there so this is my walking and I also want to put my relevance arrow in here because this is relevant to our conversation somehow so maybe my friend comes up to me and says oh you look really tired like yeah I am tired I have been walking for four hours so it's relevant to our conversation right now [Music] the past perfect progressive once again takes two types of actions and puts them together but this time it's going on in the past and so what we're doing is we're taking an event with duration attached to it and then putting it before a single event so we'll use walking again so I had mean walking will make it four hours again four hours when I met him so that's my event number two when I met okay so we've got two events going on we thought our walking so--that's event number one and then I met him you'll notice this one's in the simple past that's event number two now instead of having one event in front of another we've got a duration in front of another event so it looks like this so I've got four hours here and my event is my walking and then I've got so this is event number one which is all about duration and then I've got another shorter event happened I met him okay so we take an event with a long duration in progress and we place it before a short event that starts and finishes very quickly so this is the past perfect progressive [Music] last but certainly not least we've got the future perfect progressive so once again we're taking a progressive ongoing action and pairing it with a completed action but this time it's all going in the future but it's relevant to what we're talking about right now so it gets a little bit complicated so here's the sentence we're going to use we're going to use the walking thing again so I will have been walking for four hours so that's our event number one and that's our future perfect progressive when I arrived so it's gonna take me four hours of walking to get to wherever it is I'm going your house or some kind of destination so how do we Ella straight this up we need to vent number two which is I'm our auditing so we've indicated that in our sentence so now we're gonna put them on our timelines so I don't actually know in when my walking started but I've got so I'm gonna have to have some kind of question mark here but this is four hours so we've got four hours of duration and this is our walking okay and I know label a decedent number one and then event number two is I arrived okay so in the future we've got an ongoing action of duration for four hours and then something happens after that to interrupt that ongoing action and probably it's relevant somehow to what we're talking about so it would be a good idea to put this little arrow back to whatever we're talking about right now so for example when I meet you I'm gonna be really tired because I will have been walking for four hours when I arrive so that's the future perfect progressive so what I've taken you through first of all was a series of tips or ideas or techniques for making timelines to illustrate the different verb tenses in English so that your students can have a better understanding of those verb tenses then I took you through each of the verb tenses in turn and how you could create timelines or what those timelines would look like to illustrate the different uses of those verb tenses remember I did not cover every single use of every single verb tense so there are some uses of these verb tenses for you to try on your own keep timelines in your repertoire when you're teaching grammar these are an invaluable tool to help students visually understand how to place events in time with the different verb tenses in English [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Advance Consulting for Education

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Keywords: Advance Consulting for Education, ACE, Teaching English, English as a Second Language, Teaching ESL, ESL, EFL, TEFL, TESL, TESOL, Teaching Tips, Teaching Techniques, Teaching Strategies, Teacher Professional Development, Teacher PD, Professional Development, The PD Exchange, The Professional Development Exchange, www.thepdexchange.ca, how to teach grammar, teaching grammar, English grammar, www.aceducation.ca, Dianne Tyers

Id: a9_PGNWzzu8

Length: 41min 32sec (2492 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 03 2019