Sunday 16 March 2014

The Present Perfect Tense - Simplified


In this blog post I have created an infographic to simplify the Present Perfect tense, my objective is to make this tense less intimidating for students. 

Students arrive with a built in aversion to the Present Perfect tense and generally speaking they find it illogical and confusing. I have experimented with a number of different ways of teaching the Present Perfect tense: I've tried combining it with the Present Perfect Continuous, contrasting it with the Past Simple and teaching just one use of the tense at a time. I have found that the most successful method is to start by focusing on four common uses of the Present Perfect tense.  I provide my students with lots of practical examples and situations, focusing on the use rather than the meaning of the tense.  Once they have become more confident, I then move on to comparing and contrasting with other tenses. 

In addition to the infographic, I have given some examples of ways to practise the four uses in class and a list of web exercises with answers that could be given to students for self study.




https://magic.piktochart.com/output/1482813-the-present-perfect-tense


Thursday 6 March 2014

Bridging the gap to Africa - Intermediate video lesson

A video lesson about a young girl named Tippi and her special relationship with Africa. 




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLoN6pD_JeA
Tippi in Namibia courtesy of You Tube