Book Review: The English Tenses

Tenses can be tricky!

This review is late. I read this book about a month ago and had a review written up to auto publish about two weeks ago. Unfortunately, due to the magic elves that live in my computer. I have no idea where the original review went, and I've been very busy with school lately and unable to write a new one. Apologies again to author Phil Williams for this delay.

The English Tenses Practical Grammar Guide is not a book I would suggest students or teachers read from start to finish (though you certainly could). I would suggest that teachers keep this on hand to review before teaching a specific tense (or to brush up if they are teaching a new level). I would also encourage advanced students who learn well independently to consult this book to help them grapple with English tenses.

Basically, this would be a great addition for any English teacher's bookcase.

This book goes into a detailed description of the differences between all the different tenses of past, present and future. Seriously, all of them. Go to the link I gave above (or click on the book cover below) and check out the, "look inside" function Amazon gives. You'll be able to peruse the very detailed table of contents to get an idea of exactly what is in the book.

To the left you'll see a quick example of the table of contents with all of the different information is has on past tense! This repeats for the future and present tense as well.

Each section includes an explanation and the basic rules of the specific form in question. Then, Phil goes over the affirmative, interrogative, negative and negative question forms using multiple different examples and charts to make it clear what part of the sentence correlates to previous examples.

As a paperback, this book is under $25. If you read books on your tablet, kindle or online, then you can download the Kindle version for less than $7.00! It has AT LEAST 100 pages of solid information on tenses sure to clarify this topic to anyone who reads it.

Overall I'd encourage you to add this book to your wishlist. If you do get a chance to read it, or have a different text you'd recommend let me know in the comments.

You're Getting Old! (Verb Tenses)

Have you ever noticed that when you teach something, you see examples of the grammar all over! This summer I taught past and present perfect in a TOEFL prep class and the website: http://you.regettingold.com/ started getting passed around my Facebook pages.

The site is super easy to use. Simply go to the link and plug in a birthday, then  specify if you are doing this for you or for someone else.

In this case I am putting in what many people believe to be Harry Potter's birthday: July 31st, 1980. After I put in the birthday and name I press go and voila! Tons of great sentences:

Check out the AMAZING variety of sentences here. We have simple present sentences, present perfect, past perfect and past passive. We have irregular verbs (i.e. is, take, beat). If your students have been taught to identify different sentences, see if they can do so now. If you are the type of teacher who prefer that students understand meaning rather than grammar make sure they notice the different way.

The website goes on. It gives you plenty of examples of the perfect tenses as well as passive (Ronald Reagan was elected President. ET was released.)

I suggest you go through the site a few times with different birthdays: celebrities, student volunteers, authors, create birthdays for characters in books you read etc.

Are you this old?

After students get the idea have them create their own "website." I am really into using things like this for literature, so I would have them do it with a character from a story we have read. If you don't read stories in class have them make it for themselves. (Note: the website will not work for people born before 1900, so you'd have to use people from the 1900s on).

The website gives examples, but if your students need prompts:

• To see Emmy winners look at the Emmy website.
• To find heart beats and breaths taken you can go to the Bloodindex site.
• To find the date of famous people's deaths (by year) search FamousDeaths 
• Your students can find Olympic medalists (and the year) on Wikipedia
• You can find number one songs from different years on Number One In History
• You can find famous birthdays on History Orb 

I hope you ans your students find this website as fun to play with as I do!