GUIDING YOUR STUDENTS INTO THE PAST TENSE

Hi there!

Today I would like to share with you an easy but effective way to "guide"  your students into the world of the Past Tense, without having them to learn lots of new Past Tense verbs first.  

* Before we play,  I put a bunch of "time words" on the board, such as: YESTERDAY, 2 DAYS AGO, LAST FRIDAY, LAST WEEK and THIS MORNING and I only briefly explain their meanings. 

These are the 3 steps I follow...

STEP 1: First we play DEALER'S CHOICE using only  Yes, I did / No, I didn't  questions.

Q. Did you watch TV yesterday?

Q. Did you read a book last week?

Q. Did you do homework 2 days ago?

Q. Did you eat curry and rice last Friday?

* During the first few games  I often check with the students, to see if they know the meaning of the questions... 

The Time Words

Assigning a Time Word to each color  using the Color Codes

STEP 2: We play FIRST OUT 

This time the students have to make the questions themselves. And as in step 1, everybody answers with "Yes, I did" or "No, I didn't". But this time we use the Color Codes and each color has a "time word" assigned to it.

Once I think they're ready, we go to the final step...

* You can also do Q&A pair work with your students before they go to the next step. This way they get a change to talk about the past, using all the Present Tense verbs they know, while internalizing all the Time Words...

Q. Did you go to school today?

Q. Did you watch TV yesterday?

Q. Did you study Japanese this week?

Q. Did you read a newspaper last week?

STEP 3: In the last step I introduce the Past Tense forms of the verbs they already know: watched, played, ate, drank, went, studied etc. (I just put them on the whiteboard and we go over them one by one for pronunciation and meaning)

Some past tense verbs....

Then we play FIRST OUT again. But this time the students have to use the new Past Tense verbs in their answers:

Q. Did you watch TV yesterday?

A. Yes, I did. I watched TV yesterday.

No, I didn't. I watched TV 2 days ago.

A more advanced answer: 

Q. Did you watch TV yesterday?

A. Yes, I did. I watched TV yesterday. I watched "Doreamon" yesterday.

     No, I didn't. I watched TV this morning. I watched YouTube videos yesterday.

Note: Although I use "LMQ" as my main teaching tool, I also have the students do Q&A pair work so they can freely adjust their questions and answers as they see fit. The  most important  is that the students "own" the language, as opposed to "borrow" the language from the teacher....

Stay safe and till next time,

Jay