In storytelling, many of us create stories with our students in the past tense. Then, we read generic (for all five classes) or specific (per each individual class) readings of those stories in the present tense the next day. Identification of present tense forms in reading is easily done when the story has been told in the past. Most PQA activities, as well as dialogues within stories, occur in the present tense, as well, so the students get a good amount of three tenses (present, past, imperfect) as they go through their academic week. Before TPRS, teachers considered it impossible to teach three verb tenses in the first year of study, and maybe that was true with traditional methods. Now, it is easily done. The important result is that, when students thus trained respond to past tense questions, their responses are not fossilized in the present tense, vastly helping confidence and overall acquisition, not to mention scores on standardized examinations that align, as all should, with the ACTFL proficiency guidelines. If you are new and just starting out on your TPRS journey, it is strongly advised that, when you start stories in a few months after getting to know your kids with plenty of fun PQA (usually in the present tense) first, you create those stories in the past tense and then create the readings that come from those stories in the present tense. Just sayin’.
