The topic below is a good one to revisit from time to time – use of tenses. Kelly sent in this question for consideration by the group:
Hi, Ben,
I am really struggling with asking the stories in the past tense. It just feels so unnatural to me. When I have actors and the story is unfolding in front of the class, I just naturally speak in the present tense. And when I’m typing up the story after class, it’s natural for me to want to put it in the past tense because it happened earlier in the day. And I really like my upper levels to see the past tenses written out.
I know you’ve said to trust you on this one, but I just can’t get it to work for me. When I remember to ask the story in the past, I usually end up jumbling all three tenses together, which must confuse the hell out of the kids.
I’d really appreciate your advice on this. As always, THANK YOU so much for facilitating this PLC and infusing it with your wisdom and experiences. It’s invaluable to me.
Kelly
My response:
First, here is an important thread from a past article on this topic that can shed some background light on this issue:
https://benslavic.com/blog/2009/07/06/tense-use-in-tprs/
I personally struggled with this a lot for five years before I finally decided. We went through so many nuanced discussions it got silly. Can you imagine? A bunch of adults talking about something like this for like over five years and never coming to a strong and clear conclusion?
And this is a good place to say that we all must make our own decisions on everything having to do with comprehension based instruction and that there is no one way to do it.
Now, the natural inclination, one that I did for years, is to do exactly what you describe because it just felt right. However, under pressure from experts like Blaine and Susie and Diana and all sorts of personal trial and error work, I switched and I’m glad I did. Why?
It’s subtle. When we talk to people, do we talk mainly in the present? Is not the past a hugely present form in languages? Is not fossilization a big issue in beginning speech? Is it not true that kids trained only in the present tense in first year remain pretty much out to lunch in the proper use of verb tenses in future years? See this link for more on that particular discussion:
To take a step back from the confusing picture thus presented, we probably should agree that language really relies on past tense forms a lot. For me, that means making sure they hear them a lot in my classes.
The way I personally have my week set up, on Monday I PQA three structures to set up a story for the next day or two. See:
Now, PQA is largely a present tense deal, but not always. But the kids do hear a lot of PQA on Monday.
Then on Tuesday and Wednesday they get the past in heavy doses in the story. But then look what happens on Thursday in the reading class – readings are done in the present tense. So the kids read the story in the present and so transfer meaning and visual forms effortlessly (at least in French).
So the frequent spinoffs of the reading text at the end of the week make it so that on Monday and Thursday and also Friday (since I have this year changed Friday all around to focus more on novels as I mentioned here about a week ago – I will update the schedule when I can to reflect 2012 and not 2011 so this big change won’t be so confusing).
So to recap this: I personally always do stories in the past, but when I do PQA and discuss the readings, we roll in the present tense. Thus, the students get frequent, understandable repetitions of the present, the past, and the imperfect tenses in level 1 in kind of equal doses throughout the week.
Now Kelly I think that you could be happy doing your week in the opposite way, with stories in the present and the reading in the past. But, for me, it gets clumsy to discuss the readings in the past. I don’t know why. But that is just me. I could see it done the opposite way. Remember, the only thing that counts is to make sure that the kids hear lots of vereb tenses, including sprinklings of the subjunctive, all week.
What if some of us did it the one way and some others the other way and we can report back and see what happens? I like that idea. That’s a good idea!
Related: