Unlock with PatreonThe Problem with CI
To view this content, you must be a member of Ben’s Patreon at $10 or more Unlock with PatreonAlready a qualifying Patreon member? Refresh to
Question on Use of Verb Tenses
Share:
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
LinkedIn
Ben Slavic
Get The Latest Updates
Subscribe to Our Mailing List
No spam, notifications only about new products, updates.
Related Posts
CI and the Research (cont.)
To view this content, you must be a member of Ben’s Patreon at $10 or more Unlock with PatreonAlready a qualifying Patreon member? Refresh to
Research Question
To view this content, you must be a member of Ben’s Patreon at $10 or more Unlock with PatreonAlready a qualifying Patreon member? Refresh to
We Have the Research
To view this content, you must be a member of Ben’s Patreon at $10 or more Unlock with PatreonAlready a qualifying Patreon member? Refresh to
17 thoughts on “Question on Use of Verb Tenses”
Perhaps if the reader interested in this topic were to read these links to previously published articles on this topic here on the PLC, we could then talk about them in the comment fields below and try to answer this question so that it is crystal clear to all involved and then they can then make their own best decisions about what is right for them in their classrooms:
https://benslavic.com/blog/on-use-of-tenses-in-stories-and-readings/
https://benslavic.com/blog/tense-use-in-tprs/
https://benslavic.com/blog/past-vs-present/
https://benslavic.com/blog/verb-tense-question-again/
https://benslavic.com/blog/12048/
I would add that the question is excellent. If the structures are presented and PQA’d in the present, as they are written in Jim’s script, and then all of a sudden the teacher starts a story with an actor up and starts to go line by line through the script, each time throwing her thumb over her shoulder (to indicate past tense) while using a sound that is totally different from what was introduced in the Step 1 PQA, wouldn’t that be confusing? And then in the reading the tenses appear in the present? Let’s see how this conversation unfolds after those interested have had a chance to read some or all of the articles mentioned in the comment field above.
After looking at the earlier threads, I find that my approach has remained fairly consistent, and it works for me and my students. Keeping in mind that German is different from Spanish is different from French is different from Russian is different from Chinese etc.,
1. I do PQA primarily in present tense but use whatever tense occurs naturally.
2. When I have actors up and am narrating the story, I use the present tense because we are essentially “watching the film”.
3. When I am reviewing the action of the story, I use the Gesprächsform (conversational past) because we are having a conversation. Sometimes, though, I will revert to the present tense because it “feels” right.
Excursus: This sort of thing occurs regularly in all sorts of literature and even has a name. When I was doing biblical exegesis, we called this the “historical present”. The writer or speaker gets so caught up in the moment that he makes an historical event “present” to the audience. Listen to people speak. In English, everyone does this naturally: “So yesterday we had a baseball game, and the other team’s pitcher hit our batter on a pitch. Our guy was so mad that he goes out to the mound and starts yelling at the pitcher, only then the umpire comes out and kicks our guy out of the game. So we lost our best hitter.” (N.B.: boldface indicates change of tense.) There are no rules for this, we just do it naturally because it feels right and we are so caught up in the event that it once again is present before us. I would love to get that kind of engagement with my students all the time.
4. When we read the story, I use the Erzählform (narrative past) because a) we are reading a narrative and b) this is the culturally authentic place that students will most often encounter this tense (i.e. reading stories).
From Carol Gaab I picked up the idea that we write the new tense (or other conjugation form) on the board only when it is different enough to cause comprehension problems. For example, the first time I go from “he plays” to “he played” in the narrative past, I will write
er spielt he plays
er spielte he played.
Once we have gotten a few reps with that, I will almost never again have to write the weak (default = -ed) past tense because my students don’t perceive this as truly different; they understand the meaning. For strong verbs, I have to write the narrative past quite often, for example
er nimmt he takes
er nahm he took.
The nice thing about this, though, is that the narrative past is so often close to the present or its English cognate and consists of just one word that students tend to reach recognition proficiency quite quickly.
The conversational past is another beast entirely, and I need to write the new form on the board for almost every target verb. (Sometimes everyone is so involved in what is happening that they get the meaning while ignoring the form, especially for non-targeted verbs. Whew!) For example, I definitely need to write the new tense for “to be”:
er ist he is
er ist gewesen he was/used to be/was being etc.
or “give”:
er gibt he gives
er hat gegeben he gave/used to give/was giving/has given etc.
I think you see the picture
Even the present tense sometimes needs to go on the board as I switch from one person to another. Usually “he” to “you” (one person, student) and vice versa is no problem, and I simply clarify that I am talking to you, not about him. Example: er gibt / du gibst. However, the “I” form needs to go on the board: ich gebe. Every form of “to be” needs to be written on the board because they are all so different.
Something I learned from my colleague who teaches French and English is that the convention in English (and I have subsequently confirmed for German) is to discuss the action in literature, stage and film in the present tense, even though the original work may be in the past and we have already seen, heard, or read it. Consequently, we can read “Poor Ann” and then talk about it in the present tense because that is the agreed-upon way of doing it. (BTW, this reinforces for students how they talk about literature in their English classes.)
Again, keep in mind that I am speaking from the perspective of teaching German. Just as our individual application of TPRS/TCI is affected by our personalities, strengths, weaknesses, and interests as teachers, so too is it affected by the language we teach. For a language that has no tense, this is not an issue; other things are.
Spanish isn’t as in depth as German- by far. However, the spelling relationship between the past and the present are not obvious at times. (S/he gets nervous- the verb(s) do not look similar. At least in my head. Se pone nervioso vs Se puse nervioso) I would anticipate total confusion. However, I like the way Robert says he reviews in the past and then continues in the present. Seems more natural and less confusing for the teacher as well as the students. While reviewing the script the teacher could easily go over this difference- briefly. 😉
I think the verb situation is the one place that German is easier than Spanish and English. German has a grand total of six indicative tenses: pluperfect, perfect, preterite, present, future perfect, future (to use the latinate grammar terms – English has about 18). There are no progressive tenses (is seeing, has been going), no emphatic forms (will vs shall for future and future emphatic), no special interrogative forms (e.g. “do you have?”; in German it’s simply “have you?”), and the future parallels English in having a separate word to indicate future rather than a whole new set of suffixes. German nouns and pronouns are definitely more complex (the whole three-gender and case system).
I agree that verbs like pone/puso and tiene/tuvo definitely need to be given as separate lexical items. In fact, for novice low (and probably novice mid, even novice high?) learners, essentially everything is lexical. They don’t have enough information to construct a system yet. It’s similar to what happens with kids as they grow up. At first everything is lexical, and they use “went” correctly; then – I think it’s about age 2½ to 3 – their brain partially maps the system and gets the “default” past tense, so suddenly they start saying “goed” instead of “went”. I always congratulate my students when they say things like gehte (= “goed”) instead of ging (“went”) because it shows that their brains are acquiring the verb system and are mastering the default setting but haven’t quite mapped the custom settings yet.
I find that even if I put the target structures on the board in the present, which is the way Anne Matava and Jim Tripp write them, and then PQA them in the present and then switch everything over to the past for the story, the students still understand it. Of course, until their mind accepts the new programming, I throw my thumb over my shoulder to help the comprehension.
But then when I go back to the present for the reading, there is no confusion. We spoke in Step 1 in the present or whatever appropriate tense, then we built the story in the past forms and then we read it in the present. The key is that they are able to transfer all meaning without thinking about it (remember we want them focused on the meaning and not the words).
We all do it differently. At the end of the year, my level one students are very much at ease with the present, past, imperfect, near future and they have a base for the future and conditional tenses, and have heard and comprehended lots of stealth subjunctive forms, without ever having heard that word once.
I hope that doesn’t offend any teachers who still believe that we are not supposed to go beyond the present tense in level one.
I hope that doesn’t offend any teachers who still believe that we are not supposed to go beyond the present tense in level one.
Actually, Ben, I think you don’t care whether or not you offend them; you’re doing what works best for your students in the situation. Perhaps they need to be offended. 🙂
Yes Robert M. le Chevalier, I suppose you are right on that point. I am just so used to seeing those teachers everywhere. It just seems hard to believe that they will all be gone soon, as this new model takes hold. Maybe all I needed to do was click my heels together to see that those harpies never did exist, never have existed, never will exist, never would have existed, never could have existed, and don’t really exist now for all the good they are doing – and you better spell those verb forms right! Why I didn’t just click my heels earlier I don’t know. But now I can say that I have finally clicked my heels together and awoken and crawled out of a really big bag of illusion about best practices in language instruction. For proof that I am now awake, all I have to do is look back on the teachers – many of them and just getting started – whom I saw teach in Denver and Chicago. I made lost of snapshots in my minds of these new real teachers as they took deep breaths and got in front of the War Room crowd and worked. I saw some of them face something in their teaching that required more than a few gut checks. It was in those moments, those gut check moments, and also those moments when they took the group to the CI skies for a fun ride, that I realized that my dream was over, and that a new day has finally arrived for the teachers and even more importantly for their students, because I don’t like to see students shamed. What a thing to see. I never thought I would see what I saw the past few weeks. But I did. Carly, Brian, Ray, go down the list. Seeing them teach signaled a kind of final end to all that insanity that has preceded us, all that fighting, all that silly nonsense. You are right. I don’t have to apologize for this stuff to anyone anymore. Deep breath. Ours is a better way to teach. Thank you for the reminder, Robert.
Related: https://benslavic.com/blog/not-any-more/
Related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1bFr2SWP1I
I have struggled with this a lot over the years, but usually end up just doing what is natural in the moment and forgetting what I’m “supposed” to be doing. Which means that I usually PQA in the present tense and create the story in the present tense (since it’s unfolding in the moment), then I type up the reading in the past tenses and ask questions about the reading in the past. The kids are constantly mixing their tenses in any language anyway, so I find that it doesn’t hinder comprehension. The confusion comes with their output, so I usually end up spending extra time getting reps in the past on Mondays, for example, when we’re talking about what they did over the weekend, then extra time on the near future on Fridays when we’re talking about what they’re going to do for the upcoming weekend. I’ve resigned myself to just speaking naturally for the situation, and trying to get extra reps when there is confusion (i.e., when a kid says or writes “Last weekend I’m going to the mall…”).
….the kids are constantly mixing their tenses in any language anyway, so I find that it doesn’t hinder comprehension….
This is as we do in regular speech so it’s an important point, Kelly. This model is so new, and some of us have been separating tense instruction for so long, that we forget that natural speech mixes up tenses.
My experience has been that, when reading a text that was just told in the past tense (in the story) their minds just switch to comprehension and they are almost unaware that the spellings are different, since they are focused only on what it means.
For those who do the story in the present and the reading in the past, it’s the same thing – they read for meaning and their unconscious minds build an instant database on the spelling/formation of each verb and so the whole thing becomes more like a process of unfoldment into the form of the language and not a nervous study of discrete forms, which is just plain ass boring.
This is a timely discussion for me bc I’m going to go beyond present tense for my incoming level 1 class for the first time. It will be uncomfortable for me, I’m not sure why, but it will push me in a good way I think.
I simply must remember that my main goal for levels 1 and 2 is comprehension, not output. I can make the tenses comprehensible with gestures. They can show me their comprehension in a zillion ways. As long as I go slow and check, and they don’t fake it, we’ll be fine.
This brings us to Blaine’s method of having the actor up and answering in the present tense and stepping out of the present into the past to report to the class- output which is okay if you have a willing student! When I heard it two years ago, it seemed clunky to me. I have now observed and coached a bunch of people who do it, and maybe if it feels natural to me, I will be able to try it effectively for some PQA. Someone once told me they thought that deviating from the present tense in French 1 resulted in their never having a grasp of the present , but that is sheltering grammar. I tend to agree with Kelly – they all mix up their tenses and as long as they comprehend it’s all good. Ben, I am glad to hear from the French point of view that your kids seemed to just sort things out.
I always remember Susie Gross reminding us that the tenses will be jumbled for the first couple years. I think she meant output-wise, but that is just my interpretation. I remind my students the same thing, and I check constantly for comprehension. Feels like it does not take that long for them to distinguish when they are receiving input. They usually catch themselves “She goes to Boston…no , WENT to Boston.” Stuff like that. I tell them not to worry about it as long as they are following the context / meaning. I use dictee to hone in on these differences, but not in a supr out of control way. That said, if your district requires certain outcomes, I would recommend dictee as a way to focus on grammar.
…I think she meant output-wise….
That’s what I understood her to mean as well, jen.
And also in my view the best place to focus on grammar and structure is during the reading. It is where my inner grammar teacher is let out of imprisonment from time to time for good behavior. If the text is written in the present, I can write and color code the just-used (in the story) past forms, and vice versa if the reading text is written in the past.
Dictee and reading are going to be the only places to do this, along with in the reading of the chapter books. But the kids don’t care about those spellings – maybe one or two kids in the class will.
Like jen said, as long as the students are listening and focusing on the meaning we are totally good as we continue to allow the turbines of the deeper mind to do their thing of blending sound with image to create meaning with absolutely zero dependence on the conscious faculty.
If you have the latest edition of the “Green Bible”, you can read Von Ray’s Athenian Study. Susie helped write it. I just re-read it last night and it is what Jen said the end results suggest that story creation in past, read in present seems to yield better results for acquiring the past tense.
This is another one of those questions that will not ever have a definitive answer. Same goes for choosing the “right structures.” Thus is the nature of the beast. If it’s comprehensible and i+1, then kids can acquire. I think we should shut up the inner traditional teaching demon who wants us to slice up the language into pieces and organize it and control it. That demon makes it hard to provide i+1 and really hard to provide compelling i+1. And since we only know there is an order of acquisition, but we don’t know the exact order, and we know students acquire at different rates, then the best we can do is provide tons of unsheltered CI. The more unsheltered CI we can provide, the wider the net we can cast over students who are all at a different level i. So, if it can be made comprehensible, then it should be included in the input.
I have this feeling that the way tenses are best acquired is when they’re all experienced in the same sitting (as happens naturally), thus allowing the internal mechanism to process the differences. I’m not saying it happens consciously. This is not about consciously noticing the differences. But I feel like the subconscious gets better quality input to the LAD if the focus stays on the message and the input is diverse. That means going beyond giving CI on one tense per class. We need intra-class tense variety. One way I want to try this is by using a verb in 3 tenses as my 3 structures. I want stories to start in the past (20 years ago, he ate scorpion), go to the present (now he eats tarantulas), and finish in the future (20 years from now he will be eating cockroaches). Another way to accomplish this would be 3-ring-circus-style.
I don’t expect all of this will lead to accuracy of tense production. They’re beginners. It should fast-forward their path to accuracy and we can probably see more real gains in the accuracy of comprehension of the various tenses. I know VanPatten has written, as have others, that we acquire a little bit of multiple tenses simultaneously, rather than as tense units.
When we pop-up grammar, as we tend to do more of in reading, we may or may not be facilitating acquisition. If the weak version of Krashen’s theory is true, then this grammatical knowledge can make input more comprehensible, thus helping acquisition. I don’t think Krashen would give much weight to that means of acquisition. I think more and more that a strong version of Krashen’s theory is correct, that CI alone is sufficient. Under the strong version, I allow that the learning from practice of form can make small contributions to our accuracy to those of us known as good monitor-users. But I’m clear on the fact that it is different from acquisition. It happens differently in the brain and is thus a different experience, different from the way we experience first language use. So we should put some focus on form if we accept the weak version of the Comprehension Hypothesis, if we want students to have another means of editing their writing, and if we believe (as I do) that some of us can use learning to fill our acquisition gaps. I know I do this all the time when I say “if this . . . would that.”