GOTOCO describing language
GOTOCO
describinglanguage
unit 4 – describing language
introduction
grammar issues
nouns
pronouns
verbs
adverbs
punctuation tips
conditionals
questions
contents
unit 4describinglanguage
in this unit:
Learn common grammatical errors so as to �x them in class
Learn the grammar Chinese students often struggle withto help focus your teaching
Learn the varied verbs, nouns, pronouns and other parts of speech
describinglanguage
For this fourth unit we will review the way to describe language, based on its different parts. We will review the different parts of speech so as to afford a better understanding of each aspect of a sentence for teaching and review.
You must consider that some students have had a better education than others.
Some have a very good understanding of their own language and some do not.
A student may ask you what type of word ‘under’ is. You may tell them it is a
preposition, drawing blank looks. Even if you looked up the Chinese term for this
‘jie ci’ (介词) they still might have no idea what you are talking about so it’s always
important to review the very basics of a language and know how to explain them
to a foreign learner. Most students will understand the basic ideas of nouns,
verbs and adjectives, but making sentences is not so easy. Students that are not
so natural with learning sentence structures will constantly need to be reminded
of basic concepts such as verb agreement, i.e. 'I play', 'he plays', and
subject-verb-object sentences.
talking about language
Teachers and students need to know how
to describe language in order to teach
and learn. Without the ability to describe
each component of a new language,
teachers cannot answer students’
questions. Teachers need to understand
language in order to explain something
new and to correct mistakes. This
includes knowing the different sounds in
language, knowing why we say sentences
in certain orders, and why certain phrases
are used like ‘big sale’ as opposed to
‘strong reduction’, as would be literally
translated from other languages.
In order to talk about language, teachers
must know each element of language.
While this seems remedial, the learning
process of language elements for
teachers was taught so long ago (or
maybe not at all) and has become a
natural process in the brain. Most native
English speakers would not be able to
explain exactly how and why they use
certain grammar structures in everyday
life. This chapter will not explain
everything, but will show you which
elements Chinese students struggle with
and why.
Check out the links in the text below for
more grammar tips
http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/
english-grammar
https://www.englishclub.com/
Example
Example
the order of sentences
‘The cat chased the mouse.’
Here ‘the cat’ is the subject, ‘to chase’ is the verb, and ‘the mouse’ is the object.
Verbs with objects are referred to as ‘transitive’.
Complements are used with verbs such as ‘seem’, ‘look’, or ‘be’. The intent is to
provide information about the subject.
‘She seems mad.’
Here the verb is ‘to seem’ and the complement is ‘mad’.
Below we have emphasised the grammar points which challenge Chinese
students the most. Watch out for the ‘China focus’ boxes.
In English the order of sentences is often described in the following terms:
Subject Verb Object/Complement/Adverbial phrase
Example
Example
Example
Example
Example
Sentences can exist with only a subject and verb. These are called ‘intransitive’.
‘He cried.’
There are two types of objects
1. Direct
Direct objects refer to things or people who are affected by the verb.
‘He loved her.’
2. Indirect
Indirect objects are the people or things which benefit from the action.
‘She drew him a picture.’
Adverbial phrases are those which complement the verb much the same as a
‘complement’ complements the subject.
‘She lived in Frankfurt.’
In the sentence above ‘in Frankfurt’ is adverbial of place.
Multi-clause sentences are those which have more than one clause.
‘They enjoyed a meal.’
‘The man met the woman.’
When reviewing grammar, teachers need to know different parts of speech. This
begins with nouns.
noun identificationNouns are, as we are taught in
school, a person, a place, or an
object. They can also be a quality,
an idea, or even an activity. For
example: Mark is a person,
navigation is an activity,
independence is an idea and a
desk is an object.
nominal wordsNominal words are those words
or word groups which are used as
a noun. So, ‘Mark runs’ includes
the nominal word ‘Mark’.
common nounsCommon nouns refer to general
names such as ‘house’ or ‘table’.
These nouns can be abstract or
concrete.
concrete nounsConcrete nouns are, as the name
would suggest, an object which
you can physically see or touch.
abstract nounsAbstract nouns are qualities or
ideas. For example:
‘independence’ or ‘freedom’.
collective nounsNouns can be countable or
uncountable. The name implies all
you need to know: countable
nouns can exist as multiple
individual units, meaning they can
be counted. Uncountable nouns
cannot be divided into separate
elements, so cannot be made
plural.
The word ‘apple’ is
countable because you
can say ‘two apples’ or
‘twenty apples’. But the
word ‘food’ is
uncountable; you
cannot say ‘two food’
or ‘twenty food’.
pronounsPronouns assume the place of
nouns, which are often referred to
as the antecedent. For example:
John questioned whether he
would make it to work on time.
In the example above, John and
‘he’ are the same, but ‘he’
appears instead of John.
Example
pronoun formsThere are nine pronoun forms and
they are: demonstrative, indefinite,
intensive, interrogative,
possessive, relative, and reflexive.
Whenever you are writing or
speaking, the pronoun has to
agree with the antecedent. This
means that should your
antecedent be plural, the pronoun
must be too; if the antecedent is
female, the pronoun must be too.
nominative pronoun caseWhen pronouns take the
nominative case they exist in the
form of:
I, you, he, she, it, we, they, who
In this case, the nominative case
pronoun is the subject for your
sentence. For example: She went
to the yoga class.
nominativeIhe/sheityouwe theywho
objectivemehim/herityouusthemwhom
possessivemy, minehis/her/hersitsyou/yoursour/ourstheir/theirswhose
objective noun caseWhen pronouns take the objective
case they exist in the form of:
Me, you, him, her, it, us, them, whom
In this case, the objective case
pronoun is the direct or indirect
object of your sentence. For
example: He offered her a ride home
As the name would suggest, the possessive noun case indicates possession.
For example: That is my dog. Here, personal pronouns refer to the individual who is speaking in
first person, to the individual spoken to in second person, or to the individual about whom the
speaker is talking in third person.
reflexiveIf the subject completes an action for
itself or to itself, then it becomes
reflexive, such as ‘myself’, ‘ourselves’,
‘yourself’, or ‘yourselves’.
possessive noun caseWhen pronouns take the possessive
case they exist in the form of:
indefinite pronounsIndefinite pronouns are often found in
sentences which contain ‘any’, ‘all’, ‘none’, or
‘some’ and do not have a specific antecedent.
They include things such as ‘somebody’,
‘another’, ‘everyone’, ‘no one’, etc. For
example: ‘Somebody took the dogs’.
If they are used alone, they are indefinite
pronouns, but if they are used in conjunction
with a noun, they are indefinite adjectives. For
example: ‘Somebody found some keys’.
There are several in the cupboard. (indefinite
pronoun)
There are several people in the square.
(indefinite adjective)
I found some in the draw. (indefinite pronoun)
I noticed some paper on the table. (indefinite
adjective)
interrogative pronounsThese are pronouns used to ask questions. They
can be personal or they can be non-personal.
Who/Whoever: Personal subject
Whom/Whomever: Personal object
Whose: Personal possessive
Which: Non-personal subject
What: Non-personal subject
For example: Which student has the drawings?
Questions
Chinese students struggle with questions but
thankfully there are many variations of
activities to include them for practice.
Questions in English are difficult due to
auxiliaries required for verbs, adjectives and
nouns.
Closed questions require a yes or no answer
whereas open questions use what, where,
when, why, who, how, whose and which.
‘To be’ questions: use the auxiliary particles
‘am’/’is’/’are’ when the key element of the
question is a noun or adjective
What is your name?
Is she sad?
How is the weather?
‘To do’ questions: the auxiliaries ‘do’/’does’
are employed with questions that focus on
verbs
Do you like eggs?
Does Tommy write a diary?
When does she work?
Which carpet colour do you prefer?
If students can grasp this logic it’s fairly
straightforward to make past tense questions
by changing the auxiliary to the past tense:
‘am’/’is’—‘was’, ‘are’—‘were’,
‘do’/’does’—‘did’
verbsVerbs are action words. They
express actions, states of being, or
relationships between two items.
transitive verbsTransitive verbs are those which take
objects. For example: ‘Mark took the
toys’.
intransitive verbsThese verbs do not take an object.
Instead, they express action which
does not require someone to be
doing something to anyone else. For
example: ‘Mark left’. The verb here is
‘to leave’. Or ‘Jane is sleeping’.
linking verbsLinking verbs are verbs which link
the agent to the remainder of your
sentence and explain the link
between the remainder of your
sentence and your subject. For
example: with the verb ‘seem’, you
can form the sentence ‘John seems
tired from work’.
participlesParticiples can function as part of a
verb, or they can be a noun or
adjective. The participle modifies the
verb, verb phrase, noun, or noun
phrase. It is a non-finite verb form.
I saw David eating noodles.
I have eaten lunch already.
active and passive voice
Sentences can be active or passive. Therefore, tenses also have
'active forms' and 'passive forms'. The concept of passive
sentences is slightly different in Chinese Mandarin as compared to
English, so ensure you explain it clearly to your students.
In active sentences, the thing doing the action is the subject of the
sentence and the thing receiving the action is the object. Most
sentences are active.
[subject (doing the action)] + [verb] + [object (receiving the action)]
For example
David cleans the house.
Tracy learns English.
In passive sentences, the thing receiving the action is the subject
of the sentence and the thing doing the action is optionally
included near the end of the sentence. You can use the passive
form if you think that the thing receiving the action is more
important or should be emphasised. You can also use the passive
form if you do not know who is doing the action or if you do not
want to mention who is doing the action.
[Thing receiving action] + [be] + [past participle of verb] + [by] +
[thing doing action]
For example
John was taught how to read.
Kevin was hit by the ball.
Both passive and active forms can occur in a range of different
tenses so make sure you always pay attention to them when
teaching different tenses.
CHINA FOCUSEnglish has 14 tenses which is somewhat daunting for someone
whose language does not employ tense in the same way, such as
Mandarin. Mandarin, and other forms of ‘Chinese’ languages,
often uses time references, such as ‘today’ or ‘last week’, to
indicate time or a particle that can express an action has been
completed, but there are no formal tense structures.
It is important to remember that your students will usually range
from complete beginners through to intermediate learners. They
will usually be learning or need to learn the more basic tenses
such as the simple present, present continuous, the simple past,
the simple future and the present perfect. You may have more
advanced students, in which case knowledge of more difficult
tenses will be necessary, such as the past perfect: had done.
Below, we briefly introduce some of the most important tenses,
which you will use most commonly while teaching.
The simple present.
There are two main uses for the simple present:
1. An action that is regular or repeated
‘She goes to school on weekends’
‘I often visit my grandmother’
2. Facts, truths and things
‘He’s my real father’
‘Dogs eat meat’
‘She does not like eggs’
Key point: Chinese people do not conjugate their
verbs, so naturally forget all the time to add an ‘s’
to verbs with he, she or it as their subject.
The Present Continuous
This tense is also known as the present progressive and has
several different uses:
1. An action happening ‘right now’
‘Look, the cat is dancing’
‘I’m reporting for the news channel’
2. An action happening around now or continuously over a period
of time
‘Hi, mother, I’m in China studying Chinese, teaching English and
learning to cook’
‘I’m teaching a class right now so I cannot speak on the phone’
Key point: the first usage is fairly straightforward but
it is important to make students understand that this
tense can also be used to talk about things that are
not happening ‘right now’ but ‘around now’. It would
be very strange if someone asked ‘What are you
doing?’ on the telephone and someone replied ‘I’m
talking to you’, rather they are more likely to say ‘I’m
doing the gardening’. This is an action which is not
literally still happening at that moment, but it is
happening ‘around now’.
3. The present continuous is also used to talk about the future
‘Tomorrow I’m playing football so I cannot meet you’
4. It can also be used to talk about changes over time.
China is becoming richer
Children are getting naughtier etc
The Simple Past
This tense is employed for actions that happened in a specific
finished time and are themselves finished.
He ate dinner at six o’clock (the dinner is gone and the time is a
finished past time).
He ate the dinner (this sentence does not have the specific
finished time in it but we can guess from the context or the
speaker when the finished time was—maybe the speaker
previously told us).
Regular verbs often just add ‘ed’ but many common verbs are
irregular and the forms must be learnt: ‘sell’—‘sold’,
‘buy’—‘bought’, ‘see’—‘saw’, ‘catch’—‘caught’, etc.
Common finished time phrases should be made clear to the
students: yesterday, last week/month/year, When I was+age,
when I was in/at +place, …ago
The Simple Future
We talk about the future using ‘will’ to indicate things that are
regular but will happen in the future e.g. I will go to work on
Monday (I always go to work on Monday) or ‘we will meet again’
We also use it for natural states or truths in the future, e.g. ‘We will
all die one day!’, or ‘I will be in the hospital at 6.00pm’.
We can talk about plans and decisions using the ‘be going to’
structure.
‘I’m going to buy that jacket’
‘She’s going to Italy in July’ (We could also use ‘she will go to Italy’
but this would indicate she regularly goes. Here, it is her plan).
Key point: students should be aware of the difference
between ‘going to’ and ‘will’ but they should not
worry too much as most native speakers do not
consider this when they use one or the other.
However, sometimes it may sound unnatural for this
reason.
The Present Perfect
This tense is a tricky one but also commonly used so it cannot be
overlooked.
Students often get confused between its different uses.
The tense is always formed in the following way:
Subject+have/has+past participle
1. I have lived here for 4 years.
She has had that jumper forever
Here, an action which started in the past continues up until now
and, maybe, into the future. Most Chinese students with a level
above beginner have some idea of this tense. However, its second
usage is a little more perplexing.
2. Students often learn the ‘I have done something’ usage early
on as it is so important in English. Consider ‘I have been to +
place’
However, they rarely fully understand its usage.
‘I have seen the movie Frozen’ is clearly a finished action from the
past, so this sentence has a different usage to the first example. It
is not still happening now.
These actions were finished in the past but..
are important…
are connected to…
are related to…
are relevant to…
change or influence...
…the present
We often do not need to know when the action happened but just
want to know if it happened or not.
For example, ‘I have seen that movie’ is both important now and
influences now. Because you have seen it, we might not watch it
again. When you watched the movie is not important.
Key point: In contrast to the simple past which is
always paired with specific finished times the present
perfect is often used with unfinished (or non-specific)
time phrases such as this week, this year, in my
career, in [year], etc. We often see the pattern with
the present perfect that there is a connection
between the past and the present. All these time
phrases indicate a time that is still happening now
despite the action happening in the past. ‘In my life’
is a phrase we may not say but it is implied in
experiences: ‘I have been to France three times (in
my life)’. We do not need the ‘in my life’ but it is
implied in most statements about experience.
The above explanations are fairly brief and have a limited number
of examples. For further study and research see:
http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/english-grammar
https://www.englishclub.com/
Gerunds
From a beginner level to the most advanced, gerunds are an
essential piece of grammar that many students neglect.
Gerunds are verbs that are used in a similar fashion to nouns,
always in the format: verb+ing.
Gerunds are not only very useful but can also be essential in some
sentences.
They can be subjects (Swimming is fun), objects (I love dancing)
and complements (My biggest flaw is being late). There are other
specific grammatical uses but these are the basic ones that
Chinese students need to know and often have problems with.
Consider this question and its answer: What makes you angry?
Breaking a glass makes me angry. If we were to try to say this
without a gerund we might have to make a longer and more
cumbersome sentence like ‘when I break a glass I feel angry’ or ‘if
I drop a glass I get angry’ and this would not exactly correlate with
the question asked. Gerunds often form a natural part of speech.
A common mistake which is difficult to master but nevertheless
important and worth spending time on is how verbs are followed
by -ing forms (doing) or infinitives (to do)
Consider: ‘She likes baking cakes’ and ‘she likes to bake cakes’.
Both sentences are fine grammatically.
However ‘she suggested to go to France’ is incorrect.
‘However’ can only be followed by an -ing form: She
suggested going to France.
‘We are preparing having a party’ is also incorrect because
‘prepare’ can only be followed by an infinitive: We are
preparing to have a party.
It doesn't matter what the tense of the main verb is but we
should know if it is followed by an infinitive or an -ing form.
Below is a link to a useful list of verbs that use an infinitive,
gerund or both, sometimes with a change to the meaning and
sometimes without. For example ‘he stopped playing football’
and ‘he stopped to play football’ have very different meanings
http://www.engvid.com/english-resource/verbs-followed-by-g
erunds-and-infinitives/
English has 14 tenses which is somewhat daunting for someone
whose language does not employ tense in the same way, such as
Mandarin. Mandarin, and other forms of ‘Chinese’ languages,
often uses time references, such as ‘today’ or ‘last week’, to
indicate time or a particle that can express an action has been
completed, but there are no formal tense structures.
It is important to remember that your students will usually range
from complete beginners through to intermediate learners. They
will usually be learning or need to learn the more basic tenses
such as the simple present, present continuous, the simple past,
the simple future and the present perfect. You may have more
advanced students, in which case knowledge of more difficult
tenses will be necessary, such as the past perfect: had done.
Below, we briefly introduce some of the most important tenses,
which you will use most commonly while teaching.
The simple present.
There are two main uses for the simple present:
1. An action that is regular or repeated
‘She goes to school on weekends’
‘I often visit my grandmother’
2. Facts, truths and things
‘He’s my real father’
‘Dogs eat meat’
‘She does not like eggs’
Key point: Chinese people do not conjugate their
verbs, so naturally forget all the time to add an ‘s’
to verbs with he, she or it as their subject.
The Present Continuous
This tense is also known as the present progressive and has
several different uses:
1. An action happening ‘right now’
tenses
‘Look, the cat is dancing’
‘I’m reporting for the news channel’
2. An action happening around now or continuously over a period
of time
‘Hi, mother, I’m in China studying Chinese, teaching English and
learning to cook’
‘I’m teaching a class right now so I cannot speak on the phone’
Key point: the first usage is fairly straightforward but
it is important to make students understand that this
tense can also be used to talk about things that are
not happening ‘right now’ but ‘around now’. It would
be very strange if someone asked ‘What are you
doing?’ on the telephone and someone replied ‘I’m
talking to you’, rather they are more likely to say ‘I’m
doing the gardening’. This is an action which is not
literally still happening at that moment, but it is
happening ‘around now’.
3. The present continuous is also used to talk about the future
‘Tomorrow I’m playing football so I cannot meet you’
4. It can also be used to talk about changes over time.
China is becoming richer
Children are getting naughtier etc
The Simple Past
This tense is employed for actions that happened in a specific
finished time and are themselves finished.
He ate dinner at six o’clock (the dinner is gone and the time is a
finished past time).
He ate the dinner (this sentence does not have the specific
finished time in it but we can guess from the context or the
speaker when the finished time was—maybe the speaker
previously told us).
Regular verbs often just add ‘ed’ but many common verbs are
irregular and the forms must be learnt: ‘sell’—‘sold’,
‘buy’—‘bought’, ‘see’—‘saw’, ‘catch’—‘caught’, etc.
Common finished time phrases should be made clear to the
students: yesterday, last week/month/year, When I was+age,
when I was in/at +place, …ago
The Simple Future
We talk about the future using ‘will’ to indicate things that are
regular but will happen in the future e.g. I will go to work on
Monday (I always go to work on Monday) or ‘we will meet again’
We also use it for natural states or truths in the future, e.g. ‘We will
all die one day!’, or ‘I will be in the hospital at 6.00pm’.
We can talk about plans and decisions using the ‘be going to’
structure.
‘I’m going to buy that jacket’
‘She’s going to Italy in July’ (We could also use ‘she will go to Italy’
but this would indicate she regularly goes. Here, it is her plan).
Key point: students should be aware of the difference
between ‘going to’ and ‘will’ but they should not
worry too much as most native speakers do not
consider this when they use one or the other.
However, sometimes it may sound unnatural for this
reason.
The Present Perfect
This tense is a tricky one but also commonly used so it cannot be
overlooked.
Students often get confused between its different uses.
The tense is always formed in the following way:
Subject+have/has+past participle
1. I have lived here for 4 years.
She has had that jumper forever
Here, an action which started in the past continues up until now
and, maybe, into the future. Most Chinese students with a level
above beginner have some idea of this tense. However, its second
usage is a little more perplexing.
2. Students often learn the ‘I have done something’ usage early
on as it is so important in English. Consider ‘I have been to +
place’
However, they rarely fully understand its usage.
‘I have seen the movie Frozen’ is clearly a finished action from the
past, so this sentence has a different usage to the first example. It
is not still happening now.
These actions were finished in the past but..
are important…
are connected to…
are related to…
are relevant to…
change or influence...
…the present
We often do not need to know when the action happened but just
want to know if it happened or not.
For example, ‘I have seen that movie’ is both important now and
influences now. Because you have seen it, we might not watch it
again. When you watched the movie is not important.
Key point: In contrast to the simple past which is
always paired with specific finished times the present
perfect is often used with unfinished (or non-specific)
time phrases such as this week, this year, in my
career, in [year], etc. We often see the pattern with
the present perfect that there is a connection
between the past and the present. All these time
phrases indicate a time that is still happening now
despite the action happening in the past. ‘In my life’
is a phrase we may not say but it is implied in
experiences: ‘I have been to France three times (in
my life)’. We do not need the ‘in my life’ but it is
implied in most statements about experience.
The above explanations are fairly brief and have a limited number
of examples. For further study and research see:
http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/english-grammar
https://www.englishclub.com/
Gerunds
From a beginner level to the most advanced, gerunds are an
essential piece of grammar that many students neglect.
Gerunds are verbs that are used in a similar fashion to nouns,
always in the format: verb+ing.
Gerunds are not only very useful but can also be essential in some
sentences.
They can be subjects (Swimming is fun), objects (I love dancing)
and complements (My biggest flaw is being late). There are other
specific grammatical uses but these are the basic ones that
Chinese students need to know and often have problems with.
Consider this question and its answer: What makes you angry?
Breaking a glass makes me angry. If we were to try to say this
without a gerund we might have to make a longer and more
cumbersome sentence like ‘when I break a glass I feel angry’ or ‘if
I drop a glass I get angry’ and this would not exactly correlate with
the question asked. Gerunds often form a natural part of speech.
A common mistake which is difficult to master but nevertheless
important and worth spending time on is how verbs are followed
by -ing forms (doing) or infinitives (to do)
Consider: ‘She likes baking cakes’ and ‘she likes to bake cakes’.
Both sentences are fine grammatically.
However ‘she suggested to go to France’ is incorrect.
‘However’ can only be followed by an -ing form: She
suggested going to France.
‘We are preparing having a party’ is also incorrect because
‘prepare’ can only be followed by an infinitive: We are
preparing to have a party.
It doesn't matter what the tense of the main verb is but we
should know if it is followed by an infinitive or an -ing form.
Below is a link to a useful list of verbs that use an infinitive,
gerund or both, sometimes with a change to the meaning and
sometimes without. For example ‘he stopped playing football’
and ‘he stopped to play football’ have very different meanings
http://www.engvid.com/english-resource/verbs-followed-by-g
erunds-and-infinitives/
English has 14 tenses which is somewhat daunting for someone
whose language does not employ tense in the same way, such as
Mandarin. Mandarin, and other forms of ‘Chinese’ languages,
often uses time references, such as ‘today’ or ‘last week’, to
indicate time or a particle that can express an action has been
completed, but there are no formal tense structures.
It is important to remember that your students will usually range
from complete beginners through to intermediate learners. They
will usually be learning or need to learn the more basic tenses
such as the simple present, present continuous, the simple past,
the simple future and the present perfect. You may have more
advanced students, in which case knowledge of more difficult
tenses will be necessary, such as the past perfect: had done.
Below, we briefly introduce some of the most important tenses,
which you will use most commonly while teaching.
The simple present.
There are two main uses for the simple present:
1. An action that is regular or repeated
‘She goes to school on weekends’
‘I often visit my grandmother’
2. Facts, truths and things
‘He’s my real father’
‘Dogs eat meat’
‘She does not like eggs’
Key point: Chinese people do not conjugate their
verbs, so naturally forget all the time to add an ‘s’
to verbs with he, she or it as their subject.
The Present Continuous
This tense is also known as the present progressive and has
several different uses:
1. An action happening ‘right now’
‘Look, the cat is dancing’
‘I’m reporting for the news channel’
2. An action happening around now or continuously over a period
of time
‘Hi, mother, I’m in China studying Chinese, teaching English and
learning to cook’
‘I’m teaching a class right now so I cannot speak on the phone’
Key point: the first usage is fairly straightforward but
it is important to make students understand that this
tense can also be used to talk about things that are
not happening ‘right now’ but ‘around now’. It would
be very strange if someone asked ‘What are you
doing?’ on the telephone and someone replied ‘I’m
talking to you’, rather they are more likely to say ‘I’m
doing the gardening’. This is an action which is not
literally still happening at that moment, but it is
happening ‘around now’.
3. The present continuous is also used to talk about the future
‘Tomorrow I’m playing football so I cannot meet you’
4. It can also be used to talk about changes over time.
China is becoming richer
Children are getting naughtier etc
The Simple Past
This tense is employed for actions that happened in a specific
finished time and are themselves finished.
He ate dinner at six o’clock (the dinner is gone and the time is a
finished past time).
He ate the dinner (this sentence does not have the specific
finished time in it but we can guess from the context or the
speaker when the finished time was—maybe the speaker
previously told us).
Regular verbs often just add ‘ed’ but many common verbs are
irregular and the forms must be learnt: ‘sell’—‘sold’,
‘buy’—‘bought’, ‘see’—‘saw’, ‘catch’—‘caught’, etc.
Common finished time phrases should be made clear to the
students: yesterday, last week/month/year, When I was+age,
when I was in/at +place, …ago
The Simple Future
We talk about the future using ‘will’ to indicate things that are
regular but will happen in the future e.g. I will go to work on
Monday (I always go to work on Monday) or ‘we will meet again’
We also use it for natural states or truths in the future, e.g. ‘We will
all die one day!’, or ‘I will be in the hospital at 6.00pm’.
We can talk about plans and decisions using the ‘be going to’
structure.
‘I’m going to buy that jacket’
‘She’s going to Italy in July’ (We could also use ‘she will go to Italy’
but this would indicate she regularly goes. Here, it is her plan).
Key point: students should be aware of the difference
between ‘going to’ and ‘will’ but they should not
worry too much as most native speakers do not
consider this when they use one or the other.
However, sometimes it may sound unnatural for this
reason.
The Present Perfect
This tense is a tricky one but also commonly used so it cannot be
overlooked.
Students often get confused between its different uses.
The tense is always formed in the following way:
Subject+have/has+past participle
1. I have lived here for 4 years.
She has had that jumper forever
Here, an action which started in the past continues up until now
and, maybe, into the future. Most Chinese students with a level
above beginner have some idea of this tense. However, its second
usage is a little more perplexing.
2. Students often learn the ‘I have done something’ usage early
on as it is so important in English. Consider ‘I have been to +
place’
However, they rarely fully understand its usage.
‘I have seen the movie Frozen’ is clearly a finished action from the
past, so this sentence has a different usage to the first example. It
is not still happening now.
These actions were finished in the past but..
are important…
are connected to…
are related to…
are relevant to…
change or influence...
…the present
We often do not need to know when the action happened but just
want to know if it happened or not.
For example, ‘I have seen that movie’ is both important now and
influences now. Because you have seen it, we might not watch it
again. When you watched the movie is not important.
Key point: In contrast to the simple past which is
always paired with specific finished times the present
perfect is often used with unfinished (or non-specific)
time phrases such as this week, this year, in my
career, in [year], etc. We often see the pattern with
the present perfect that there is a connection
between the past and the present. All these time
phrases indicate a time that is still happening now
despite the action happening in the past. ‘In my life’
is a phrase we may not say but it is implied in
experiences: ‘I have been to France three times (in
my life)’. We do not need the ‘in my life’ but it is
implied in most statements about experience.
The above explanations are fairly brief and have a limited number
of examples. For further study and research see:
http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/english-grammar
https://www.englishclub.com/
Gerunds
From a beginner level to the most advanced, gerunds are an
essential piece of grammar that many students neglect.
Gerunds are verbs that are used in a similar fashion to nouns,
always in the format: verb+ing.
Gerunds are not only very useful but can also be essential in some
sentences.
They can be subjects (Swimming is fun), objects (I love dancing)
and complements (My biggest flaw is being late). There are other
specific grammatical uses but these are the basic ones that
Chinese students need to know and often have problems with.
Consider this question and its answer: What makes you angry?
Breaking a glass makes me angry. If we were to try to say this
without a gerund we might have to make a longer and more
cumbersome sentence like ‘when I break a glass I feel angry’ or ‘if
I drop a glass I get angry’ and this would not exactly correlate with
the question asked. Gerunds often form a natural part of speech.
A common mistake which is difficult to master but nevertheless
important and worth spending time on is how verbs are followed
by -ing forms (doing) or infinitives (to do)
Consider: ‘She likes baking cakes’ and ‘she likes to bake cakes’.
Both sentences are fine grammatically.
However ‘she suggested to go to France’ is incorrect.
‘However’ can only be followed by an -ing form: She
suggested going to France.
‘We are preparing having a party’ is also incorrect because
‘prepare’ can only be followed by an infinitive: We are
preparing to have a party.
It doesn't matter what the tense of the main verb is but we
should know if it is followed by an infinitive or an -ing form.
Below is a link to a useful list of verbs that use an infinitive,
gerund or both, sometimes with a change to the meaning and
sometimes without. For example ‘he stopped playing football’
and ‘he stopped to play football’ have very different meanings
http://www.engvid.com/english-resource/verbs-followed-by-g
erunds-and-infinitives/
tenses (cont)
English has 14 tenses which is somewhat daunting for someone
whose language does not employ tense in the same way, such as
Mandarin. Mandarin, and other forms of ‘Chinese’ languages,
often uses time references, such as ‘today’ or ‘last week’, to
indicate time or a particle that can express an action has been
completed, but there are no formal tense structures.
It is important to remember that your students will usually range
from complete beginners through to intermediate learners. They
will usually be learning or need to learn the more basic tenses
such as the simple present, present continuous, the simple past,
the simple future and the present perfect. You may have more
advanced students, in which case knowledge of more difficult
tenses will be necessary, such as the past perfect: had done.
Below, we briefly introduce some of the most important tenses,
which you will use most commonly while teaching.
The simple present.
There are two main uses for the simple present:
1. An action that is regular or repeated
‘She goes to school on weekends’
‘I often visit my grandmother’
2. Facts, truths and things
‘He’s my real father’
‘Dogs eat meat’
‘She does not like eggs’
Key point: Chinese people do not conjugate their
verbs, so naturally forget all the time to add an ‘s’
to verbs with he, she or it as their subject.
The Present Continuous
This tense is also known as the present progressive and has
several different uses:
1. An action happening ‘right now’
‘Look, the cat is dancing’
‘I’m reporting for the news channel’
2. An action happening around now or continuously over a period
of time
‘Hi, mother, I’m in China studying Chinese, teaching English and
learning to cook’
‘I’m teaching a class right now so I cannot speak on the phone’
Key point: the first usage is fairly straightforward but
it is important to make students understand that this
tense can also be used to talk about things that are
not happening ‘right now’ but ‘around now’. It would
be very strange if someone asked ‘What are you
doing?’ on the telephone and someone replied ‘I’m
talking to you’, rather they are more likely to say ‘I’m
doing the gardening’. This is an action which is not
literally still happening at that moment, but it is
happening ‘around now’.
3. The present continuous is also used to talk about the future
‘Tomorrow I’m playing football so I cannot meet you’
4. It can also be used to talk about changes over time.
China is becoming richer
Children are getting naughtier etc
The Simple Past
This tense is employed for actions that happened in a specific
finished time and are themselves finished.
He ate dinner at six o’clock (the dinner is gone and the time is a
finished past time).
He ate the dinner (this sentence does not have the specific
finished time in it but we can guess from the context or the
speaker when the finished time was—maybe the speaker
previously told us).
Regular verbs often just add ‘ed’ but many common verbs are
irregular and the forms must be learnt: ‘sell’—‘sold’,
‘buy’—‘bought’, ‘see’—‘saw’, ‘catch’—‘caught’, etc.
Common finished time phrases should be made clear to the
students: yesterday, last week/month/year, When I was+age,
when I was in/at +place, …ago
The Simple Future
We talk about the future using ‘will’ to indicate things that are
regular but will happen in the future e.g. I will go to work on
Monday (I always go to work on Monday) or ‘we will meet again’
We also use it for natural states or truths in the future, e.g. ‘We will
all die one day!’, or ‘I will be in the hospital at 6.00pm’.
We can talk about plans and decisions using the ‘be going to’
structure.
‘I’m going to buy that jacket’
‘She’s going to Italy in July’ (We could also use ‘she will go to Italy’
but this would indicate she regularly goes. Here, it is her plan).
Key point: students should be aware of the difference
between ‘going to’ and ‘will’ but they should not
worry too much as most native speakers do not
consider this when they use one or the other.
However, sometimes it may sound unnatural for this
reason.
The Present Perfect
This tense is a tricky one but also commonly used so it cannot be
overlooked.
Students often get confused between its different uses.
The tense is always formed in the following way:
Subject+have/has+past participle
1. I have lived here for 4 years.
She has had that jumper forever
Here, an action which started in the past continues up until now
and, maybe, into the future. Most Chinese students with a level
above beginner have some idea of this tense. However, its second
usage is a little more perplexing.
2. Students often learn the ‘I have done something’ usage early
on as it is so important in English. Consider ‘I have been to +
place’
However, they rarely fully understand its usage.
‘I have seen the movie Frozen’ is clearly a finished action from the
past, so this sentence has a different usage to the first example. It
is not still happening now.
These actions were finished in the past but..
are important…
are connected to…
are related to…
are relevant to…
change or influence...
…the present
We often do not need to know when the action happened but just
want to know if it happened or not.
For example, ‘I have seen that movie’ is both important now and
influences now. Because you have seen it, we might not watch it
again. When you watched the movie is not important.
Key point: In contrast to the simple past which is
always paired with specific finished times the present
perfect is often used with unfinished (or non-specific)
time phrases such as this week, this year, in my
career, in [year], etc. We often see the pattern with
the present perfect that there is a connection
between the past and the present. All these time
phrases indicate a time that is still happening now
despite the action happening in the past. ‘In my life’
is a phrase we may not say but it is implied in
experiences: ‘I have been to France three times (in
my life)’. We do not need the ‘in my life’ but it is
implied in most statements about experience.
The above explanations are fairly brief and have a limited number
of examples. For further study and research see:
http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/english-grammar
https://www.englishclub.com/
Gerunds
From a beginner level to the most advanced, gerunds are an
essential piece of grammar that many students neglect.
Gerunds are verbs that are used in a similar fashion to nouns,
always in the format: verb+ing.
Gerunds are not only very useful but can also be essential in some
sentences.
They can be subjects (Swimming is fun), objects (I love dancing)
and complements (My biggest flaw is being late). There are other
specific grammatical uses but these are the basic ones that
Chinese students need to know and often have problems with.
Consider this question and its answer: What makes you angry?
Breaking a glass makes me angry. If we were to try to say this
without a gerund we might have to make a longer and more
cumbersome sentence like ‘when I break a glass I feel angry’ or ‘if
I drop a glass I get angry’ and this would not exactly correlate with
the question asked. Gerunds often form a natural part of speech.
A common mistake which is difficult to master but nevertheless
important and worth spending time on is how verbs are followed
by -ing forms (doing) or infinitives (to do)
Consider: ‘She likes baking cakes’ and ‘she likes to bake cakes’.
Both sentences are fine grammatically.
However ‘she suggested to go to France’ is incorrect.
‘However’ can only be followed by an -ing form: She
suggested going to France.
‘We are preparing having a party’ is also incorrect because
‘prepare’ can only be followed by an infinitive: We are
preparing to have a party.
It doesn't matter what the tense of the main verb is but we
should know if it is followed by an infinitive or an -ing form.
Below is a link to a useful list of verbs that use an infinitive,
gerund or both, sometimes with a change to the meaning and
sometimes without. For example ‘he stopped playing football’
and ‘he stopped to play football’ have very different meanings
http://www.engvid.com/english-resource/verbs-followed-by-g
erunds-and-infinitives/
tenses (cont)
English has 14 tenses which is somewhat daunting for someone
whose language does not employ tense in the same way, such as
Mandarin. Mandarin, and other forms of ‘Chinese’ languages,
often uses time references, such as ‘today’ or ‘last week’, to
indicate time or a particle that can express an action has been
completed, but there are no formal tense structures.
It is important to remember that your students will usually range
from complete beginners through to intermediate learners. They
will usually be learning or need to learn the more basic tenses
such as the simple present, present continuous, the simple past,
the simple future and the present perfect. You may have more
advanced students, in which case knowledge of more difficult
tenses will be necessary, such as the past perfect: had done.
Below, we briefly introduce some of the most important tenses,
which you will use most commonly while teaching.
The simple present.
There are two main uses for the simple present:
1. An action that is regular or repeated
‘She goes to school on weekends’
‘I often visit my grandmother’
2. Facts, truths and things
‘He’s my real father’
‘Dogs eat meat’
‘She does not like eggs’
Key point: Chinese people do not conjugate their
verbs, so naturally forget all the time to add an ‘s’
to verbs with he, she or it as their subject.
The Present Continuous
This tense is also known as the present progressive and has
several different uses:
1. An action happening ‘right now’
‘Look, the cat is dancing’
‘I’m reporting for the news channel’
2. An action happening around now or continuously over a period
of time
‘Hi, mother, I’m in China studying Chinese, teaching English and
learning to cook’
‘I’m teaching a class right now so I cannot speak on the phone’
Key point: the first usage is fairly straightforward but
it is important to make students understand that this
tense can also be used to talk about things that are
not happening ‘right now’ but ‘around now’. It would
be very strange if someone asked ‘What are you
doing?’ on the telephone and someone replied ‘I’m
talking to you’, rather they are more likely to say ‘I’m
doing the gardening’. This is an action which is not
literally still happening at that moment, but it is
happening ‘around now’.
3. The present continuous is also used to talk about the future
‘Tomorrow I’m playing football so I cannot meet you’
4. It can also be used to talk about changes over time.
China is becoming richer
Children are getting naughtier etc
The Simple Past
This tense is employed for actions that happened in a specific
finished time and are themselves finished.
He ate dinner at six o’clock (the dinner is gone and the time is a
finished past time).
He ate the dinner (this sentence does not have the specific
finished time in it but we can guess from the context or the
speaker when the finished time was—maybe the speaker
previously told us).
Regular verbs often just add ‘ed’ but many common verbs are
irregular and the forms must be learnt: ‘sell’—‘sold’,
‘buy’—‘bought’, ‘see’—‘saw’, ‘catch’—‘caught’, etc.
Common finished time phrases should be made clear to the
students: yesterday, last week/month/year, When I was+age,
when I was in/at +place, …ago
The Simple Future
We talk about the future using ‘will’ to indicate things that are
regular but will happen in the future e.g. I will go to work on
Monday (I always go to work on Monday) or ‘we will meet again’
We also use it for natural states or truths in the future, e.g. ‘We will
all die one day!’, or ‘I will be in the hospital at 6.00pm’.
We can talk about plans and decisions using the ‘be going to’
structure.
‘I’m going to buy that jacket’
‘She’s going to Italy in July’ (We could also use ‘she will go to Italy’
but this would indicate she regularly goes. Here, it is her plan).
Key point: students should be aware of the difference
between ‘going to’ and ‘will’ but they should not
worry too much as most native speakers do not
consider this when they use one or the other.
However, sometimes it may sound unnatural for this
reason.
The Present Perfect
This tense is a tricky one but also commonly used so it cannot be
overlooked.
Students often get confused between its different uses.
The tense is always formed in the following way:
Subject+have/has+past participle
1. I have lived here for 4 years.
She has had that jumper forever
Here, an action which started in the past continues up until now
and, maybe, into the future. Most Chinese students with a level
above beginner have some idea of this tense. However, its second
usage is a little more perplexing.
2. Students often learn the ‘I have done something’ usage early
on as it is so important in English. Consider ‘I have been to +
place’
However, they rarely fully understand its usage.
‘I have seen the movie Frozen’ is clearly a finished action from the
past, so this sentence has a different usage to the first example. It
is not still happening now.
These actions were finished in the past but..
are important…
are connected to…
are related to…
are relevant to…
change or influence...
…the present
We often do not need to know when the action happened but just
want to know if it happened or not.
For example, ‘I have seen that movie’ is both important now and
influences now. Because you have seen it, we might not watch it
again. When you watched the movie is not important.
Key point: In contrast to the simple past which is
always paired with specific finished times the present
perfect is often used with unfinished (or non-specific)
time phrases such as this week, this year, in my
career, in [year], etc. We often see the pattern with
the present perfect that there is a connection
between the past and the present. All these time
phrases indicate a time that is still happening now
despite the action happening in the past. ‘In my life’
is a phrase we may not say but it is implied in
experiences: ‘I have been to France three times (in
my life)’. We do not need the ‘in my life’ but it is
implied in most statements about experience.
The above explanations are fairly brief and have a limited number
of examples. For further study and research see:
http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/english-grammar
https://www.englishclub.com/
Gerunds
From a beginner level to the most advanced, gerunds are an
essential piece of grammar that many students neglect.
Gerunds are verbs that are used in a similar fashion to nouns,
always in the format: verb+ing.
Gerunds are not only very useful but can also be essential in some
sentences.
They can be subjects (Swimming is fun), objects (I love dancing)
and complements (My biggest flaw is being late). There are other
specific grammatical uses but these are the basic ones that
Chinese students need to know and often have problems with.
Consider this question and its answer: What makes you angry?
Breaking a glass makes me angry. If we were to try to say this
without a gerund we might have to make a longer and more
cumbersome sentence like ‘when I break a glass I feel angry’ or ‘if
I drop a glass I get angry’ and this would not exactly correlate with
the question asked. Gerunds often form a natural part of speech.
A common mistake which is difficult to master but nevertheless
important and worth spending time on is how verbs are followed
by -ing forms (doing) or infinitives (to do)
Consider: ‘She likes baking cakes’ and ‘she likes to bake cakes’.
Both sentences are fine grammatically.
However ‘she suggested to go to France’ is incorrect.
‘However’ can only be followed by an -ing form: She
suggested going to France.
‘We are preparing having a party’ is also incorrect because
‘prepare’ can only be followed by an infinitive: We are
preparing to have a party.
It doesn't matter what the tense of the main verb is but we
should know if it is followed by an infinitive or an -ing form.
Below is a link to a useful list of verbs that use an infinitive,
gerund or both, sometimes with a change to the meaning and
sometimes without. For example ‘he stopped playing football’
and ‘he stopped to play football’ have very different meanings
http://www.engvid.com/english-resource/verbs-followed-by-g
erunds-and-infinitives/
tenses (cont)
English has 14 tenses which is somewhat daunting for someone
whose language does not employ tense in the same way, such as
Mandarin. Mandarin, and other forms of ‘Chinese’ languages,
often uses time references, such as ‘today’ or ‘last week’, to
indicate time or a particle that can express an action has been
completed, but there are no formal tense structures.
It is important to remember that your students will usually range
from complete beginners through to intermediate learners. They
will usually be learning or need to learn the more basic tenses
such as the simple present, present continuous, the simple past,
the simple future and the present perfect. You may have more
advanced students, in which case knowledge of more difficult
tenses will be necessary, such as the past perfect: had done.
Below, we briefly introduce some of the most important tenses,
which you will use most commonly while teaching.
The simple present.
There are two main uses for the simple present:
1. An action that is regular or repeated
‘She goes to school on weekends’
‘I often visit my grandmother’
2. Facts, truths and things
‘He’s my real father’
‘Dogs eat meat’
‘She does not like eggs’
Key point: Chinese people do not conjugate their
verbs, so naturally forget all the time to add an ‘s’
to verbs with he, she or it as their subject.
The Present Continuous
This tense is also known as the present progressive and has
several different uses:
1. An action happening ‘right now’
‘Look, the cat is dancing’
‘I’m reporting for the news channel’
2. An action happening around now or continuously over a period
of time
‘Hi, mother, I’m in China studying Chinese, teaching English and
learning to cook’
‘I’m teaching a class right now so I cannot speak on the phone’
Key point: the first usage is fairly straightforward but
it is important to make students understand that this
tense can also be used to talk about things that are
not happening ‘right now’ but ‘around now’. It would
be very strange if someone asked ‘What are you
doing?’ on the telephone and someone replied ‘I’m
talking to you’, rather they are more likely to say ‘I’m
doing the gardening’. This is an action which is not
literally still happening at that moment, but it is
happening ‘around now’.
3. The present continuous is also used to talk about the future
‘Tomorrow I’m playing football so I cannot meet you’
4. It can also be used to talk about changes over time.
China is becoming richer
Children are getting naughtier etc
The Simple Past
This tense is employed for actions that happened in a specific
finished time and are themselves finished.
He ate dinner at six o’clock (the dinner is gone and the time is a
finished past time).
He ate the dinner (this sentence does not have the specific
finished time in it but we can guess from the context or the
speaker when the finished time was—maybe the speaker
previously told us).
Regular verbs often just add ‘ed’ but many common verbs are
irregular and the forms must be learnt: ‘sell’—‘sold’,
‘buy’—‘bought’, ‘see’—‘saw’, ‘catch’—‘caught’, etc.
Common finished time phrases should be made clear to the
students: yesterday, last week/month/year, When I was+age,
when I was in/at +place, …ago
The Simple Future
We talk about the future using ‘will’ to indicate things that are
regular but will happen in the future e.g. I will go to work on
Monday (I always go to work on Monday) or ‘we will meet again’
We also use it for natural states or truths in the future, e.g. ‘We will
all die one day!’, or ‘I will be in the hospital at 6.00pm’.
We can talk about plans and decisions using the ‘be going to’
structure.
‘I’m going to buy that jacket’
‘She’s going to Italy in July’ (We could also use ‘she will go to Italy’
but this would indicate she regularly goes. Here, it is her plan).
Key point: students should be aware of the difference
between ‘going to’ and ‘will’ but they should not
worry too much as most native speakers do not
consider this when they use one or the other.
However, sometimes it may sound unnatural for this
reason.
The Present Perfect
This tense is a tricky one but also commonly used so it cannot be
overlooked.
Students often get confused between its different uses.
The tense is always formed in the following way:
Subject+have/has+past participle
1. I have lived here for 4 years.
She has had that jumper forever
Here, an action which started in the past continues up until now
and, maybe, into the future. Most Chinese students with a level
above beginner have some idea of this tense. However, its second
usage is a little more perplexing.
2. Students often learn the ‘I have done something’ usage early
on as it is so important in English. Consider ‘I have been to +
place’
However, they rarely fully understand its usage.
‘I have seen the movie Frozen’ is clearly a finished action from the
past, so this sentence has a different usage to the first example. It
is not still happening now.
These actions were finished in the past but..
are important…
are connected to…
are related to…
are relevant to…
change or influence...
…the present
We often do not need to know when the action happened but just
want to know if it happened or not.
For example, ‘I have seen that movie’ is both important now and
influences now. Because you have seen it, we might not watch it
again. When you watched the movie is not important.
Key point: In contrast to the simple past which is
always paired with specific finished times the present
perfect is often used with unfinished (or non-specific)
time phrases such as this week, this year, in my
career, in [year], etc. We often see the pattern with
the present perfect that there is a connection
between the past and the present. All these time
phrases indicate a time that is still happening now
despite the action happening in the past. ‘In my life’
is a phrase we may not say but it is implied in
experiences: ‘I have been to France three times (in
my life)’. We do not need the ‘in my life’ but it is
implied in most statements about experience.
The above explanations are fairly brief and have a limited number
of examples. For further study and research see:
http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/english-grammar
https://www.englishclub.com/
Gerunds
From a beginner level to the most advanced, gerunds are an
essential piece of grammar that many students neglect.
Gerunds are verbs that are used in a similar fashion to nouns,
always in the format: verb+ing.
Gerunds are not only very useful but can also be essential in some
sentences.
They can be subjects (Swimming is fun), objects (I love dancing)
and complements (My biggest flaw is being late). There are other
specific grammatical uses but these are the basic ones that
Chinese students need to know and often have problems with.
Consider this question and its answer: What makes you angry?
Breaking a glass makes me angry. If we were to try to say this
without a gerund we might have to make a longer and more
cumbersome sentence like ‘when I break a glass I feel angry’ or ‘if
I drop a glass I get angry’ and this would not exactly correlate with
the question asked. Gerunds often form a natural part of speech.
A common mistake which is difficult to master but nevertheless
important and worth spending time on is how verbs are followed
by -ing forms (doing) or infinitives (to do)
Consider: ‘She likes baking cakes’ and ‘she likes to bake cakes’.
Both sentences are fine grammatically.
However ‘she suggested to go to France’ is incorrect.
‘However’ can only be followed by an -ing form: She
suggested going to France.
‘We are preparing having a party’ is also incorrect because
‘prepare’ can only be followed by an infinitive: We are
preparing to have a party.
It doesn't matter what the tense of the main verb is but we
should know if it is followed by an infinitive or an -ing form.
Below is a link to a useful list of verbs that use an infinitive,
gerund or both, sometimes with a change to the meaning and
sometimes without. For example ‘he stopped playing football’
and ‘he stopped to play football’ have very different meanings
http://www.engvid.com/english-resource/verbs-followed-by-g
erunds-and-infinitives/
tenses (cont)
English has 14 tenses which is somewhat daunting for someone
whose language does not employ tense in the same way, such as
Mandarin. Mandarin, and other forms of ‘Chinese’ languages,
often uses time references, such as ‘today’ or ‘last week’, to
indicate time or a particle that can express an action has been
completed, but there are no formal tense structures.
It is important to remember that your students will usually range
from complete beginners through to intermediate learners. They
will usually be learning or need to learn the more basic tenses
such as the simple present, present continuous, the simple past,
the simple future and the present perfect. You may have more
advanced students, in which case knowledge of more difficult
tenses will be necessary, such as the past perfect: had done.
Below, we briefly introduce some of the most important tenses,
which you will use most commonly while teaching.
The simple present.
There are two main uses for the simple present:
1. An action that is regular or repeated
‘She goes to school on weekends’
‘I often visit my grandmother’
2. Facts, truths and things
‘He’s my real father’
‘Dogs eat meat’
‘She does not like eggs’
Key point: Chinese people do not conjugate their
verbs, so naturally forget all the time to add an ‘s’
to verbs with he, she or it as their subject.
The Present Continuous
This tense is also known as the present progressive and has
several different uses:
1. An action happening ‘right now’
‘Look, the cat is dancing’
‘I’m reporting for the news channel’
2. An action happening around now or continuously over a period
of time
‘Hi, mother, I’m in China studying Chinese, teaching English and
learning to cook’
‘I’m teaching a class right now so I cannot speak on the phone’
Key point: the first usage is fairly straightforward but
it is important to make students understand that this
tense can also be used to talk about things that are
not happening ‘right now’ but ‘around now’. It would
be very strange if someone asked ‘What are you
doing?’ on the telephone and someone replied ‘I’m
talking to you’, rather they are more likely to say ‘I’m
doing the gardening’. This is an action which is not
literally still happening at that moment, but it is
happening ‘around now’.
3. The present continuous is also used to talk about the future
‘Tomorrow I’m playing football so I cannot meet you’
4. It can also be used to talk about changes over time.
China is becoming richer
Children are getting naughtier etc
The Simple Past
This tense is employed for actions that happened in a specific
finished time and are themselves finished.
He ate dinner at six o’clock (the dinner is gone and the time is a
finished past time).
He ate the dinner (this sentence does not have the specific
finished time in it but we can guess from the context or the
speaker when the finished time was—maybe the speaker
previously told us).
Regular verbs often just add ‘ed’ but many common verbs are
irregular and the forms must be learnt: ‘sell’—‘sold’,
‘buy’—‘bought’, ‘see’—‘saw’, ‘catch’—‘caught’, etc.
Common finished time phrases should be made clear to the
students: yesterday, last week/month/year, When I was+age,
when I was in/at +place, …ago
The Simple Future
We talk about the future using ‘will’ to indicate things that are
regular but will happen in the future e.g. I will go to work on
Monday (I always go to work on Monday) or ‘we will meet again’
We also use it for natural states or truths in the future, e.g. ‘We will
all die one day!’, or ‘I will be in the hospital at 6.00pm’.
We can talk about plans and decisions using the ‘be going to’
structure.
‘I’m going to buy that jacket’
‘She’s going to Italy in July’ (We could also use ‘she will go to Italy’
but this would indicate she regularly goes. Here, it is her plan).
Key point: students should be aware of the difference
between ‘going to’ and ‘will’ but they should not
worry too much as most native speakers do not
consider this when they use one or the other.
However, sometimes it may sound unnatural for this
reason.
The Present Perfect
This tense is a tricky one but also commonly used so it cannot be
overlooked.
Students often get confused between its different uses.
The tense is always formed in the following way:
Subject+have/has+past participle
1. I have lived here for 4 years.
She has had that jumper forever
Here, an action which started in the past continues up until now
and, maybe, into the future. Most Chinese students with a level
above beginner have some idea of this tense. However, its second
usage is a little more perplexing.
2. Students often learn the ‘I have done something’ usage early
on as it is so important in English. Consider ‘I have been to +
place’
However, they rarely fully understand its usage.
‘I have seen the movie Frozen’ is clearly a finished action from the
past, so this sentence has a different usage to the first example. It
is not still happening now.
These actions were finished in the past but..
are important…
are connected to…
are related to…
are relevant to…
change or influence...
…the present
We often do not need to know when the action happened but just
want to know if it happened or not.
For example, ‘I have seen that movie’ is both important now and
influences now. Because you have seen it, we might not watch it
again. When you watched the movie is not important.
Key point: In contrast to the simple past which is
always paired with specific finished times the present
perfect is often used with unfinished (or non-specific)
time phrases such as this week, this year, in my
career, in [year], etc. We often see the pattern with
the present perfect that there is a connection
between the past and the present. All these time
phrases indicate a time that is still happening now
despite the action happening in the past. ‘In my life’
is a phrase we may not say but it is implied in
experiences: ‘I have been to France three times (in
my life)’. We do not need the ‘in my life’ but it is
implied in most statements about experience.
The above explanations are fairly brief and have a limited number
of examples. For further study and research see:
http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/english-grammar
https://www.englishclub.com/
Gerunds
From a beginner level to the most advanced, gerunds are an
essential piece of grammar that many students neglect.
Gerunds are verbs that are used in a similar fashion to nouns,
always in the format: verb+ing.
Gerunds are not only very useful but can also be essential in some
sentences.
They can be subjects (Swimming is fun), objects (I love dancing)
and complements (My biggest flaw is being late). There are other
specific grammatical uses but these are the basic ones that
Chinese students need to know and often have problems with.
Consider this question and its answer: What makes you angry?
Breaking a glass makes me angry. If we were to try to say this
without a gerund we might have to make a longer and more
cumbersome sentence like ‘when I break a glass I feel angry’ or ‘if
I drop a glass I get angry’ and this would not exactly correlate with
the question asked. Gerunds often form a natural part of speech.
A common mistake which is difficult to master but nevertheless
important and worth spending time on is how verbs are followed
by -ing forms (doing) or infinitives (to do)
Consider: ‘She likes baking cakes’ and ‘she likes to bake cakes’.
Both sentences are fine grammatically.
However ‘she suggested to go to France’ is incorrect.
‘However’ can only be followed by an -ing form: She
suggested going to France.
‘We are preparing having a party’ is also incorrect because
‘prepare’ can only be followed by an infinitive: We are
preparing to have a party.
It doesn't matter what the tense of the main verb is but we
should know if it is followed by an infinitive or an -ing form.
Below is a link to a useful list of verbs that use an infinitive,
gerund or both, sometimes with a change to the meaning and
sometimes without. For example ‘he stopped playing football’
and ‘he stopped to play football’ have very different meanings
http://www.engvid.com/english-resource/verbs-followed-by-g
erunds-and-infinitives/
Adverbs are used to describe a verb, adjective or another
adverb. This kind of grammar is suitable for beginners, if
presented in a simple format, right through to intermediate or
advanced students.
Key points: teachers should be able to identify and
present irregular adverbs like well, fast, hard as
students usually think adverbs end in -ly. However,
many words look like adverbs but are, in fact,
adjectives, like motherly, friendly, lively etc. The
hard part with adverbs is their position which is
covered in detail in this link:
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/grammar/british-gra
mmar/adverbs-and-adverb-phrases-position
adverbs
English has 14 tenses which is somewhat daunting for someone
whose language does not employ tense in the same way, such as
Mandarin. Mandarin, and other forms of ‘Chinese’ languages,
often uses time references, such as ‘today’ or ‘last week’, to
indicate time or a particle that can express an action has been
completed, but there are no formal tense structures.
It is important to remember that your students will usually range
from complete beginners through to intermediate learners. They
will usually be learning or need to learn the more basic tenses
such as the simple present, present continuous, the simple past,
the simple future and the present perfect. You may have more
advanced students, in which case knowledge of more difficult
tenses will be necessary, such as the past perfect: had done.
Below, we briefly introduce some of the most important tenses,
which you will use most commonly while teaching.
The simple present.
There are two main uses for the simple present:
1. An action that is regular or repeated
‘She goes to school on weekends’
‘I often visit my grandmother’
2. Facts, truths and things
‘He’s my real father’
‘Dogs eat meat’
‘She does not like eggs’
Key point: Chinese people do not conjugate their
verbs, so naturally forget all the time to add an ‘s’
to verbs with he, she or it as their subject.
The Present Continuous
This tense is also known as the present progressive and has
several different uses:
1. An action happening ‘right now’
‘Look, the cat is dancing’
‘I’m reporting for the news channel’
2. An action happening around now or continuously over a period
of time
‘Hi, mother, I’m in China studying Chinese, teaching English and
learning to cook’
‘I’m teaching a class right now so I cannot speak on the phone’
Key point: the first usage is fairly straightforward but
it is important to make students understand that this
tense can also be used to talk about things that are
not happening ‘right now’ but ‘around now’. It would
be very strange if someone asked ‘What are you
doing?’ on the telephone and someone replied ‘I’m
talking to you’, rather they are more likely to say ‘I’m
doing the gardening’. This is an action which is not
literally still happening at that moment, but it is
happening ‘around now’.
3. The present continuous is also used to talk about the future
‘Tomorrow I’m playing football so I cannot meet you’
4. It can also be used to talk about changes over time.
China is becoming richer
Children are getting naughtier etc
The Simple Past
This tense is employed for actions that happened in a specific
finished time and are themselves finished.
He ate dinner at six o’clock (the dinner is gone and the time is a
finished past time).
He ate the dinner (this sentence does not have the specific
finished time in it but we can guess from the context or the
speaker when the finished time was—maybe the speaker
previously told us).
Regular verbs often just add ‘ed’ but many common verbs are
irregular and the forms must be learnt: ‘sell’—‘sold’,
‘buy’—‘bought’, ‘see’—‘saw’, ‘catch’—‘caught’, etc.
Common finished time phrases should be made clear to the
students: yesterday, last week/month/year, When I was+age,
when I was in/at +place, …ago
The Simple Future
We talk about the future using ‘will’ to indicate things that are
regular but will happen in the future e.g. I will go to work on
Monday (I always go to work on Monday) or ‘we will meet again’
We also use it for natural states or truths in the future, e.g. ‘We will
all die one day!’, or ‘I will be in the hospital at 6.00pm’.
We can talk about plans and decisions using the ‘be going to’
structure.
‘I’m going to buy that jacket’
‘She’s going to Italy in July’ (We could also use ‘she will go to Italy’
but this would indicate she regularly goes. Here, it is her plan).
Key point: students should be aware of the difference
between ‘going to’ and ‘will’ but they should not
worry too much as most native speakers do not
consider this when they use one or the other.
However, sometimes it may sound unnatural for this
reason.
The Present Perfect
This tense is a tricky one but also commonly used so it cannot be
overlooked.
Students often get confused between its different uses.
The tense is always formed in the following way:
Subject+have/has+past participle
1. I have lived here for 4 years.
She has had that jumper forever
Here, an action which started in the past continues up until now
and, maybe, into the future. Most Chinese students with a level
above beginner have some idea of this tense. However, its second
usage is a little more perplexing.
2. Students often learn the ‘I have done something’ usage early
on as it is so important in English. Consider ‘I have been to +
place’
However, they rarely fully understand its usage.
‘I have seen the movie Frozen’ is clearly a finished action from the
past, so this sentence has a different usage to the first example. It
is not still happening now.
These actions were finished in the past but..
are important…
are connected to…
are related to…
are relevant to…
change or influence...
…the present
We often do not need to know when the action happened but just
want to know if it happened or not.
For example, ‘I have seen that movie’ is both important now and
influences now. Because you have seen it, we might not watch it
again. When you watched the movie is not important.
Key point: In contrast to the simple past which is
always paired with specific finished times the present
perfect is often used with unfinished (or non-specific)
time phrases such as this week, this year, in my
career, in [year], etc. We often see the pattern with
the present perfect that there is a connection
between the past and the present. All these time
phrases indicate a time that is still happening now
despite the action happening in the past. ‘In my life’
is a phrase we may not say but it is implied in
experiences: ‘I have been to France three times (in
my life)’. We do not need the ‘in my life’ but it is
implied in most statements about experience.
The above explanations are fairly brief and have a limited number
of examples. For further study and research see:
http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/english-grammar
https://www.englishclub.com/
Gerunds
From a beginner level to the most advanced, gerunds are an
essential piece of grammar that many students neglect.
Gerunds are verbs that are used in a similar fashion to nouns,
always in the format: verb+ing.
Gerunds are not only very useful but can also be essential in some
sentences.
They can be subjects (Swimming is fun), objects (I love dancing)
and complements (My biggest flaw is being late). There are other
specific grammatical uses but these are the basic ones that
Chinese students need to know and often have problems with.
Consider this question and its answer: What makes you angry?
Breaking a glass makes me angry. If we were to try to say this
without a gerund we might have to make a longer and more
cumbersome sentence like ‘when I break a glass I feel angry’ or ‘if
I drop a glass I get angry’ and this would not exactly correlate with
the question asked. Gerunds often form a natural part of speech.
A common mistake which is difficult to master but nevertheless
important and worth spending time on is how verbs are followed
by -ing forms (doing) or infinitives (to do)
Consider: ‘She likes baking cakes’ and ‘she likes to bake cakes’.
Both sentences are fine grammatically.
However ‘she suggested to go to France’ is incorrect.
‘However’ can only be followed by an -ing form: She
suggested going to France.
‘We are preparing having a party’ is also incorrect because
‘prepare’ can only be followed by an infinitive: We are
preparing to have a party.
It doesn't matter what the tense of the main verb is but we
should know if it is followed by an infinitive or an -ing form.
Below is a link to a useful list of verbs that use an infinitive,
gerund or both, sometimes with a change to the meaning and
sometimes without. For example ‘he stopped playing football’
and ‘he stopped to play football’ have very different meanings
http://www.engvid.com/english-resource/verbs-followed-by-g
erunds-and-infinitives/
Some adverbs are necessary at a beginner level such as
adverbs of indefinite frequency: always, never, sometimes,
often, rarely, seldom, occasionally etc., and definite frequency:
three times a week, once a month, everyday etc.
Many common adverbs are so important students learn them
almost naturally such as adverbs of time like ‘today’ which fit
in the end position of the sentence or at the beginning if we
want to emphasise the time.
Teachers can also focus on adverbs of manner which show
how we do something:
‘He ran to the bus stop quickly’
These are often in the end position but can also fit in the
‘mid-position’ before the verb: ‘He dangerously balanced on
the edge.’
Other adverbs of manner: well, angrily, cheerfully, slowly etc.
This website gives more details on usage and position
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/grammar/british-grammar/
adverbs-and-adverb-phrases-position
Adverbs can also describe adjectives (‘It was terribly scary’) or
adverbs themselves. For example: ‘He did it thoroughly well’.
Here, ‘well’ is the adverb of manner and ‘thoroughly’
describes how well he did it
adverbs
English has 14 tenses which is somewhat daunting for someone
whose language does not employ tense in the same way, such as
Mandarin. Mandarin, and other forms of ‘Chinese’ languages,
often uses time references, such as ‘today’ or ‘last week’, to
indicate time or a particle that can express an action has been
completed, but there are no formal tense structures.
It is important to remember that your students will usually range
from complete beginners through to intermediate learners. They
will usually be learning or need to learn the more basic tenses
such as the simple present, present continuous, the simple past,
the simple future and the present perfect. You may have more
advanced students, in which case knowledge of more difficult
tenses will be necessary, such as the past perfect: had done.
Below, we briefly introduce some of the most important tenses,
which you will use most commonly while teaching.
The simple present.
There are two main uses for the simple present:
1. An action that is regular or repeated
‘She goes to school on weekends’
‘I often visit my grandmother’
2. Facts, truths and things
‘He’s my real father’
‘Dogs eat meat’
‘She does not like eggs’
Key point: Chinese people do not conjugate their
verbs, so naturally forget all the time to add an ‘s’
to verbs with he, she or it as their subject.
The Present Continuous
This tense is also known as the present progressive and has
several different uses:
1. An action happening ‘right now’
‘Look, the cat is dancing’
‘I’m reporting for the news channel’
2. An action happening around now or continuously over a period
of time
‘Hi, mother, I’m in China studying Chinese, teaching English and
learning to cook’
‘I’m teaching a class right now so I cannot speak on the phone’
Key point: the first usage is fairly straightforward but
it is important to make students understand that this
tense can also be used to talk about things that are
not happening ‘right now’ but ‘around now’. It would
be very strange if someone asked ‘What are you
doing?’ on the telephone and someone replied ‘I’m
talking to you’, rather they are more likely to say ‘I’m
doing the gardening’. This is an action which is not
literally still happening at that moment, but it is
happening ‘around now’.
3. The present continuous is also used to talk about the future
‘Tomorrow I’m playing football so I cannot meet you’
4. It can also be used to talk about changes over time.
China is becoming richer
Children are getting naughtier etc
The Simple Past
This tense is employed for actions that happened in a specific
finished time and are themselves finished.
He ate dinner at six o’clock (the dinner is gone and the time is a
finished past time).
He ate the dinner (this sentence does not have the specific
finished time in it but we can guess from the context or the
speaker when the finished time was—maybe the speaker
previously told us).
Regular verbs often just add ‘ed’ but many common verbs are
irregular and the forms must be learnt: ‘sell’—‘sold’,
‘buy’—‘bought’, ‘see’—‘saw’, ‘catch’—‘caught’, etc.
Common finished time phrases should be made clear to the
students: yesterday, last week/month/year, When I was+age,
when I was in/at +place, …ago
The Simple Future
We talk about the future using ‘will’ to indicate things that are
regular but will happen in the future e.g. I will go to work on
Monday (I always go to work on Monday) or ‘we will meet again’
We also use it for natural states or truths in the future, e.g. ‘We will
all die one day!’, or ‘I will be in the hospital at 6.00pm’.
We can talk about plans and decisions using the ‘be going to’
structure.
‘I’m going to buy that jacket’
‘She’s going to Italy in July’ (We could also use ‘she will go to Italy’
but this would indicate she regularly goes. Here, it is her plan).
Key point: students should be aware of the difference
between ‘going to’ and ‘will’ but they should not
worry too much as most native speakers do not
consider this when they use one or the other.
However, sometimes it may sound unnatural for this
reason.
The Present Perfect
This tense is a tricky one but also commonly used so it cannot be
overlooked.
Students often get confused between its different uses.
The tense is always formed in the following way:
Subject+have/has+past participle
1. I have lived here for 4 years.
She has had that jumper forever
Here, an action which started in the past continues up until now
and, maybe, into the future. Most Chinese students with a level
above beginner have some idea of this tense. However, its second
usage is a little more perplexing.
2. Students often learn the ‘I have done something’ usage early
on as it is so important in English. Consider ‘I have been to +
place’
However, they rarely fully understand its usage.
‘I have seen the movie Frozen’ is clearly a finished action from the
past, so this sentence has a different usage to the first example. It
is not still happening now.
These actions were finished in the past but..
are important…
are connected to…
are related to…
are relevant to…
change or influence...
…the present
We often do not need to know when the action happened but just
want to know if it happened or not.
For example, ‘I have seen that movie’ is both important now and
influences now. Because you have seen it, we might not watch it
again. When you watched the movie is not important.
Key point: In contrast to the simple past which is
always paired with specific finished times the present
perfect is often used with unfinished (or non-specific)
time phrases such as this week, this year, in my
career, in [year], etc. We often see the pattern with
the present perfect that there is a connection
between the past and the present. All these time
phrases indicate a time that is still happening now
despite the action happening in the past. ‘In my life’
is a phrase we may not say but it is implied in
experiences: ‘I have been to France three times (in
my life)’. We do not need the ‘in my life’ but it is
implied in most statements about experience.
The above explanations are fairly brief and have a limited number
of examples. For further study and research see:
http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/english-grammar
https://www.englishclub.com/
Gerunds
From a beginner level to the most advanced, gerunds are an
essential piece of grammar that many students neglect.
Gerunds are verbs that are used in a similar fashion to nouns,
always in the format: verb+ing.
Gerunds are not only very useful but can also be essential in some
sentences.
They can be subjects (Swimming is fun), objects (I love dancing)
and complements (My biggest flaw is being late). There are other
specific grammatical uses but these are the basic ones that
Chinese students need to know and often have problems with.
Consider this question and its answer: What makes you angry?
Breaking a glass makes me angry. If we were to try to say this
without a gerund we might have to make a longer and more
cumbersome sentence like ‘when I break a glass I feel angry’ or ‘if
I drop a glass I get angry’ and this would not exactly correlate with
the question asked. Gerunds often form a natural part of speech.
A common mistake which is difficult to master but nevertheless
important and worth spending time on is how verbs are followed
by -ing forms (doing) or infinitives (to do)
Consider: ‘She likes baking cakes’ and ‘she likes to bake cakes’.
Both sentences are fine grammatically.
However ‘she suggested to go to France’ is incorrect.
‘However’ can only be followed by an -ing form: She
suggested going to France.
‘We are preparing having a party’ is also incorrect because
‘prepare’ can only be followed by an infinitive: We are
preparing to have a party.
It doesn't matter what the tense of the main verb is but we
should know if it is followed by an infinitive or an -ing form.
Below is a link to a useful list of verbs that use an infinitive,
gerund or both, sometimes with a change to the meaning and
sometimes without. For example ‘he stopped playing football’
and ‘he stopped to play football’ have very different meanings
http://www.engvid.com/english-resource/verbs-followed-by-g
erunds-and-infinitives/
PUNCTUATION TIPS
brackets
( )full stop
.comma
,
exclamationmark
!speechmarks
”
”
questionmark
?
English has 14 tenses which is somewhat daunting for someone
whose language does not employ tense in the same way, such as
Mandarin. Mandarin, and other forms of ‘Chinese’ languages,
often uses time references, such as ‘today’ or ‘last week’, to
indicate time or a particle that can express an action has been
completed, but there are no formal tense structures.
It is important to remember that your students will usually range
from complete beginners through to intermediate learners. They
will usually be learning or need to learn the more basic tenses
such as the simple present, present continuous, the simple past,
the simple future and the present perfect. You may have more
advanced students, in which case knowledge of more difficult
tenses will be necessary, such as the past perfect: had done.
Below, we briefly introduce some of the most important tenses,
which you will use most commonly while teaching.
The simple present.
There are two main uses for the simple present:
1. An action that is regular or repeated
‘She goes to school on weekends’
‘I often visit my grandmother’
2. Facts, truths and things
‘He’s my real father’
‘Dogs eat meat’
‘She does not like eggs’
Key point: Chinese people do not conjugate their
verbs, so naturally forget all the time to add an ‘s’
to verbs with he, she or it as their subject.
The Present Continuous
This tense is also known as the present progressive and has
several different uses:
1. An action happening ‘right now’
‘Look, the cat is dancing’
‘I’m reporting for the news channel’
2. An action happening around now or continuously over a period
of time
‘Hi, mother, I’m in China studying Chinese, teaching English and
learning to cook’
‘I’m teaching a class right now so I cannot speak on the phone’
Key point: the first usage is fairly straightforward but
it is important to make students understand that this
tense can also be used to talk about things that are
not happening ‘right now’ but ‘around now’. It would
be very strange if someone asked ‘What are you
doing?’ on the telephone and someone replied ‘I’m
talking to you’, rather they are more likely to say ‘I’m
doing the gardening’. This is an action which is not
literally still happening at that moment, but it is
happening ‘around now’.
3. The present continuous is also used to talk about the future
‘Tomorrow I’m playing football so I cannot meet you’
4. It can also be used to talk about changes over time.
China is becoming richer
Children are getting naughtier etc
The Simple Past
This tense is employed for actions that happened in a specific
finished time and are themselves finished.
He ate dinner at six o’clock (the dinner is gone and the time is a
finished past time).
He ate the dinner (this sentence does not have the specific
finished time in it but we can guess from the context or the
speaker when the finished time was—maybe the speaker
previously told us).
Regular verbs often just add ‘ed’ but many common verbs are
irregular and the forms must be learnt: ‘sell’—‘sold’,
‘buy’—‘bought’, ‘see’—‘saw’, ‘catch’—‘caught’, etc.
Common finished time phrases should be made clear to the
students: yesterday, last week/month/year, When I was+age,
when I was in/at +place, …ago
The Simple Future
We talk about the future using ‘will’ to indicate things that are
regular but will happen in the future e.g. I will go to work on
Monday (I always go to work on Monday) or ‘we will meet again’
We also use it for natural states or truths in the future, e.g. ‘We will
all die one day!’, or ‘I will be in the hospital at 6.00pm’.
We can talk about plans and decisions using the ‘be going to’
structure.
‘I’m going to buy that jacket’
‘She’s going to Italy in July’ (We could also use ‘she will go to Italy’
but this would indicate she regularly goes. Here, it is her plan).
Key point: students should be aware of the difference
between ‘going to’ and ‘will’ but they should not
worry too much as most native speakers do not
consider this when they use one or the other.
However, sometimes it may sound unnatural for this
reason.
The Present Perfect
This tense is a tricky one but also commonly used so it cannot be
overlooked.
Students often get confused between its different uses.
The tense is always formed in the following way:
Subject+have/has+past participle
1. I have lived here for 4 years.
She has had that jumper forever
Here, an action which started in the past continues up until now
and, maybe, into the future. Most Chinese students with a level
above beginner have some idea of this tense. However, its second
usage is a little more perplexing.
2. Students often learn the ‘I have done something’ usage early
on as it is so important in English. Consider ‘I have been to +
place’
However, they rarely fully understand its usage.
‘I have seen the movie Frozen’ is clearly a finished action from the
past, so this sentence has a different usage to the first example. It
is not still happening now.
These actions were finished in the past but..
are important…
are connected to…
are related to…
are relevant to…
change or influence...
…the present
We often do not need to know when the action happened but just
want to know if it happened or not.
For example, ‘I have seen that movie’ is both important now and
influences now. Because you have seen it, we might not watch it
again. When you watched the movie is not important.
Key point: In contrast to the simple past which is
always paired with specific finished times the present
perfect is often used with unfinished (or non-specific)
time phrases such as this week, this year, in my
career, in [year], etc. We often see the pattern with
the present perfect that there is a connection
between the past and the present. All these time
phrases indicate a time that is still happening now
despite the action happening in the past. ‘In my life’
is a phrase we may not say but it is implied in
experiences: ‘I have been to France three times (in
my life)’. We do not need the ‘in my life’ but it is
implied in most statements about experience.
The above explanations are fairly brief and have a limited number
of examples. For further study and research see:
http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/english-grammar
https://www.englishclub.com/
Gerunds
From a beginner level to the most advanced, gerunds are an
essential piece of grammar that many students neglect.
Gerunds are verbs that are used in a similar fashion to nouns,
always in the format: verb+ing.
Gerunds are not only very useful but can also be essential in some
sentences.
They can be subjects (Swimming is fun), objects (I love dancing)
and complements (My biggest flaw is being late). There are other
specific grammatical uses but these are the basic ones that
Chinese students need to know and often have problems with.
Consider this question and its answer: What makes you angry?
Breaking a glass makes me angry. If we were to try to say this
without a gerund we might have to make a longer and more
cumbersome sentence like ‘when I break a glass I feel angry’ or ‘if
I drop a glass I get angry’ and this would not exactly correlate with
the question asked. Gerunds often form a natural part of speech.
A common mistake which is difficult to master but nevertheless
important and worth spending time on is how verbs are followed
by -ing forms (doing) or infinitives (to do)
Consider: ‘She likes baking cakes’ and ‘she likes to bake cakes’.
Both sentences are fine grammatically.
However ‘she suggested to go to France’ is incorrect.
‘However’ can only be followed by an -ing form: She
suggested going to France.
‘We are preparing having a party’ is also incorrect because
‘prepare’ can only be followed by an infinitive: We are
preparing to have a party.
It doesn't matter what the tense of the main verb is but we
should know if it is followed by an infinitive or an -ing form.
Below is a link to a useful list of verbs that use an infinitive,
gerund or both, sometimes with a change to the meaning and
sometimes without. For example ‘he stopped playing football’
and ‘he stopped to play football’ have very different meanings
http://www.engvid.com/english-resource/verbs-followed-by-g
erunds-and-infinitives/
commasRely on commas to connect two ideas into one sentence. If you have a
conjunction, the comma goes before it in order to insert a quick pause
in-between the two ideas.
This is not the only time a comma can be used. You can also use it to
make a list. For example: The zoo has dogs, cats, boa constrictors, and
alligators.
,
using the semicolon:Semicolons are intended to connect two independent clauses together.
This means that your two sentences can be separated by a period, but
with the semicolon, you just get rid of the pause one would normally take
when a period is present and show the two clauses are closely related.
For example:
‘My mother came over today. She is still glowing after her wedding last
week.’
Without the semicolon this sentence is read like:
‘My mother came over today.*pause* She is still glowing after her
wedding last week.’
With the semicolon this sentence is read like:
‘My mother came over today; she is still glowing after her wedding last
week.’
Another way of looking at this is that in place of the semicolon, you might
have put a conjunction like ‘and’, ‘but’, ‘yet’.
So how do you use it?
If you have two independent clauses, or sentences that can stand alone
on their own, you can use the semicolon.
;
For example:
The sentence ‘My mother came over today’ works as a complete
sentence.
As does, ‘She is still glowing after her wedding last week’.
Do not use the semicolon with a conjunction. In this case, you want to
use a comma because you have a conjunction separating your two
clauses.
For example:
‘My mother came over today, and she is still glowing after her wedding
last week.’
In the example above, the conjunction ‘and’ exists, so you use a comma
and not a semicolon.
So when can you get away with the semicolon? Use it whenever you
want to establish a link between two statements that either contrast one
another or link to one another.
For example:
‘His uncle came over for lunch today; his beard is completely white.’
In the example sentence above, the two sentences can function on their
own, in an independent fashion. However, you are using the semicolon to
make the connection for your reader that you noticed the white beard on
the uncle because he came over for lunch.
*Note: both the comma and the semicolon initiate a pause when reading
or speaking. The comma means a short length pause while the
semicolon means a medium length pause. A period is a complete stop.
You can also use a semicolon to connect sentences that already have
punctuation in them. This is typically seen when two sentences are
connected, inside of which one has a list and a comma or two.
For example: When Mark was upset as a child, he would often run to his
room, lock the door, and scream; he had difficulty communicating his
emotions.
In the example above, if you had attempted to use a comma in place of
the semicolon, it would have resulted in what is called a comma splice
and that would mean the connection between your two clauses would be
lost as well.
You can also use the semicolon to make a list of items you want to
separate. This is something typically seen when listing dates, names, or
locations.
For example: While looking for the best burritos in the world I travelled to
Los Angeles, California; Rota, Spain; Rio de Janiero, Brazil.
E.g.
‘e.g.’ means ‘for example’ and should be used as such. For example:
‘When eating burritos, Tim always adds extra toppings, e.g. spicy salsa’.
Parentheses or Commas for ‘i.e.’ and ‘e.g.’
You can use either in either case. For example: (e.g. your list of things
here) or e.g., your list of things here.
If you are using a comma, you want one after ‘e.g.’ or ‘i.e.’.
English has 14 tenses which is somewhat daunting for someone
whose language does not employ tense in the same way, such as
Mandarin. Mandarin, and other forms of ‘Chinese’ languages,
often uses time references, such as ‘today’ or ‘last week’, to
indicate time or a particle that can express an action has been
completed, but there are no formal tense structures.
It is important to remember that your students will usually range
from complete beginners through to intermediate learners. They
will usually be learning or need to learn the more basic tenses
such as the simple present, present continuous, the simple past,
the simple future and the present perfect. You may have more
advanced students, in which case knowledge of more difficult
tenses will be necessary, such as the past perfect: had done.
Below, we briefly introduce some of the most important tenses,
which you will use most commonly while teaching.
The simple present.
There are two main uses for the simple present:
1. An action that is regular or repeated
‘She goes to school on weekends’
‘I often visit my grandmother’
2. Facts, truths and things
‘He’s my real father’
‘Dogs eat meat’
‘She does not like eggs’
Key point: Chinese people do not conjugate their
verbs, so naturally forget all the time to add an ‘s’
to verbs with he, she or it as their subject.
The Present Continuous
This tense is also known as the present progressive and has
several different uses:
1. An action happening ‘right now’
‘Look, the cat is dancing’
‘I’m reporting for the news channel’
2. An action happening around now or continuously over a period
of time
‘Hi, mother, I’m in China studying Chinese, teaching English and
learning to cook’
‘I’m teaching a class right now so I cannot speak on the phone’
Key point: the first usage is fairly straightforward but
it is important to make students understand that this
tense can also be used to talk about things that are
not happening ‘right now’ but ‘around now’. It would
be very strange if someone asked ‘What are you
doing?’ on the telephone and someone replied ‘I’m
talking to you’, rather they are more likely to say ‘I’m
doing the gardening’. This is an action which is not
literally still happening at that moment, but it is
happening ‘around now’.
3. The present continuous is also used to talk about the future
‘Tomorrow I’m playing football so I cannot meet you’
4. It can also be used to talk about changes over time.
China is becoming richer
Children are getting naughtier etc
The Simple Past
This tense is employed for actions that happened in a specific
finished time and are themselves finished.
He ate dinner at six o’clock (the dinner is gone and the time is a
finished past time).
He ate the dinner (this sentence does not have the specific
finished time in it but we can guess from the context or the
speaker when the finished time was—maybe the speaker
previously told us).
Regular verbs often just add ‘ed’ but many common verbs are
irregular and the forms must be learnt: ‘sell’—‘sold’,
‘buy’—‘bought’, ‘see’—‘saw’, ‘catch’—‘caught’, etc.
Common finished time phrases should be made clear to the
students: yesterday, last week/month/year, When I was+age,
when I was in/at +place, …ago
The Simple Future
We talk about the future using ‘will’ to indicate things that are
regular but will happen in the future e.g. I will go to work on
Monday (I always go to work on Monday) or ‘we will meet again’
We also use it for natural states or truths in the future, e.g. ‘We will
all die one day!’, or ‘I will be in the hospital at 6.00pm’.
We can talk about plans and decisions using the ‘be going to’
structure.
‘I’m going to buy that jacket’
‘She’s going to Italy in July’ (We could also use ‘she will go to Italy’
but this would indicate she regularly goes. Here, it is her plan).
Key point: students should be aware of the difference
between ‘going to’ and ‘will’ but they should not
worry too much as most native speakers do not
consider this when they use one or the other.
However, sometimes it may sound unnatural for this
reason.
The Present Perfect
This tense is a tricky one but also commonly used so it cannot be
overlooked.
Students often get confused between its different uses.
The tense is always formed in the following way:
Subject+have/has+past participle
1. I have lived here for 4 years.
She has had that jumper forever
Here, an action which started in the past continues up until now
and, maybe, into the future. Most Chinese students with a level
above beginner have some idea of this tense. However, its second
usage is a little more perplexing.
2. Students often learn the ‘I have done something’ usage early
on as it is so important in English. Consider ‘I have been to +
place’
However, they rarely fully understand its usage.
‘I have seen the movie Frozen’ is clearly a finished action from the
past, so this sentence has a different usage to the first example. It
is not still happening now.
These actions were finished in the past but..
are important…
are connected to…
are related to…
are relevant to…
change or influence...
…the present
We often do not need to know when the action happened but just
want to know if it happened or not.
For example, ‘I have seen that movie’ is both important now and
influences now. Because you have seen it, we might not watch it
again. When you watched the movie is not important.
Key point: In contrast to the simple past which is
always paired with specific finished times the present
perfect is often used with unfinished (or non-specific)
time phrases such as this week, this year, in my
career, in [year], etc. We often see the pattern with
the present perfect that there is a connection
between the past and the present. All these time
phrases indicate a time that is still happening now
despite the action happening in the past. ‘In my life’
is a phrase we may not say but it is implied in
experiences: ‘I have been to France three times (in
my life)’. We do not need the ‘in my life’ but it is
implied in most statements about experience.
The above explanations are fairly brief and have a limited number
of examples. For further study and research see:
http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/english-grammar
https://www.englishclub.com/
Gerunds
From a beginner level to the most advanced, gerunds are an
essential piece of grammar that many students neglect.
Gerunds are verbs that are used in a similar fashion to nouns,
always in the format: verb+ing.
Gerunds are not only very useful but can also be essential in some
sentences.
They can be subjects (Swimming is fun), objects (I love dancing)
and complements (My biggest flaw is being late). There are other
specific grammatical uses but these are the basic ones that
Chinese students need to know and often have problems with.
Consider this question and its answer: What makes you angry?
Breaking a glass makes me angry. If we were to try to say this
without a gerund we might have to make a longer and more
cumbersome sentence like ‘when I break a glass I feel angry’ or ‘if
I drop a glass I get angry’ and this would not exactly correlate with
the question asked. Gerunds often form a natural part of speech.
A common mistake which is difficult to master but nevertheless
important and worth spending time on is how verbs are followed
by -ing forms (doing) or infinitives (to do)
Consider: ‘She likes baking cakes’ and ‘she likes to bake cakes’.
Both sentences are fine grammatically.
However ‘she suggested to go to France’ is incorrect.
‘However’ can only be followed by an -ing form: She
suggested going to France.
‘We are preparing having a party’ is also incorrect because
‘prepare’ can only be followed by an infinitive: We are
preparing to have a party.
It doesn't matter what the tense of the main verb is but we
should know if it is followed by an infinitive or an -ing form.
Below is a link to a useful list of verbs that use an infinitive,
gerund or both, sometimes with a change to the meaning and
sometimes without. For example ‘he stopped playing football’
and ‘he stopped to play football’ have very different meanings
http://www.engvid.com/english-resource/verbs-followed-by-g
erunds-and-infinitives/
Semicolons are intended to connect two independent clauses together.
This means that your two sentences can be separated by a period, but
with the semicolon, you just get rid of the pause one would normally take
when a period is present and show the two clauses are closely related.
For example:
‘My mother came over today. She is still glowing after her wedding last
week.’
Without the semicolon this sentence is read like:
‘My mother came over today.*pause* She is still glowing after her
wedding last week.’
With the semicolon this sentence is read like:
‘My mother came over today; she is still glowing after her wedding last
week.’
Another way of looking at this is that in place of the semicolon, you might
have put a conjunction like ‘and’, ‘but’, ‘yet’.
So how do you use it?
If you have two independent clauses, or sentences that can stand alone
on their own, you can use the semicolon.
;
For example:
The sentence ‘My mother came over today’ works as a complete
sentence.
As does, ‘She is still glowing after her wedding last week’.
Do not use the semicolon with a conjunction. In this case, you want to
use a comma because you have a conjunction separating your two
clauses.
For example:
‘My mother came over today, and she is still glowing after her wedding
last week.’
In the example above, the conjunction ‘and’ exists, so you use a comma
and not a semicolon.
So when can you get away with the semicolon? Use it whenever you
want to establish a link between two statements that either contrast one
another or link to one another.
For example:
‘His uncle came over for lunch today; his beard is completely white.’
In the example sentence above, the two sentences can function on their
own, in an independent fashion. However, you are using the semicolon to
make the connection for your reader that you noticed the white beard on
the uncle because he came over for lunch.
*Note: both the comma and the semicolon initiate a pause when reading
or speaking. The comma means a short length pause while the
semicolon means a medium length pause. A period is a complete stop.
You can also use a semicolon to connect sentences that already have
punctuation in them. This is typically seen when two sentences are
connected, inside of which one has a list and a comma or two.
For example: When Mark was upset as a child, he would often run to his
room, lock the door, and scream; he had difficulty communicating his
emotions.
In the example above, if you had attempted to use a comma in place of
the semicolon, it would have resulted in what is called a comma splice
and that would mean the connection between your two clauses would be
lost as well.
You can also use the semicolon to make a list of items you want to
separate. This is something typically seen when listing dates, names, or
locations.
For example: While looking for the best burritos in the world I travelled to
Los Angeles, California; Rota, Spain; Rio de Janiero, Brazil.
E.g.
‘e.g.’ means ‘for example’ and should be used as such. For example:
‘When eating burritos, Tim always adds extra toppings, e.g. spicy salsa’.
Parentheses or Commas for ‘i.e.’ and ‘e.g.’
You can use either in either case. For example: (e.g. your list of things
here) or e.g., your list of things here.
If you are using a comma, you want one after ‘e.g.’ or ‘i.e.’.
English has 14 tenses which is somewhat daunting for someone
whose language does not employ tense in the same way, such as
Mandarin. Mandarin, and other forms of ‘Chinese’ languages,
often uses time references, such as ‘today’ or ‘last week’, to
indicate time or a particle that can express an action has been
completed, but there are no formal tense structures.
It is important to remember that your students will usually range
from complete beginners through to intermediate learners. They
will usually be learning or need to learn the more basic tenses
such as the simple present, present continuous, the simple past,
the simple future and the present perfect. You may have more
advanced students, in which case knowledge of more difficult
tenses will be necessary, such as the past perfect: had done.
Below, we briefly introduce some of the most important tenses,
which you will use most commonly while teaching.
The simple present.
There are two main uses for the simple present:
1. An action that is regular or repeated
‘She goes to school on weekends’
‘I often visit my grandmother’
2. Facts, truths and things
‘He’s my real father’
‘Dogs eat meat’
‘She does not like eggs’
Key point: Chinese people do not conjugate their
verbs, so naturally forget all the time to add an ‘s’
to verbs with he, she or it as their subject.
The Present Continuous
This tense is also known as the present progressive and has
several different uses:
1. An action happening ‘right now’
‘Look, the cat is dancing’
‘I’m reporting for the news channel’
2. An action happening around now or continuously over a period
of time
‘Hi, mother, I’m in China studying Chinese, teaching English and
learning to cook’
‘I’m teaching a class right now so I cannot speak on the phone’
Key point: the first usage is fairly straightforward but
it is important to make students understand that this
tense can also be used to talk about things that are
not happening ‘right now’ but ‘around now’. It would
be very strange if someone asked ‘What are you
doing?’ on the telephone and someone replied ‘I’m
talking to you’, rather they are more likely to say ‘I’m
doing the gardening’. This is an action which is not
literally still happening at that moment, but it is
happening ‘around now’.
3. The present continuous is also used to talk about the future
‘Tomorrow I’m playing football so I cannot meet you’
4. It can also be used to talk about changes over time.
China is becoming richer
Children are getting naughtier etc
The Simple Past
This tense is employed for actions that happened in a specific
finished time and are themselves finished.
He ate dinner at six o’clock (the dinner is gone and the time is a
finished past time).
He ate the dinner (this sentence does not have the specific
finished time in it but we can guess from the context or the
speaker when the finished time was—maybe the speaker
previously told us).
Regular verbs often just add ‘ed’ but many common verbs are
irregular and the forms must be learnt: ‘sell’—‘sold’,
‘buy’—‘bought’, ‘see’—‘saw’, ‘catch’—‘caught’, etc.
Common finished time phrases should be made clear to the
students: yesterday, last week/month/year, When I was+age,
when I was in/at +place, …ago
The Simple Future
We talk about the future using ‘will’ to indicate things that are
regular but will happen in the future e.g. I will go to work on
Monday (I always go to work on Monday) or ‘we will meet again’
We also use it for natural states or truths in the future, e.g. ‘We will
all die one day!’, or ‘I will be in the hospital at 6.00pm’.
We can talk about plans and decisions using the ‘be going to’
structure.
‘I’m going to buy that jacket’
‘She’s going to Italy in July’ (We could also use ‘she will go to Italy’
but this would indicate she regularly goes. Here, it is her plan).
Key point: students should be aware of the difference
between ‘going to’ and ‘will’ but they should not
worry too much as most native speakers do not
consider this when they use one or the other.
However, sometimes it may sound unnatural for this
reason.
The Present Perfect
This tense is a tricky one but also commonly used so it cannot be
overlooked.
Students often get confused between its different uses.
The tense is always formed in the following way:
Subject+have/has+past participle
1. I have lived here for 4 years.
She has had that jumper forever
Here, an action which started in the past continues up until now
and, maybe, into the future. Most Chinese students with a level
above beginner have some idea of this tense. However, its second
usage is a little more perplexing.
2. Students often learn the ‘I have done something’ usage early
on as it is so important in English. Consider ‘I have been to +
place’
However, they rarely fully understand its usage.
‘I have seen the movie Frozen’ is clearly a finished action from the
past, so this sentence has a different usage to the first example. It
is not still happening now.
These actions were finished in the past but..
are important…
are connected to…
are related to…
are relevant to…
change or influence...
…the present
We often do not need to know when the action happened but just
want to know if it happened or not.
For example, ‘I have seen that movie’ is both important now and
influences now. Because you have seen it, we might not watch it
again. When you watched the movie is not important.
Key point: In contrast to the simple past which is
always paired with specific finished times the present
perfect is often used with unfinished (or non-specific)
time phrases such as this week, this year, in my
career, in [year], etc. We often see the pattern with
the present perfect that there is a connection
between the past and the present. All these time
phrases indicate a time that is still happening now
despite the action happening in the past. ‘In my life’
is a phrase we may not say but it is implied in
experiences: ‘I have been to France three times (in
my life)’. We do not need the ‘in my life’ but it is
implied in most statements about experience.
The above explanations are fairly brief and have a limited number
of examples. For further study and research see:
http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/english-grammar
https://www.englishclub.com/
Gerunds
From a beginner level to the most advanced, gerunds are an
essential piece of grammar that many students neglect.
Gerunds are verbs that are used in a similar fashion to nouns,
always in the format: verb+ing.
Gerunds are not only very useful but can also be essential in some
sentences.
They can be subjects (Swimming is fun), objects (I love dancing)
and complements (My biggest flaw is being late). There are other
specific grammatical uses but these are the basic ones that
Chinese students need to know and often have problems with.
Consider this question and its answer: What makes you angry?
Breaking a glass makes me angry. If we were to try to say this
without a gerund we might have to make a longer and more
cumbersome sentence like ‘when I break a glass I feel angry’ or ‘if
I drop a glass I get angry’ and this would not exactly correlate with
the question asked. Gerunds often form a natural part of speech.
A common mistake which is difficult to master but nevertheless
important and worth spending time on is how verbs are followed
by -ing forms (doing) or infinitives (to do)
Consider: ‘She likes baking cakes’ and ‘she likes to bake cakes’.
Both sentences are fine grammatically.
However ‘she suggested to go to France’ is incorrect.
‘However’ can only be followed by an -ing form: She
suggested going to France.
‘We are preparing having a party’ is also incorrect because
‘prepare’ can only be followed by an infinitive: We are
preparing to have a party.
It doesn't matter what the tense of the main verb is but we
should know if it is followed by an infinitive or an -ing form.
Below is a link to a useful list of verbs that use an infinitive,
gerund or both, sometimes with a change to the meaning and
sometimes without. For example ‘he stopped playing football’
and ‘he stopped to play football’ have very different meanings
http://www.engvid.com/english-resource/verbs-followed-by-g
erunds-and-infinitives/
Semicolons are intended to connect two independent clauses together.
This means that your two sentences can be separated by a period, but
with the semicolon, you just get rid of the pause one would normally take
when a period is present and show the two clauses are closely related.
For example:
‘My mother came over today. She is still glowing after her wedding last
week.’
Without the semicolon this sentence is read like:
‘My mother came over today.*pause* She is still glowing after her
wedding last week.’
With the semicolon this sentence is read like:
‘My mother came over today; she is still glowing after her wedding last
week.’
Another way of looking at this is that in place of the semicolon, you might
have put a conjunction like ‘and’, ‘but’, ‘yet’.
So how do you use it?
If you have two independent clauses, or sentences that can stand alone
on their own, you can use the semicolon.
For example:
The sentence ‘My mother came over today’ works as a complete
sentence.
As does, ‘She is still glowing after her wedding last week’.
Do not use the semicolon with a conjunction. In this case, you want to
use a comma because you have a conjunction separating your two
clauses.
For example:
‘My mother came over today, and she is still glowing after her wedding
last week.’
In the example above, the conjunction ‘and’ exists, so you use a comma
and not a semicolon.
So when can you get away with the semicolon? Use it whenever you
want to establish a link between two statements that either contrast one
another or link to one another.
For example:
‘His uncle came over for lunch today; his beard is completely white.’
In the example sentence above, the two sentences can function on their
own, in an independent fashion. However, you are using the semicolon to
make the connection for your reader that you noticed the white beard on
the uncle because he came over for lunch.
*Note: both the comma and the semicolon initiate a pause when reading
or speaking. The comma means a short length pause while the
semicolon means a medium length pause. A period is a complete stop.
You can also use a semicolon to connect sentences that already have
punctuation in them. This is typically seen when two sentences are
connected, inside of which one has a list and a comma or two.
For example: When Mark was upset as a child, he would often run to his
;
room, lock the door, and scream; he had difficulty communicating his
emotions.
In the example above, if you had attempted to use a comma in place of
the semicolon, it would have resulted in what is called a comma splice
and that would mean the connection between your two clauses would be
lost as well.
You can also use the semicolon to make a list of items you want to
separate. This is something typically seen when listing dates, names, or
locations.
For example: While looking for the best burritos in the world I travelled to
Los Angeles, California; Rota, Spain; Rio de Janiero, Brazil.
E.g.
‘e.g.’ means ‘for example’ and should be used as such. For example:
‘When eating burritos, Tim always adds extra toppings, e.g. spicy salsa’.
Parentheses or Commas for ‘i.e.’ and ‘e.g.’
You can use either in either case. For example: (e.g. your list of things
here) or e.g., your list of things here.
If you are using a comma, you want one after ‘e.g.’ or ‘i.e.’.
conjunctionsUse conjunctions to link two ideas with the same S + V + O combination.
For example: “Tim visited his friend, but I did not like his friend’.
Conjunctions should follow the first idea and a comma. They include
words such as: for, and, but, or, nor, so, yet.
conditionals
Conditionals are very confusing for new learners as they have their
own special grammatical rules that need to be taught and are not
easily picked up.
Textbooks and teaching guides often point teachers and students
in the direction of the first, second and third conditional rules
which are as follows:
First conditional: ‘If he comes, we will all hide’
The structure is formed as follows: If+subject+present
tense+will+infinitive Usage: for events that are likely to
happen, or where if they happen, another event will
happen in the future.
Second conditional: ‘If I were a woman, I would wear a
dress everyday.’
The structure is formed with the past tense to show
some ‘distance from reality’:
If+subject+simple past+would+infinitive
Usage: for situations that are unreal, unlikely, or even
impossible. The simple past distances the grammar from
‘reality’ and note that, ‘was’ is altered to ‘were’ to further
it from ‘reality’. This is a purely grammatical usage called
the subjunctive.
Third conditional: ‘If Tony had not lied, we would not have
gone to the party.’
If+subject+past perfect+would have+past participle
In this conditional usage we focus on an unreal situation
in the past. If it happened then another thing would have
happened, but neither did as they are both unreal
situations in the past.
This condition is usually reserved for more advanced
learners.
CHINA FOCUSThese are three common structures using conditionals but teachers
should be aware that there are others. There are many scenarios
with an ‘if’ that are real, or not imaginary: ‘if you need to borrow a
tennis racket, you can have mine’. Here both tenses are simple
present. (this is sometimes known as ‘zero conditional’).
Another example using different tenses that does not fit into the first,
second or third conditional concept: If you didn’t take the exam then
you can’t get this position in our company. In this sen-tence the
condition is a realistic situation in the past that does not allow the
person to get the job in the present.
Here are some websites with more information and examples:
http://library.bcu.ac.uk/learner/Grammar%20Guides/3.08%20If.htm
http://www.ef.com/english-resources/english-grammar/conditional/
Conditionals are very confusing for new learners as they have their
own special grammatical rules that need to be taught and are not
easily picked up.
Textbooks and teaching guides often point teachers and students
in the direction of the first, second and third conditional rules
which are as follows:
First conditional: ‘If he comes, we will all hide’
The structure is formed as follows: If+subject+present
tense+will+infinitive Usage: for events that are likely to
happen, or where if they happen, another event will
happen in the future.
Second conditional: ‘If I were a woman, I would wear a
dress everyday.’
The structure is formed with the past tense to show
some ‘distance from reality’:
If+subject+simple past+would+infinitive
Usage: for situations that are unreal, unlikely, or even
impossible. The simple past distances the grammar from
‘reality’ and note that, ‘was’ is altered to ‘were’ to further
it from ‘reality’. This is a purely grammatical usage called
the subjunctive.
Third conditional: ‘If Tony had not lied, we would not have
gone to the party.’
If+subject+past perfect+would have+past participle
In this conditional usage we focus on an unreal situation
in the past. If it happened then another thing would have
happened, but neither did as they are both unreal
situations in the past.
This condition is usually reserved for more advanced
learners.
conditionals
These are three common structures using conditionals but teachers
should be aware that there are others. There are many scenarios
with an ‘if’ that are real, or not imaginary: ‘if you need to borrow a
tennis racket, you can have mine’. Here both tenses are simple
present. (this is sometimes known as ‘zero conditional’).
Another example using different tenses that does not fit into the first,
second or third conditional concept: If you didn’t take the exam then
you can’t get this position in our company. In this sen-tence the
condition is a realistic situation in the past that does not allow the
person to get the job in the present.
Here are some websites with more information and examples:
http://library.bcu.ac.uk/learner/Grammar%20Guides/3.08%20If.htm
http://www.ef.com/english-resources/english-grammar/conditional/
Teaching grammar is one of the key building blocks of establishing yourself in the
classroom. Knowledge of grammar gives you confidence to think of examples and
authority in students’ eyes. There is often one student who thinks they know
everything and may even try to undermine your position in the class. If you are
stuttering over your grammar you may find this problematic.
The above issues range from beginner to advanced level so making sure you have
the right grammar activities for the right level is paramount. A general tip is to make
activities easier than what you think the students’ level is. Firstly, as an important
review of grammar they may have forgotten or is inherently tricky. Secondly, as
when you meet students you may find they appear to have a good standard of
English, but they may only be using a limited range of vocabulary and grammar
that they have perfected. Therefore, you need to test their grammar and push them
out of their comfort zone through simple conversation or writing activities. Once
you know the problems they have, you can create more activities to help them
improve in a way specific to their needs.
With the lowest level beginners and newcomers to the language, remember and
try to understand they know nothing and even very simple grammar structures
may be very difficult. Focus on the basics of s-v-o, the basic tenses, agreement (he
plays), countable and non-countable nouns and basic vocabulary.
Teachers must understand common grammatical issues in the English language, issues which often need refreshing before stepping into the classroom.
Teachers must know the different parts of speech and the order of a sentence.
Teachers must be able to teach each part of speech and make edits to student work.
Chinese students often struggle with tenses, adverbs, questions and conditional sentences so teachers need to make sure they explain these clearly, giving lots of examples
summary
worksheetunit 4
Describe the following nouns and give an example of each in a sentence:Common Nouns
Concrete Nouns
Abstract Nouns
Collective Nouns
Possessive Nouns
Countable Nouns
In your own words, explain the difference between Unfinished Action and Past.
List the nine pronoun forms and when you would use them.
Explain why it is important for teachers to know the different parts of a sentence.