Lesson Plans Focusing on Tenses and Verb Conjugation

Lesson Plans Focusing on Tenses and Verb Conjugation

By Kenneth Beare, About.com Guide
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These lesson plans help students learn to use English tenses and conjugate with confidence. Many of the lessons focus on using related verb tenses during conversation, rather than focusing simply on correct verb conjugation. Each lesson includes lesson objectives, step by step instructions and copyable handout materials for in-class use.

1. Tense Review

These pages provide a lesson aimed at reviewing names and structures of basic tenses. On the second page you will find a printable version of the lesson, as well as the answers to the exercises.

2. Integrating Target Grammar Structures

The example lesson plan focuses on the use of recycling language, namely the passive voice, to help students learn inductively while at the same time improve their oral production skills. By often repeating the passive voice in various guises the students become comfortable with the use of the passive and can then go on to actually employ the passive voice in speaking. It is important to remember that the subject area that the should speak about needs to be limited as to not male the task too difficult by giving students too much choice.

3. A VIP - Present Perfect Simple and Continuous

Students often confuse the present perfect and present perfect continuous. This lesson employs an imaginary biography to get students asking questions and speaking about completed accomplishments (present perfect) and duration of activity (present perfect continuous).

4. Conditional Statements

Making conditional statements are an important part of fluency. This lesson focuses on helping students improve their recognition of the structure and use it in conversation

5. Question Tags

If we want to ask for information we usually use the standard question form. However, sometimes we just want to keep a conversation going, or confirm information. In this case, question tags are often used to solicit input or confirmation to what we are saying. Using question tags well also promotes a keen understanding of the use of various auxiliary verbs.

6. Use of Time Expressions

Time expressions are often the key to understanding and planning written work. Students can improve their written and spoken accuracy by having a good grasp of the relationship between time expressions and tenses. This lesson includes an identification and matching exercise and is followed by a longer sentence construction exercise to give students practice in correct sentence structure.

7. Time Expressions - Past or Present Perfect?

The following lesson takes an inductive approach to helping students refine their usage of past simple or present perfect. Focusing on time signifiers instead of conjugation can help students improve their overall understanding of the importance time and context plays in speaking English.
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