Tense and aspect: initial training sessions
This site takes the view that there are, despite what many
grammar books will tell you, actually three tenses in English.
Yes, yes, we know that the future in English is not really a tense
form because the verb is not inflected but a sentence such as:
I will be 30 years old in
January
can only refer to the future with no reference to any other time (it
is an absolute tense).
The other two tenses can be loosely categorised as present
(referring to now and always) and past.
At an initial level, the aspects to be considered are these:
- perfect:
seen as relating one time to another such as:
She has arrived
relating now to the past
She had arrived
relating then to before then
She will have arrived
relating the future to before the future - progressive
concerning ongoing events or states in, e.g.:
She was working in the garden last week
There is no attempt here to distinguish this from the continuous aspect because, in English, the two aspects are usually realised with the same tense forms. - prospective
to account for the use of the present progressive form to refer to the future and to the use of going to to do the same thing, as in e.g.:
I'm going to see the film
I'm having lunch with my mother next week
Left out of this area altogether are considerations of habitual,
durative, iterative and other aspects which are common forms in
other languages (and occur in English).
The simplification causes a certain amount of inexactitude and half
truth but is unavoidable at this level.
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The key ideas |
Obviously, the names of the tense forms and aspects will have to
be acquired. That's the focus of a later worksheet.
Before getting bogged down in identifying present perfect
progressive forms or whatever, it's as well to deal with the
difference between time and tense and the mismatch sometimes
observed between them.
Worksheet #1 is an attempt to alert people to the central ideas but
will need a good deal of discussion as people work through it.
The essentials to cover at initial training level are:
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Workshop tasks |
Usually, participants can be relied on to do some work at home or out of face-to-face session time to absorb the terminology but the concepts are better presented and discussed in class. You need to be on hand because the ideas are rarely seen as intuitive.
- Worksheet #1
- This is a quick awareness-raising exercise.
Start with eliciting what people may already (vaguely) be aware of, namely that there is such a thing as tense and it is somehow related to time.
The purpose of the first two tasks is to make it clear that tense is indeed a matter of time in many cases.
The second two tasks are designed to undermine the idea.
You will need to check that everyone has the right answers and question 4 will need a good deal of discussion. - Worksheet #2
- This is about aspect not time or tense per se.
This worksheet does not explain the meanings of aspects, it exemplifies them and attempts to alert people to their significance in English. Meaning is your problem.
- Worksheet #3
- This exercise focuses on the names of the tenses. It's mostly revision and reference.
- The comment is made that English can but does not usually
distinguish between progressive and continuous aspects.
For example:
She was living in London at the time
is a continuous aspect, but
She is writing a letter at the moment
is progressive but the tense form is the same. However:
She is thinking about her holiday
is progressive
and
She thinks her holiday was wonderful
is continuous insofar as it functions as a background and refers to a state of affairs.
In this case, because of stative and dynamic uses, the forms are different.
It is, naturally, usually not wise to trouble initial-course trainees with this but to aver that continuous and progressive are interchangeable words is also unwise.
The second task on this worksheet focuses on all that people on initial training courses need to know about finite and non-finite verb forms.
The text contains examples of non-finite forms acting as parts of subjects and objects, as adverbials, prepositions and as adjectives.
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Related areas |
This is a contentious area and the site takes a slightly sideways, functional look at things. There are also more traditional guides to the tense forms.
| Related guides | |
| For trainees: | |
| tenses | for the index to the guides to tense forms in the initial plus section |
| tense and aspect | an essentials-only guide to the area |
| time lines | for an example set of timelines to help in getting concepts across to learners |
| For you (as a reminder of what you need to know) | |
| tenses and aspects | this takes you to the more technical in-service guides to tense forms, aspects and much else |
| A-Z index | where you can find guides to or containing specific concepts and terms |