When teaching and practicing the simple present tense students must understand that the present simple is used to describe routines, habits, daily activities, and general truths. The following practice tips range from mechanical drills to meaningful practice.  Teachers can adapt them to fit their students needs.

Oral drills

• Students practice forming simple present negative statements.  The teacher provides a sentence in the affirmative; students change it to the negative.
  Example:
  Teacher: My father watches TV in the evening.
  Students: My father doesn’t watch TV
• You can also use the same type of drill to practice question forms and short answers.
  Example:
  Teacher: Does your father watch TV at 4 o’clock in the morning?
  Students: No he doesn’t.

Meaningful practice

For a more meaningful way to practice the simple present tense,

You can also practice the simple present in a more meaningful way.

1. For example to practice simple present statements with adverbs of frequency, the teacher calls on students individually to provide sentences with always, usually, often, sometimes, rarely, or never to describe their usual habits.
Example:
Teacher: Nancy read the newspaper.
Nancy: I never read the newspaper.

2. devise a questionnaire:

1. What’s your name?
2. Where do you live?
3. What do you do?
4. What do you do in your free time?
5. What sport do you like?
6. Do you practice it?
7. When and where do you practice it?

Then proceed as follows:

• Students answer the questions. Help them by providing verbs they will probably need.
• Students work in pairs to ask and answer the questions.
• Students write a paragraph about their partners and read it loud.

3. Here is another activity to consolidate the use of the simple present:

• On the board, draw a chart with many columns each labeled with a different job.
• Students are put into groups.
• Each group is given individual sentences on slips of papers. Each sentence describes an activity a person would do in one of the jobs indicated on the chart. For example: ” a mechanic repairs cars”, “a journalist writes articles”…
• Make sure that groups understand the meaning of the sentences and provide help.
• Students read the sentences and match them with the jobs.
• A representative of each group is asked to write on the board sentences underneath the appropriate job.

3. A variation of the previous activity.

• Ask students to provide a description of jobs.
• Then they take turns reading descriptions.
• The other students try to guess the job.

4. You can also use a chain game to practice the simple present for routines and habitual action.

•  Ask students to continue a story. Start the story as follows:
  “My cousin always has a busy day. He gets up early in the morning. At 5:00 o’clock, he goes jogging…”
• This must be written on the board and ask students to continue the story.
• Each student adds a new sentence to continue the story.

Exercises:

Put the words in brackets in the correct form of the simple present.

e.g : John (work)… in a restaurant.John
works in a restaurant.

1.  The sun (rise)… in the east.
2. My parents (like )… slow music very much.
3. I always (drive)… to work.
4. Nancy (do )…. Judo.
5. Leila (drink )… four cups of coffee a day.

Circle the correct answer

1.  Sue / I like jogging in the morning.
2. Alan / I usually writes reports in his job.
3. Bill / Sara and Sue always cleans her room.
4. Tony / we visit this museum regularly.
5. I / Leila watches soap opera.

Circle the correct answer

1. Do / does Leila like swimming?
2.  Where do / does Alice and Alan live?
3. What time do / does the sun rise?
4. Do / does the Smiths go to this restaurant?
5.  What do / does you think of the new manager?

Put these sentences into the negative form

1. The sun rises in the east.
   It….in the west
2.  They speak Spanish in Spain.
   They… Chinese in Spain.
3. Vegetarians eat fruits and vegetables.
   Vegetarians…meat.
4.  They drive on the left in Britain.
   They… on the right.

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What are plugins

Wikipedia defines plugins as follows:

Plug-ins are sets of software components that add specific abilities to a larger software application. If supported, plug-ins enable customizing the functionality of an application.

In the same way wordPress plugins will add new features and functionalities to your blog. They can extend WordPress to do almost anything you can imagine.

You can have a look at the most popular plugins in this page:

The most popular WordPress Plugins

Five WordPress plugins for teachers

The following are some plugins for teachers:

1. Class Blogs
   It is meant to simplify the process of blogging as a class. It accomplishes this by making it easier to find, organize and analyze the work created by your students.
2. Learninglog
   It offers teachers and learners advanced functions to use WordPress as a learning tool which includes an administration interface for teachers to set up learninglogs for students, an administration interface for teachers to set up learninglogs for students, the possibility for teachers to create assignments for groups or individuals…
3. mtouch quiz
   It create a multiple choice quiz (or exam). This plugin was written with learning and mobility in mind. The quiz interface is touch friendly.
4. digress it
   It allows commenting at the paragraph level and is intended for in-depth conversations about longer documents.
5. Buddypress
   Features include: a class dashboard, courses, lectures, bibliography, assignments, quizzes, gradebook, and schedules.
   

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Are Humans Rational or Irrational?

Behavioral economist Dan Ariely, the author of Predictably Irrational, uses classic visual illusions and his own counterintuitive (and sometimes shocking) research findings to show how we’re not as rational as we think when we make decisions.

How can these ideas relate to learning and teaching?

• As teachers should we continue to drive hard hitting facts into our students heads saying it’s reality?
• Humans are much less rational than we are given to think. So how can we urge our students to question any accepted ideas and concepts? How can we teach them to doubt reality? Go beyond accepted beliefs and develop critical thinking?
• I still believe that one of the most noble aims of any educational system is to encourage students to formulate new challenging questions rather than adopt hardly knit sets of knowledge.
• When it comes to decision making, rational thinking is highly overrated. So we have to be aware of our limits when dealing with testing and evaluating kids at school. It’s not that obvious when we label students as mediocre, brilliant, or whatever. Things might be different in reality.
• Making the right decisions sometimes may be a real challenge

Watch the video:

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Difficulties

When teaching the simple present tense, there are several considerations teachers have to take into account. First, some irregular verbs may confuse students. For instance, the verb ‘have‘ and ‘be‘ have different forms in the simple present (has, am, are,…) A second concern is related to the dropping of the ‘s’ of the third person singular which many students seem to forget . Another difficulty is the spelling of the forms that take the ‘s’ of the third person singular. Sometimes, only ‘s‘ is added (close – closes) while in some forms ‘es’ is added (watch – watches.) Finally, interrogative and negative forms which necessitate the auxiliary ‘do‘ may represent another challenge for beginner students.

Contrasting tenses

Bearing in mind the above difficulties, I usually try to teach a tense by contrasting it with another tense. For the simple present tense, I contrast it with either:

• the present progressive tense (I’m reading a book now; I always read it in the morning),
• or the simple past (I usually play tennis on Sundays, but last Sunday I didn’t play tennis; I was ill)

Contrasting tenses gives students the opportunity to make  finer distinctions between tenses and locate situations in time. Learners will also be able to discover nuances in meaning as well as in structure. IN the case of the simple present, my ultimate aim is to make students understand  that this tense is used to describe routines, habits, daily activities, and general truths.

Tips and procedure to teach the simple present tense

1. Introduce the simple present and the present progressive through situations.

A. What am I doing now? (pretend to be reading a book)
B. Reading.
A. Yes I am reading a book at the moment. I read a book every week.

2. Write similar examples on the board.

• I am watching TV now. I watch TV every evening. I love watching movies.
• I am playing soccer. I play soccer every Sunday. I like soccer, but I don’t like tennis.
• I am driving to work now . I drive to work every morning. I live far away from work.
• I am having lunch now. I usually have lunch at home. I don’t like to have lunch in a restaurant.

3. Draw a table on the board like the one below and students to identify the actions that routines habits or facts and those that take place at the time of speaking.

4. Introduce a) interrogative forms and b) third person singular forms, negative and affirmative.

• Do you like playing soccer?
  Yes, I like playing soccer, but I don’t like playing tennis. My sister doesn’t like playing tennis. She likes playing volleyball.
• Does Yor sister have a lot of friends?
  No, she doesn’t have many friends. She’s unpopular.
• Do your parents like watching action films?
  No they don’t; they prefer love stories.

Ask students to complete this chart:

5. Introduce adverbs of frequency and prepare a questionnaire like the following:

Choose the appropriate choice for you:

• I eat breakfast in the cafeteria.
  a. Always b. Sometimes c. Rarely d. Never
• I drink strong coffee in the morning.
  a. Always b. Sometimes c. Rarely d. Never
• I have lunch at a fast food restaurant.
  a. Always b. Sometimes c. Rarely d. Never
• I eat fruits after lunch.
  a. Always b. Sometimes c. Rarely d. Never
• I have dinner at home
  a. Always b. Sometimes c. Rarely d. Never

6. Students read their preferences. The other students listen and take notes. Then they write short paragraphs about their partners.

My partner never has breakfast in a cafeteria. He sometimes has strong coffee…

7.  Ask students to come up with examples of the simple present.

• My name is…
• I am from…
• I … every morning.
• I work  in …
• I like…, but I don’t like…
• I go to…. school.
• I go to bed at…

Walk around and provide any help. Then ask students to write a paragraph using the examples they provided.

8. Later, it would be a great idea to help students distinguish between the simple present and the simple past. Provide examples like the following:

• I go to the movies every Saturday, but last Saturday I didn’t go to the movies I stayed at home. I was ill.
• They always have breakfast at home, but last Sunday they didn’t have breakfast at home. They went out early in the morning.

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Teaching very young learners, those considered to be between three and five years old, may be a challenge because of many reasons. To start with, it is usually very hard to keep these learners 100% concentrated. They may easily feel bored and you will have to find a way to keep them focused.  In addition, an EFL or ESL teacher will find it daunting teaching a language to very young learners in the same way older learners are taught.

Characteristics of very young learners

• They need to feel safe.
• They have short concentration span.
• They need concrete experiences in order to understand.
• Their first language is still developing.
• Their writing and reading skills are still rudimentary.
• They are readily engaged in play.

Tips to teach very young learners

• Young learners need a lot of recycling and repetition.
• They cannot comprehend abstract ideas, so go for concrete examples, practical instances of language in use to be able to understand them and reproduce them.
• Younger learners need to be taught meaningful English.
• It is useless to teach them grammar since they still struggle with grammar in their mother tongue.
• It is preferable to help very young learners to memorize whole chunks rather than go into detailed descriptions of structures.
• Teaching chunks of language in context may be a great idea.
• Using songs, games, fairy tales, stories, short conversations, dance, play… provide good exposure to language.
• Using a lot of visual aids, colors and music can be fun and enhance retention.
• Focus must be on fluency rather on accuracy.
• Very young learners need to learn by doing.  Use of their motor skills to cut out shapes and glue them might be fun and helpful to L2 acquisition.

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This lesson plan helps students explore the different elements of a short story. By the end of the lesson students will be able to come up with a definition of the short story and know the elements that  constitute it. On line materials may be used to carry out the lesson plan. More than one session can be needed to deliver it.

 The activity

• Ask students what a short story is.Write any suggestions on the board.
• Present in the form of a work sheet the characteristics that define a short story:
  1.  Length: a classic definition of a short story is that one should be able to read it in one sitting.
  2. Prose as opposed to poetry
  3. Fiction, narrative.
  4. Concise: information offered in the story is relevant to the tale being told.  This is unlike a novel, where the story can diverge from the main plot
• Ask students to come up with a definition that might look as follows:
  “A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas  and novels.” (Wikipedia)
• Next ask the students to further examine the uniqueness of the short story by reading a short story like The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant.
• Students make a first report on:
  1. the title,
  2. characters,
  3. setting,
  4. plot,
  5.  climax,
  6.  and conclusion.
• Let the students answer questions about the short story. Here is an online copy of questions about The Necklace:
  “The Necklace” – Questions
• Assign more short stories to be read and studied as extensive reading.

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Many teachers find it challenging to teach the present perfect. This is due to a number of reasons.

1. First, the present perfect is not really a present tense.
2. It is composed of the auxiliary have and a past participle.
3. The past participle itself is a real challenge for students, particularly the irregular forms

The following lesson plan provides ideas on how to teach this tense.

1. Start by giving examples of present perfect:

• Last week, I watched three movies.
• This week, I have watched only one.

2. Elicit the form of the present perfect simple.

• Have + Past Participle.

Remind students that the past participle of regular verbs is formed by adding -ed to the base form of the verb

• play = played
• visit = visited
• receive = received

However, the past participle of irregular verbs have special forms and have to be learned by heart:

• be = been
• come = come
• do = done

3. Help students make a distinction between finished and unfinished actions:

• Last week, I watched three movies. (Ask students: is last week finished?)
• This week, I have watched only one. (Ask students: is this week finished?)

Then draw a table like this:

Ask students to complete the table with time expressions like yesterday, this morning, in 1992, today….

Ask students to give you examples of finished actions and unfinished ones.

• I visited my uncle twice last week. But, I have visited him only once this week.
• I wrote three poems last month. But this month I have written only one poem.
• I called my girlfriend five times yesterday. But today, I have called her six times.

4. Once students grasp the contrast between finished and unfinished actions, you can proceed to present new uses of the present perfect.

A. Have you ever…?

Use personal experience to teach this structure.

• Have you ever seen an Indian movie?
• Have you ever played golf?
• Have you ever met  a world champion?
• Have you ever written a poem?

B. Actions that happened in the past but whose effect is still in the present.

• Why don’t want to eat lunch with us? -  Because, I’ve already eaten it.
• Why don’t you want to read that book? – Because I’ve read it before.
• Why is he sad? – Because he has lost his purse.

C. Present Perfect with since and for

The best way to teach the present perfect with since and for is to use a time line.

• 1990 – Nancy moved to New York.
• 1992 – She was appointed as a teacher in Jesse Jackson high school.
• 1994 – She married Alan.

Then Students may come up with examples like:

• Nancy has lived in New york since 1990 / for … years.
• She has been a teacher since 1992 / for….years.
• She has been married to Alan since 1994 / for.. years.

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Dogme is a communicative approach to language teaching that was initiated by Scott Thornbury in his article, “A Dogma for EFL”. Dogme advocates a kind of teaching that doesn’t rely on published textbooks but relies on conversational communication that occurs in the classroom between teachers and students. The name of the approach comes from an analogy the Danish Dogme 95 film movement which intended to “cleans cinema of an obsessive concern for technique and rehabilitate cinema which foregrounded the story and the inner life of characters.” According to Scott Thornbury,

teaching should be done using only the resources that the teachers and students bring to the classroom – i.e themselves and whatever happens to be in the classroom.

Key features of dogme

As an approach dogme has well grounded principles in language learning and learning theories as explained by Scott Thornbury in this post blog. He explains that dogme considers

• learning as experiential and holistic,
• and language learning as an emergent jointly-constructed and socially-constituted process motivated both by communal and communicative imperatives.

Key features of dogme include the following:

• Dogme has its roots in communicative language teaching
• Conversation is seen as central to language learning.
• Dogme also places more emphasis on a discourse-level (rather than sentence-level) approach to language.
• Dogme considers that the learning of a skill is co-constructed within the interaction between the learner and the teacher.
• The Dogme approach considers that student-produced material is preferable to published materials and textbooks, to the extent of inviting teachers to take a ‘vow of chastity’ and not use textbooks
• Like task-based approach, dogme considers language learning to be a process where language emerges rather than one where it is acquired.
• Scaffolded learning where learning is assisted by the teacher through conversations makes it possible for effective learning to take place.
• The teacher’s role is to optimize language learning affordances, the environment where learners can potentially learn and direct their attention to emergent language.
• The learners voice, beliefs and knowledge are accepted.

Criticism

• Dogme can be a real challenge for teachers in low resource contexts
• Many teachers question the appropriateness of dogme in situations where students are preparing for examinations that have specific syllabi.
• Dogme creates problems for non-native and novice teachers who find in textbooks a safe guide.
• The initial call for a “vow of chastity” not to use textbooks is seen as unnecessarily purist and hinders the adoption of a weaker version of dogme.

Merits

• Dogme is compatible with reflective teaching.
• More freedom for teachers and students to conceptualize and implement more appropriate material.
• Students are most engaged by content they have created themselves
• Dogme has the merit of creating a low-affective filter environment in the classroom.
• learners follow their own pace of learning assisted by the teacher through scaffolding.
• Learning is humanized through a radical pedagogy of dialogue.
• Learners are freed from the ideological load inherent in  textbooks generally published in the west and commercialized all over the world.
• Dogme recognizes the legitimacy of learners needs and expectations.
• Dogme gives teachers and learners the possibility to free themselves from the models of teaching and learning imposed by textbook writers.
• Conversations provide the opportunity for learners to analyze, internalize, and practice language.
• Communication is central in the dogme approach.

Refereneces and links:

• Dogme yahoo group
• Throw away your textbooks
• Dogme: nothing if not critical
• Dogme: dancing in the dark
• Against Dogme: a plea for moderation
• Scott Thornbury’s blog

Meddings, Luke; Thornbury, Scott (2009). Teaching Unplugged: Dogme in English Language Teaching. Peaslake UK: Delta.

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Six web tools for teachers. This includes helpful writing and vocabulary tools for designing lessons using online material and websites. You can get more details from Nick Peachey blog.

• Wordnik
  Connecting people with meaning. The words you want defined.
• Phras.in
  Contextualize your words
• Phraseup
  phraseup assists you with writing by finding and filling-in the words you can’t remember
• Telescopic text
  Telescopic text is primarily a set of tools for creating expanding texts. Very useful for practicing writing.
• Devolver
  Movie maker. Useful to create dialogues and dialogue scenes.
• Pimpampum
  Helps students create visual slide shows ofsentences or short texts.

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Grammar teaching is a tricky enterprise. What is for some a straightforward rule may be for others a controversial issue. To make matters worse grammar is defined according to whether we have a descriptive or prescriptive view of language. Prescriptivists think that the objective of grammar is to state whether a construction abides by the set of grammar rules of a speech community. Descriptivists, however, view grammar as a description of how people do speak rather than how they should speak. In addition, while some believe it is best to teach grammar with all its intricacies unveiling the secrets of exceptions, others contend that, for pragmatic reasons, a pedagogic grammar that purports to be a sub-set of the rules of grammar should be the central preoccupation of teachers, discarding all the difficulties and exceptions for the learner to discover in later levels as his /her skills become refined and fine tuned with the grammatical complexity of constructions.

Descriptive grammar and prescriptive grammar

Is it right to say a certain construction rather than another is the central objective of prescriptive grammar? Regulating our use of language to the ideal set of linguistic rules overshadows the fact that language is evolving forever. Rules change as communities are influenced by external factors, like globalization, or simply as an effect of new needs and necessities. So for a descriptivist, it would be wiser to describe language as it is rather than as it should be. For example, one of the most noticeable development of English is the dropping of the third person singular. Many other changes are occurring in English as it is shown in an interesting article  entitled Current changes in English syntax by Christian Mair and Geoffrey. They cite a typical list of changes suspected to be going on in present-day standard English which is largely based on Barber (1964, p.130-144):

a. a tendency to regularise irregular morphology (e.g. dreamt = dreamed)
b. revival of the “mandative” subjunctive, probably inspired by formal US usage (we demand that she take part in the meeting)
c. elimination of shall as a future marker in the first person
d. development of new, auxiliary-like uses of certain lexical verbs (e.g. get, want – cf., e.g., The way you look, you wanna / want to see a doctor soon)6
e. extension of the progressive to new constructions, e.g. modal, present perfect and past perfect passive progressive (the road would not be being built/ has not been being built/ had not been being built before the general elections)
f. increase in the number and types of multi-word verbs (phrasal verbs, have/take/give a ride, etc.)
g. placement of frequency adverbs before auxiliary verbs (even if no emphasis is intended – I never have said so)
h. do-support for have (have you any money? and no, I haven’t any money – do you have/ have you got any money? and no, I don’t have any money/ haven’t got any money)
i. demise of the inflected form whom
j. increasing use of less instead of fewer with countable nouns (e.g. less people)
k. spread of the s-genitive to non-human nouns (the book’s cover)
l. omission of the definite article in certain environments (e.g. renowned Nobel laureate
Derek Walcott)
m. “singular” they (everybody came in their car)
n. like, same as, and immediately used as conjunctions
o. a tendency towards analytical comparatives and superlatives (politer = more polite)

You might also be interested in a discussion about current changes in English by following this link

Language is not static many changes do occur and the aim of descriptive grammar is to observe the linguistic world as it is, without the bias of preconceived ideas about how it ought to be. It analyzes language objectively and describes how it is used by a speech community.

Prescriptive grammar on the other hand aims at defining standard language forms and giving advice on effective language use. A prescriptivist contends that certain constructions are correct and that others, even though they may be used by native speakers, are simply incorrect. Prescriptive grammarians often believe that descriptivists distort language usage.

Actual or perceived language usage?

The regulatory perspective of prescriptive grammar may delineate right from wrong usage of language, but it will fall short of explaining the facts. Sticking to the ideal set of rules they claim governing language may lead prescriptive grammarians to advocate an artificial grammar that has basically no strong evidence in actual use. Nevertheless, it is very difficult to escape from being a prescriptivist. We all, at one time or another, adhere to normativity. There is always a need of some legitimate authority in language. Teachers, for example, need to give students some landmarks, to guide them in internalizing the target language and its grammar.

Pedagogical Grammar

Even if teachers want to teach the grammar that descriptivists advocate, it would be pedagogically  difficult. However, textbooks are full of  regulatory grammar rules that state what is wrong and right. This teaching is done sometimes selectively, discarding exceptions and focussing on regularities at the expense of accurate grammar.

“have” and “think” are stative verbs: they cannot be used in the continuous form.

Stating a grammar rule in this categoric simplistic way doesn’t take into consideration the fact that both these verbs are also used in the continuous form when:

• “have” doesn’t mean possess or own – I am having a difficult time doing this exercise.
• “think” is not used to mean opinion – I am thinking about how to do the exercise.

This pedagogical grammar might make the teacher’s life in the classroom easier, but it loses a fundamental concept of grammar, namely that language is also about irregularities.

Reference:

Barber, Ch. (1964). Linguistic change in present-day English. London and Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd.

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