Tense - The simple present

♬Ol’ Man River, he don’t say nothing…

I’m terribly sorry to interrupt, but that should be “He doesn't say anything.”

Statement of form

Sbj + present tense verb (the base form, unless the subject is ‘he, ‘she’ or ‘it’, in which case add -s or –es, depending on the spelling of the base form).

For ‘be’, it’s ‘am’, ‘is’ or ‘are’.

Students need to know

We use it talk about what we see as general truths. So that includes:

routines and habits

“I wake up every morning, stumble out of bed…”

common knowledge

“Klingons rule this quadrant.”

scientific facts

“Dilithium crystals produce warp drive.”

And anything else the speaker sees as an immutable fact of life:

“You Earthlings make me sick.”

We also prefer present simple for timetabled events, as these are also viewed as unmovable facts:

“The train to Shanghai leaves in no time.” (English announcement at Chinese railway station – well, they got the tense right.)

Students struggle with

For the most part, the concepts of the present simple are not difficult for students to grasp. It’s what it doesn’t represent that causes problems. The tense does not usually refer to the time of speaking – i.e. the present, somewhat unexpectedly. For this we tend to use the present continuous:

“What’s the Captain doing?”

“He’s attempting to beam up.”

The exception tends to be with non-action verbs:

“He needs help – now!”

Many other languages have something like the Present Simple, and may or may not have a ‘continuous’ form. If they do, they might well use it very differently. For these reasons, students often grope for the right choice of tense.

But these problems are as nothing when compared with the third person form of the present simple.

If asked to name the single, most common error made by learners of English, 99 experienced teachers out of 100 would say 3^rd person –s:

Teacher: What does your partner do?

Student: He work in Costa.

Even advanced level speakers will routinely miss it off, and I know many teachers who have all but given up correcting students on this error.

So why is it such an issue? One theory is that students need strategies for simplifying the task of language learning to prevent them giving up or going crazy. One short-cut that seems to be almost universally adopted by the learner community is to assume that present simple IS the base form. After all, much of the time they’ll be right with that. The rest of the time, they’ll have their teachers wondering what’s the point of carrying on.

Generative situations

Rush hour pain. Introducing the third person. The idea is to present a list of annoying things that constitute bad ‘commuter etiquette.’ You can avoid 3^rd person if you wish, by insisting students talk about “They…”

Get some pictures of a crowded train or bus.

Next, check that students know the word “commuter”. On the board, using an image of a person, labelled “Bad Commuter”, elicit things that this person typically does:

He plays loud music.

He blocks the door.

He wears a big back-pack.

He eats smelly food.

He gets on before people get off.

He doesn’t give his seat to old or pregnant people.

He talks loudly on his mobile phone.

Low level students will not of course be able to give you many, if any of these. So think about putting the sentences on the board, numbered. Act it out, or show a picture of it if possible, and get the students to tell you the number. Then go on to focus on the grammar point – that –s ending.

Fun practice

Brainbox. This makes the most of the students’ knowledge of the world outside the classroom. You will need to prepare a list of facts that you know to be true, from various spheres of life, together with its sphere:

“The Earth goes round the sun.” – science;

“Tesco’s opens at 7 o’clock in the morning.” – shopping;

“Birds eat worms.” Nature;

“The Wisla River goes through Poland.” – geography;

“Football teams have eleven players.” – sport

Type it out with generous line spacing to allow room for students to write under each sentence.

As a demonstration, present the first sentence to the class, by reading it out, and showing it. Ask the class if they can give you another, similar sentence, again from science. If they are slow to catch on, give them the sentence pattern:

          “______ goes round ______” - and encourage them to give you another sentence, perhaps:

          “The moon goes round the Earth.”

          “Titan goes round Saturn.”

Then hand out your list of sentences and get students to work together to write a similar sentence to each of your sample ones. Monitor closely to ensure accuracy.

Simple feedback would be to get students to read out their sentences, though it would be worth priming the listeners to respond appropriately: “Really?” or “I know that.” Or “We wrote that too!”

For a more extended activity, get students to form new pairs or small groups, or mingle, and perform mini dialogues, based on a combination of your initial sentence and their added fact:

A: “Tesco’s opens at seven o’clock.”

B: “And Carrefour opens at six o’clock.”

A: “Birds eat worms.”

B: “And cows eat grass.”

After this, have some feedback on any genuinely new facts they learnt.