Today I had my 5th teaching practice. I have 5 more to go, so I’m halfway there! We passed the halfway mark for the class already. It will be finished on Feb 26th. It seems like it has been going by so fast.
The pace of the class has been picking up this week. We’re all very busy with our lesson plans and teaching assignments, we have another essay due Wednesday, and Thursday we have to make our presentations to be video taped.
Sarah gives us a grammar lesson
I’m still confused over a lot of the verb tenses. I don’t remember ever hearing about most of them before. No, never in my life! I remember the past, present and future, but now all of the sudden there are 12 of them! WTF?! What are they and when do we use them all? I still don’t know but I am learning.
Maybe by the time the course is over I will actually know what I’m doing. 😉
I come across this blog, with a lot of interesting posts and picture. I am, however, shocked to read that a trainee English teacher does not know the verb tenses? Wow! A really bold statement and perhaps not the best way to advertise her ability to teach English!
ha! I said I am LEARNING to teach English.
I don’t know where you went to school, but in the states, they surely never taught us all these tenses in school.
Personally, I don’t really know why one needs to know what verb tenses are for or how they’re formed. Just as long as you know what you want to say and how to say it. Why all the extra information, that you’ll never REALLY have any use for, ever in your life (unless you want to be an English teacher)?
Have you ever needed to know all that? or are you like most of the rest of us- who only use the words without needing to know which exact parts of speech they are and what tense the verb is?
I’m really not an English teacher yet, nor an English major. I’m actually a math major (and never used any of that either since school). I am a ships officer. That is what I know and use that information daily. Ask me about navigation and I will be able to answer and explain all you want. English minutia? not so much. Sorry.
Hope you’ll check out the blog again anyway Jeff.
Hi Jill, I did not intend to be petulant, I do speak three languages and the verb tenses helped me a lot in the learning process. I am not a native English speaking, and in my home country (Switzerland) we do learn verbs in primary school, and I do believe it is an absolute necessity. It really taught me how to properly express myself. I think that it is really important to understand the difference between tenses, but also, for example, how to construct an affirmative sentence or a conditional sentence. But maybe this is just me, I really like to understand things and languages is one of them! Good luck with your course and all the best for your future!
No problem Jeff. I admire your ability to speak so many languages. I took Latin in high school and learned a little bit of Greek, Spanish, Russian while we were traveling around those places, but have never kept it up. I’ve forgotten almost all of it.
We are not very good with languages here in the US. Most schools don’t teach any 2nd language til high school and then only require 2 years (if that).
We do learn the parts of speech in grade school, but never that detailed. I can’t say I remember all the details. I do remember nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc but I really don’t think they got into such depth about the verb forms.
I did learn how to speak, read and write English fairly well, so I’m not sure that all that detail is really necessary. That is what I was trying to say.
I’m more of a math and science person. I like to try and solve puzzles.