Would Tense

Register now & get certified to teach english abroad! This is a fun speaking activity where students discuss which of these spooky things they would rather do. Choose carefully.   Register now & get certified to teach english abroad!  [Read more]

Register now & get certified to teach english abroad! This is a useful board game to talk about things your students would rather do.   Register now & get certified to teach english abroad!  [Read more]

Register now & get certified to teach english abroad! These are some fun conversation cards with "Would you" questions for your ESL students.   Register now & get certified to teach english abroad!  [Read more]

Linda Dunsmore Alumni Experiences I never thought I needed to take a test to teach English before doing the TEFL course. Graduating from an all American boarding school to doing my undergrad in Denver, Colorado and using my time off to teach English in India I did not think a test would benefit me in any way. It was not until I was required to attain a teaching certificate in the country of Thailand where I did my research and decided upon taking the TEFL. There are two main reasons as to why I think the TEFL would benefit anyone: 1. Time efficient and 2. Educational. Taking the TEFL course is time efficient. There are so many things I was able to learn from taking the TEFL course. The TEFL course is time efficient and has proven to be educational. Are you ready to teach English abroad?...  [Read more]

  Now we'll have a look at the present perfect tense. The form for the present perfect tense is again our subject here, our auxiliary verb, or helping verb, in this case it's 'have'. For subjects 'I,' 'you,' 'we,' 'they', we leave the auxiliary verb as 'have'. For 'he,' 'she' and 'it', our auxiliary verb needs to be conjugated or changed into 'has'. Following these helping verbs, we have our main verb in the past participle form. Here we have the verb 'to play'. 'To play' is a regular verb. So for regular verbs we simply add '-ed'. The result is sentences such as 'I have played football today,' or 'He has played snooker today'. Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section of their online TEFL certification course. Each of our online courses is broken down...  [Read more]

  Here now is a teaching idea for the present perfect tense. If you remember back, one of the main usages of the present perfect tense is to talk about past experiences at an indefinite time. Here, will be having students work in small groups. Each small group will receive a prompt. This prompt has various past experiences. However, not conjugated into the question. The challenge for the students will be to take one of these prompts and to create a question based upon it. For example here they see 'win' and 'a competition'. One at a time, the students will take turns forming the question. 'Have you ever won a competition?' The other people listening to the question in the small group, will exchange their past experiences, either 'Yes, I have,' and perhaps tell a bit about the...  [Read more]

  We'll begin our examination of all the tenses by first looking at the present tense. There are four present tenses and we'll begin with the present simple tense. It's the most common tense in the English language as it talks about things in general, general facts, routines, habits. Those are usages that we'll look at in a little while but first let's focus on the form of the tense. Here, we've got our subjects 'I', 'you', 'we', 'they' and the base form of the verb followed by the rest of our sentence. Here for the 'he', 'she' and 'it' subjects, we have to conjugate our verb and in this case we've added an '-es' for 'teaches' followed by the rest of our sentence. With subjects 'I', 'you', 'we' and 'they' the pattern stays the same throughout we use the base form of the verb....  [Read more]

  Another idea for the present continuous tense focuses on the action of miming. Because it's in the present continuous tense, it'll be critical that the student, who is doing miming, continues to do the miming as the students guess what he or she is doing. In order to do this, the teacher will ask one student to come to the front of the class and present them with a card. The card at low levels will just be one word such as 'sleeping,' 'surfing,' 'eating,' or 'playing'. As soon as the student is able to mine any one of those actions, the students continue to guess with 'You are sleeping,' 'You are eating,' 'You are surfing.' Now at higher levels what you could do is continue on from the base of the action and include something like 'You are playing football,' or 'You are playing...  [Read more]

  Now here's a teaching idea for the present perfect continuous tense. If you remember we use this tense to talk about actions that had been continuing up until the present moment or very recently. In this activity, you'll be giving a student a card. That card will include the past activity as well as some results. This card says 'You've been driving in the rain on your motorbike. You're all wet and your clothes are too.' The results are 'you're all wet and your clothes are too.' You'll present that information to the rest of the class and, therefore, it's up to the class to guess the action that was occurring up until the certain point in time. What will happen in this activity is, the student at the front of the room will express the present results 'clothes being wet; I'm all...  [Read more]

  And now we'll take a look at a few teaching ideas for the present continuous tense. The present continuous tense is quite a visual tense. We use it to describe actions that are happening at the present moment. So, we could give our students a picture, such as the one seen here. It is important that in the picture there are many activities going on. The teacher can give a time limit to pairs or small groups. In that time limit, the pairs or small groups will make various sentences based upon what they see in the picture. These sentences may include 'He is taking a picture,' 'He is throwing a boomerang,' 'They are playing with the ball,' 'He is digging a hole.' At the end of the time limit, the teacher will ask for some feedback and get feedback from the pairs and the groupings to...  [Read more]

Register now & get certified to teach english abroad! What would you do if a gingerbread man jumped out of your oven?   Register now & get certified to teach english abroad!  [Read more]

  And now we'll have a look at the present perfect continuous tense. As its name suggests, what we're going to do is combine the present continuous usages and the present perfect usages into a tense that basically expresses the fact that we've got an action continuing up until the present point in time. For the form of this tense, again, we're going to combine into various aspects of both the perfect and the continuous tenses. If we have a look we always begin with our subjects, then we have our, two now, helping verbs. The helping verb 'to have' for the perfect tenses, as well as the helping verb 'be' for the continuous tenses. For our subjects 'I', 'you', 'we' and 'they', we leave 'have' as 'have' and for 'he', 'she' and 'it', we conjugate it to 'has'. Because it's a continuous...  [Read more]

  Now, let's take a look at the present continuous tense. The continuous tense is used to talk about actions in progress at the time of speaking or around the time of speaking. The first thing to notice with the continuous tense is that we must use the verb plus '-ing' form, also known as the present participle. You'll see it in any continuous tense, especially with the present continuous. We have three different forms of this tense. First, we have the subject 'I' used with 'am teaching'. Then, we have 'you', 'we' and 'they are teaching'. Finally, we've got 'he', 'she' 'it is teaching'. The 'am', 'are' and 'is' are forms of the verb 'to be' and here with this tense is used as an auxiliary verb or a helping verb. In order to form negative sentences, we simply add the word 'not'...  [Read more]

  Now here are some teaching ideas for the future continuous tense. Here, we have an activity where we'll be asking students to spontaneously make some excuses based upon some invitations. We can do this in pairs or small groups. The teacher will have cut these cards up and the students will place them into a pile, randomly picking up a card. So one student might pick this card up and say 'Would you like to play tennis with me tomorrow?' The other student will be challenged to come up with an excuse as quickly as possible, which might be 'No, I'm sorry I'll be working.' Then, we have the next student pick up the next card and we challenge an additional student to make an excuse. Here we have another teaching idea for the future continuous tense and this involves two students trying...  [Read more]

  The main function for the present perfect tense is to relate something in the past to the present. We can do so in a number of ways. First, we have indefinite past actions. 'I have been to Italy twice'. We're not concerned with when it happened, we just simply want to say that it has happened in the past. It's a fact of something I have done in the past but yet it's still true in the present. Unfinished past actions: 'I have lived here for three years'. I started living here in the past and it's still true now. With this usage, you will typically see time expressions. Finally, we have past actions with present results. I have lost my keys. It's implied that I still haven't found them. I lost them in the past. I don't have them now. I've lost my keys. Below you can read feedback...  [Read more]

  Here's an idea for teaching the present perfect continuous tense. However in this activity what the students will be doing, is comparing and contrasting this tense with the present perfect tense. This is something that a teacher will want to do after they've explored both tenses and because both tenses are quite confusing, we'll ask the students to compare and contrast the two, making sure that they can tell the difference. In this activity, the teacher will have cut out each individual card. The teacher will distribute the cards to the students and after a minute has gone by, the teacher will then ask the students to fold their cards over and get into a pair. One student in the pair will then present a certain result and ask the student to form the question. Here, with the prompts...  [Read more]

  The two most common usages for the present continuous tense as it relates to speaking about things in the present. We have actions in progress at the time of speaking, specifically right when it's being said. So I can say ?I am teaching right now.? However, we also have actions in progress around the time of speaking. ?I'm reading a good book.? Now, of course I'm not reading a book just now but I started reading a book in the past I am reading it perhaps today sometime and I'll finish reading the book at some point in the future. Again, I'm not doing it just now but around the time of speaking. Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section of their online TEFL certification course. Each of our online courses is broken down into concise units that focus on...  [Read more]

  As mentioned earlier, to form this tense, we have to use a special form of the verb. Technically it's called the past participle form with irregular verbs. Of course these past participle forms change quite a bit from its base form of the verb. Here are a few examples 'go' moves to 'gone', 'be' moves to 'been', 'write' to 'written', 'speak' to 'spoken' and 'read'. Although very confusing for the non-native speaker, doesn't change its spelling, but does change its pronunciation, resulting in 'read' going to 'read'. Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section of their online TEFL certification course. Each of our online courses is broken down into concise units that focus on specific areas of English language teaching. This convenient, highly structured...  [Read more]

Register now & get certified to teach english abroad! The simple past tense is used to talk about a completed action in a time before now. It indicates an action which is completed at a definite time in the past.   The simple past tense is used to talk about a completed action in a time before now. It indicates an action which is completed at a definite time in the past. Register now & get certified to teach english abroad!  [Read more]

Register now & get certified to teach english abroad!   Here's a useful infographic showcasing the different verb tenses in the English language.   = used for an action that was completed before some point in the past, for example: "I had written a book."   = used for an action that occurred in the past, for example: "I wrote a book."   = used for an action that was completed over a period of time before some point in the past, for example: "I had been writing a book."   = used for a continuing action that began in the past, for example: "I was writing a book."   = used for a completed action or an action that began in the past and continued until the present, for example: "I have written a book."   ...  [Read more]

Register now & get certified to teach english abroad! Here is a fun worksheet to practice recognizing the different tenses in English with your young students. Students simply have to color by past, present or future tense.     Register now & get certified to teach english abroad!  [Read more]

  The two most common usages for the present simple tense are habits and routines, as well as general facts and truths. Our example of routine would be 'I teach every Monday.' We've used our subject 'I', our base form 'teach' and 'every Monday' speaking about the routine that I have. We also have our general facts 'The sun rises in the east.' Here, 'the sun' would follow under the pronoun 'it' so we've had to conjugate our verb per our pattern and finish our sentence. We could also talk about general truths such as likes or dislikes. 'I like football,' or 'He likes football.' Of course, there are other usages but these are the two most common. Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section of their online TEFL certification course. Each of our online courses...  [Read more]

Register now & get certified to teach english abroad! Look at the people below. What are they doing? Create sentences with the correct use of the present continuous tense.   Register now & get certified to teach english abroad!  [Read more]

  A first example of a teaching idea for the present simple tense will be a classic activity called 'Find someone who'. Here, we will be trying to find someone who has a general truth such as the ability to play a musical instrument or the fact that they have a brother and a sister. This results in students going around the room asking questions in the present simple tense, such as 'Do you play a musical instrument?' 'Are you a teacher?' 'Do you have a brother and a sister?' The answers resulting will also be in the present simple tense. They will be generally 'Yes I do,' or 'No I don't.' The students will go around trying to find somebody who fits the general truth and when they do, they will write their name in the appropriate space. The students will mill around the room for...  [Read more]

  The teaching idea covered here is one that would be particularly appropriate for more advanced English language learners, those who can use different tenses accurately. The activity is a board game that focuses on comparing and contrasting the tenses, focusing on the Present Perfect and the Present Perfect Continuous. Each student takes a turn at rolling the dice and moving around the board. For example a student could land on a square that says "Something you have been learning for a long time." An appropriate answer for the student could be "I have been learning English for a long time." The next student takes a turn and could land on a square that says "A beautiful place you have visited." This time the student could use the Present Perfect rather than the Present Perfect...  [Read more]

  And now let's look at the future continuous tense. The future continuous tense is typically used to indicate an action in progress at a particular time in the future. To form this tense in the positive form, we have our subject, here we've used 'Karen', the word 'will', our auxiliary verb our helping verb 'to be' and then the present participle or the verb with 'ing', so 'Karen will be going'. In order to create the negative form, we keep with our positive form but add 'not' in between 'will' and our helping verb 'to be'. Finally, we ask a question by beginning with 'will', then we have our subject being sure to include our helping verb and the present participle: 'Will Karen be going?' Some of the more common usages for the future continuous tense are as follows. We can use them...  [Read more]

  Before looking at specific teaching ideas for the present simple tense, let's first look at some considerations for teaching ideas in general. We have to remember that these activities will be used in the activate stage of your lesson. Here, the focus will be on building fluency and using the language in a bit more of a free-flowing way yet still focusing on that class' language point. We also have to consider the appropriacy for a number of factors: timings. Whether the activity will be too short or too long. We want to look at ages making sure that the activity is appropriate for young learners or adult learners. We also have to take into consideration our language levels. Will the activity be appropriate for our starters or our pre-intermediates or our intermediates? Will the...  [Read more]

While teaching English abroad can be rewarding, there may be instances when educators wish to supplement their income. One widely embraced strategy is offering private English lessons as there is a substantial market for one-on-one tutoring in most countries. Often, individual students or parents are willing to pay significant amounts, sometimes ranging from $20 to $40 per hour, for these personalized sessions. Leveraging such side gigs can significantly bolster earnings and enhance the overall teaching experience abroad. Teaching private lessons Teaching online Blogging Developing materials Writing and proofreading Au pairing Virtual assistant Examining Taking on one or more private students in your spare time is one of the most common ways for TEFL qualified teachers to make extra...  [Read more]

Register now & get certified to teach english abroad! Complete the following sentences. Choose an appropriate verb from the box below and transform the verb to the present continuous form.   Register now & get certified to teach english abroad!  [Read more]

  Here the teacher gives a brief overview of the uses of the 'going to' future tense. This tense is formed: Subject + verb to be "am/is/are" + going to + base verb. The two uses for the 'going to' future are: To talk about future plans/ intentions made before speaking. They are going to watch a film. Predictions based on evidence. (Looking at dark clouds overhead) It's going to rain. The future tenses represent just one part of the grammar covered by ITTT's TEFL certification courses. ITTT's courses can be taken fully online, in-class or a combination of the two. Visit us at the link above to find a TEFL course that suits you. Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section of their online TEFL certification course. Each of our online courses is broken down...  [Read more]