לומדים אנגלית / קוראים ספרי ילדים

Exercises on Tenses

How do we approach an exercise where we have to put the verbs in brackets in the suitable tense?

I suggest we teach our students to follow these steps:

Read the passage carefully without writing anything.

Underline the Time Expressions, e.g.,  yesterday, five years ago, last year, now, at the moment,  usually, twice a week.

Underline the verbs that are already conjugated in a certain tense – e.g. worked, have gone, will go. (Use a different colour.)

Underline special words that may indicate what tense is required – e.g. if, wish, while, when, before, by the time, just, already. (Use a different colour.)

Underline Stative Verbs ,e.g. see, love and modals, e.g. can, must. (Use different colors.)

Read the passage again and decide, based on the words and expressions you have underlined, whether the passage refers to the Present or the Past.

If the passage refers to the Present, choose the appropriate tense: Present Simple, Present Progressive or Future Simple. The Map of the Present –  מפת ההווה.pdf – may be very helpful.

If the passage refers to the Past, there are many options to choose from. You have to check every sentence and see if you have one or two verbs and if they happened at the same time or not. You may find the Map of the Past – מפת העבר.pdf – most helpful.

Now your students are ready to do the exercise in the right way.

In my next post I will bring a few examples of texts meant to be used for practice.

Meanwhile, you can find detailed instructions and exercises followed by answers and explanations in:

דקדוק אנגלי לדוברי עברית – עמ' 145 – 149.  

For more practice – graded review exercises, see: 

The New Language Guidebook and Workbook, p 198 – 208.