Taught for the third time today. The first part of the lesson went ok, but I stumbled when I had to explain the difference between the Present Perfect Simple & Simple Past tense.
The first part of the lesson, I had this activity which is called the “Grammar Auction”. I gave the students a handout consisting of 15 grammatically correct and incorrect sentences. The students were divided into groups and each group had to decide on 5 sentences to buy and how much they want to bid for it.
If they buy a grammatically correct sentence and they tell me it’s correct, they’ll get double the amount they bidded for. But if they tell me a correct sentence is wrong, I’ll subtract that amount from the total.
If they buy a grammatically incorrect sentence and they can correct it, they can double the amount bidded for. If they tell me that it’s correct when the sentence’s actually wrong, I subtract the amount from the total.
So the game went well, but my explanation of the difference between the two tenses went awry. Gosh, I find it so hard to explain grammar. To native speakers, it comes so naturally and we don’t think about it when we speak.
But anyway, one more lesson down and two more to go. My next lesson will be in three weeks’ time as all schools will be having a two-week term break starting from next week.
I’ll be spending the next two weeks working on my assignments that’s for sure! It’s the home stretch and it’s full steam ahead!