Tenses

I have a love/hate relationship with tenses. As a learner of Spanish, I feel great when I can use and understand them well, but I hate them when I don’t understand them or misunderstand them. They can REALLY change the meaning of a sentence. 

Consider this example;

"I get so much work from my boss. I will kill him!"

"I got so much work from my boss. I killed him!"

Obviously these are very different sentences but they look similar.

So how do you work on this part of English? Is it a problem for you?

Well, one solution I am starting to think about is reading fiction. I’m reading the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo at the moment (a brilliant book, by the way!) and I noticed something in the writing. It is very common in English speaking fiction novels that the story is written in the past tense. What people say can be any tense, but when the story is being told, the tenses are in the past.

Here is an example from a short story. (Hotel Says Goodbye to Clean Couple)

When Theodore asked the couple what the problem was, they said that their bedding was filthy and they wanted it replaced. The couple could not identify any specific “filth” on the bedding. The wife just said, “We’re paying good money to stay here. How dare you doubt us? We know the filth is there. That’s all the proof you need.” Theodore called room service, and the bedding was replaced immediately.

Do you see the difference?

Here is the story;

When Theodore asked the couple what the problem was, they said that their bedding was filthy and they wanted it replaced. The couple could not identify any specific “filth” on the bedding. The wife just said, “We’re paying good money to stay here. How dare you doubt us? We know the filth is there. That’s all the proof you need.” Theodore called room service, and the bedding was replaced immediately.

Here is what the characters are saying;

When Theodore asked the couple what the problem was, they said that their bedding was filthy and they wanted it replaced. The couple could not identify any specific “filth” on the bedding. The wife just said, “We’re paying good money to stay here. How dare you doubt us? We know the filth is there. That’s all the proof you need.” Theodore called room service, and the bedding was replaced immediately.

If you are having problems with your tenses, then I don’t think this will fix them, but reading a few short stories in English (maybe from children’s books – that’s what I do for my Spanish) might at least make you notice the tenses a bit more. It will also give you lots of repetition. We need lots of repetition to really learn something, so repeat and repeat and repeat is never a bad thing!

Also, please remember that this rule of past tense in stories is only a general rule and you will find plenty of stories that do not follow this rule. (Even on the same website that I found the first story; Sara went Shopping)

As always, I look forward to your opinions. :-)

Gordon

P.S. The website I got these stories from is a great website with lots of short stories specifically for English Language Learners. The website has mp3s of all the stories, so you can read and listen to all the stories. It also has exercises related to the stories; crosswords, vocabulary exercises, yes/no questions, etc. Brilliant! Just go to http://www.rong-chang.com/qa2/