Teaching Tenses Rosemary Aitken Pdf Info

Title: Teaching Tenses: Ideas for Presenting and Practising Tenses in English
Author: Rosemary Aitken
Publication: Thomas Nelson (now part of Cengage/National Geographic Learning)
Intended Audience: English language teachers (EFL/ESL), particularly those in early-to-mid career, though useful for teacher trainers and experienced educators seeking fresh classroom ideas.

Overview

Teaching Tenses is a highly practical methodology resource designed to help English language teachers present, clarify, and practice verb tenses in a communicative and conceptually clear way. Unlike a theoretical grammar book, Aitken’s work focuses entirely on classroom application: how to teach each tense so that learners understand both its form and its meaning.

The book is organized tense by tense, covering:

Key Features

Strengths for Teachers

Potential Limitations (for a critical review)

About the PDF Version

A PDF of Teaching Tenses is widely circulated among English teacher communities, but note that it is not legally free. The book remains under copyright. If using a digital copy, verify that it comes from a licensed source (e.g., institutional subscription, purchased e-book, or legal archive). Many circulating PDFs are scanned copies of the 1992/2002 print edition, often with missing appendices or low-quality timelines.

Conclusion

Despite its age, Teaching Tenses remains a gold-standard practical reference for EFL/ESL teachers who need concrete, ready-to-teach explanations and activities for English verb tenses. It is less useful as a theoretical or research text, but unmatched in its clarity and classroom usability. For a teacher struggling to explain the difference between “I have done” and “I did,” Aitken’s book is worth its weight in lesson plans. teaching tenses rosemary aitken pdf

Introduction

Teaching tenses can be a challenging task for many English language teachers. Rosemary Aitken, a renowned ELT expert, has developed a practical approach to teaching tenses that focuses on the meaning and use of each tense in context. Her approach emphasizes the importance of helping learners understand the concept of time and aspect, rather than just memorizing rules and exceptions.

Understanding Tenses

Before diving into the guide, let's review the basic concepts:

The Aitken Approach

Rosemary Aitken's approach to teaching tenses involves the following steps:

A Comprehensive Guide to Teaching Tenses

Here is a detailed guide to teaching tenses using the Aitken approach:

Aitken introduces a visual system for drawing timelines on whiteboards that is unmatched in its clarity. Students see the difference between "I worked" (a closed block in the past) and "I have worked" (a line extending to the present) instantly.

The back of the book contains board games, role-play prompts, and error-analysis cards. These are the sections most frequently scanned and shared as PDF extracts. The "Tense Dominoes" game is a fan favorite for reviewing six tenses at once. Title: Teaching Tenses: Ideas for Presenting and Practising

This is where the book shines. For each of the major tenses (Simple Present, Present Continuous, Simple Past, Past Continuous, Present Perfect, Past Perfect, Future forms), she offers: