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This unit went over the four past tenses in exactly the same fashion as the previous chapter about the four present tenses. Essentially the past and present tenses are analogous, and the future tenses will follow in the same manner (i.e., simple, continuous, perfect and perfect continuous). Proper formation and usage were explained for every tense, along with examples of common student errors, useful activities for each tense, and some charts consisting of irregular verbs.
Story telling seems to be a good way to practice all of the tenses, though what I have found most useful in my teaching experience are role-play interviews for the past simple and detective games for past continuous. Students seem to have the most fun when playing them and are able to get really creative with the language/situations. I have never practiced past perfect or past perfect continuous with students, though telling a story backwards to practice past perfect struck me as a fun idea. If students are able to come up with the story themselves or I create a story that incorporates a lot of the class’ interests/people the class knows then I am sure everyone will have a great time.
I noticed that there were no activity examples for past perfect continuous though, and that there was only one usage mentioned. I think this tense would be for advanced learners and if I had to teach a class on the subject, I would try to have students talk about the lives of historical figures (e.g., Milton Hershey had been trying for years to create a successful business before he made it big.).
Some other things that I found important to note are that the analogous tenses use the exact same auxiliary verbs (e.g., present perfect and past perfect both take the auxiliary verb ‘have’) and that there are not as many usages listed as there were for the present tenses. I do not think that this means the past tenses are less expressive, but perhaps we talk in the present tense more often. For example, it would be very odd to see a newspaper headline in the past perfect tense or even the past simple tense. ‘Stocks fall 50%’ just has a nicer ring than ‘stocks had fallen 50% before this paper was printed’.
