Overview of All English Tenses - Present Tenses - Present Continuous - Overview
Now, let's take a look at the present continuous tense. The continuous tense is used to talk about actions in progress at the time of speaking or around the time of speaking. The first thing to notice with the continuous tense is that we must use the verb plus '-ing' form, also known as the present participle. You'll see it in any continuous tense, especially with the present continuous. We have three different forms of this tense. First, we have the subject 'I' used with 'am teaching'. Then, we have 'you', 'we' and 'they are teaching'. Finally, we've got 'he', 'she' 'it is teaching'. The 'am', 'are' and 'is' are forms of the verb 'to be' and here with this tense is used as an auxiliary verb or a helping verb. In order to form negative sentences, we simply add the word 'not' between our helping verb and our main verb plus '-ing'. To form the questions for the present continuous tense, again what we've done, is inverted our helping verbs and our subjects resulting in questions like 'Am i teaching?' 'Are you teaching?' and 'Is he teaching?'.
Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section of their online TEFL certification course. Each of our online courses is broken down into concise units that focus on specific areas of English language teaching. This convenient, highly structured design means that you can quickly get to grips with each section before moving onto the next.
Students can see how English is actually used in real life, something that they will face when they are outside interacting with native speaker.
However, it requires a great effort to find authentic materials that contains grammatical structures and vocabulary that suit students level of the languag.
On the other hand, created materials can work really well in class because they can be done the way a teacher wants and needs them, and this is why created materials do not completely reflect real life languag.
In consequence, I believe that teachers have to use materials that suit students? need.
Authentic materials have to be reinforced by created materials and created materials by authentic material.
This will depend on the level of students; for intermediate students I would suggest using more authentic materials since students have already the knowledge to understand different structures, so topics need to be rough tuned so students do not experience the Plato effect, and they can feel that they are learning and making progress with the languag.
The advantage and disadvantage of using course books, besides course books are appealing, provides syllabus, time saving for the teacher, course books provides continuous practice of structures and vocabulary presented in the book, also they have a structured topic sequence in each unit provides an issue to discuss or follo.
A course book offers specific practice for each of the productive and receptive skill.
Finally, a course book contains extra activities to do outside the class; thus, students van still have certain contact with English outside the class specially in places where English is taught as a foreign languag.
Students do not feel interested in the topi.
Nevertheless, a course book stops teachers? creativity which may stop teachers do activities that do not cover students? need.
Another obvious disadvantage is that course books may become boring and predictable since they may not have been designed for specific contexts like books used in EFL settings but designed for ESL student.
In addition, a course book does not give enough time to the teacher to use extra activities since the curriculum tends to be tight not leaving enough time to do other activities that could benefit students Finally, teachers must not let books stop our creativity; we always have to expand it because we are the ones who know our students? learning preferences, needs and pac.
So we continuously must be thinking of supplementary activities that can maximize the book?s activities, adapt, vary, or replace those activities that students will not benefit fro.
For this, we need to plan our lesson in advance analyzing and studying the activities in the book, so we cannot over trust that book?s activities will cover all students? needs, and that those activities will be enough for student.
