Teachers of English use lots of strange words that may not always seem clear. The words are used as a ’short cut.’ They’re labels that educators define so that next time you hear the word you can understand the whole meaning behind it. I suspect that if you asked a teacher of English they might not always be able to explain ALL the words in a way that would make you understand them because the meaning is too technical or has been misunderstood.
Take the word TENSE, for instance. I still have nightmares about the time I first started teaching and said to my students ‘Today we’ll look at the present perfect tenses.’ I hadn’t realised that they would need more than an explanation of the ‘present perfect’ when a student said ‘Miss Miss. What does ‘tense’ mean?’ I knew what it meant and how to use it but I couldn’t explain it in a clear and simple manner for an elementary student. I said ‘Er … erm … when we look at the present perfect the meaning of the word ‘tense’ will become clearer.’
Today I’m giving myself a second chance to explain the NOUN ‘tense’ and here it is:
It is an expression of a location of an ACTION in TIME.
Does that help? Of course there is much more to it than that but as long as you remember that it is about the time or the ‘kind’ of time, you’ll be all right.
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