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Should we teach tenses in a planned order?

Modern language textbooks for many years have presented verb tenses in a certain order, starting with present tense, then moving on to the more simply formed or frequently used versions of past and future. This tradition in the UK goes back to the grammar-translation approach, but was shared with the rise of the oral-situational approach in the 1960s (or even before for a minority of teachers). The rationale behind it goes something like this:

1. We don’t want to confuse pupils by introducing more than one tense at a time. Language learning is hard enough without complicating it even further.
2. Languages are best learned in a linear fashion, beginning with simpler (sometimes more frequent) forms before moving on to complex ones.
3. Focusing on one tense at a time allows for more repetition and a greater likelihood that the grammar will be better automatised or “internalised”. This was also an assumption of the audio-lingual approach.

What does research have to say on the order in which we teach tenses?

Well, you will find very scant support for treating tenses or grammar in general in this way. Much research over a few decades suggests that, while some attention to grammatical form probably helps acquisition, attempts to order the teaching of it do not align with how we acquire languages, our first or others. The argument goes that, just as in first language acquisition, humans develop their internalised grammar (NOT pedagogical grammar, i.e. the rules we see in text books) through exposure to and interaction with meaningful language. The order of acquisition of grammatical forms is at least partly immune to the order we choose to teach them in.

Rather, by hearing and reading multiple uses of correct utterances we gradually internalise a set of “rules”. The so-called pedagogical grammars of text books have little to do with the internalised grammars in our brains. (If you doubt this, ask yourself the question “What is the rule for using present perfect ‘I’ve played’ compared with present perfect continuous ‘I’ve been playing’? You “know” this tule because you can use them without hesitation, but you don’t “know” the rule for using them. (This is the distinction between procedural and declarative knowledge.)

Does this mean that textbooks have got it all wrong? Does it mean text book writers are unaware of the research? Not necessarily. Cognitive science tells us other interesting things about learning in general and which are almost certainly relevant to classroom language teaching in particular.

One of them is Cognitive Load Theory, originally put forward by John Sweller. “Cognitive load" relates to the amount of information that working memory can hold at one time. Sweller argued that, since working memory has a limited capacity, instructional methods should avoid overloading it with additional activities or information that don't directly contribute to learning. In our case of verb tenses you might argue, as mentioned above, that asking pupils to understand and use too many verb forms at once might constitute cognitive overload. In lay persons’ terms, it’s all too much for most students to take on board. For many students coping with one tense is hard enough.

So, on the one hand applied linguists in the field of second language acquisition tell us that we don’t acquire languages in a linear fashion, building, piece by piece from the simple to the harder; while on the other hand cognitive scientists tell us we should not overcomplicate what we present to pupils. What can we conclude from this?

One possible way to look at this is perhaps to adopt a compromise position. Namely, stick broadly to a sequence of tenses derived from communicative usefulness and simplicity (starting with the present tense), but being less doctrinaire about excluding other tenses when their use makes communicative sense. This is in contrast to the traditional view that, for example, we should exclude all use of other tenses when we teach beginners the present. It so happens that the present tense is appropriate for many simple communicative needs: simple narration, expressing future intentions, everyday references to likes, dislikes, wants, the time, weather and day-to-day situations. So for me the present is a sensible place to start, without formally excluding other useful verb forms.

The evidence of my own classrooms over many years was that a planned approach to the introduction of verb tense allowed me to work largely in the target language, supplying large amounts of useful comprehensible input, some of which was successfully acquired for spontaneous use by pupils. It allowed me to recycle high frequency verb forms repeatedly so that, as I saw it, they were more likely to become automatised/internalised. Mixing up tenses too soon would have limited such opportunities for repetition and may have confused my students. A minority of those I taught went on to become highly motivated, quite fluent speakers after a few years. The rest were nearly all able to deal confidently with relatively rehearsed, contrived conversation. Would they have done better without a planned, graded approach to verb tense? I can’t know for sure, but I doubt if they would have done better.





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