Humanising Language Teaching
Year 5; Issue 2; March 03

How to stop "Tense-jumping"
NLP timelines and verb tenses in English

by Ana Robles, Galicia, Spain

Verbal tenses are difficult for my students. They learn what tenses there are and how to construct them quickly. The theoretical rules about when to use each tense are easy for them, too, but when it comes to put all that theory into practise, weeeell! I am sure you know how it goes. They start describing something they were doing yesterday using the past simple, and suddenly in the middle of the action they jump to the present simple and then back to a past continuous or sometimes even a future. And that's nothing compared to what they do with more complex tenses like the present perfect. All my students at beginner and pre-intermediate level do that, regardless of how good they are at English or how much work they put into it. In fact, when it comes to verbal tenses, the difference between 'good' and 'normal' students is not the type of mistakes they make, but how soon or how late they are going to stop jumping from one tense to the other.

And that rises a basic question: what sort of knowledge do we have that allows us to know when to use each verbal tense?. It is not grammar knowledge. Knowing the 'rules' is not enough. When I talk or when I write, whether in English or in my mother tongue I don't think of rules. When I correct my students compositions it is not the grammar rules that tell me there is a mistake. There is something else there.

Language is linked to my inner world. When I say 'chair' behind the word there are visual images, sounds and feelings I associate with that word. In the same way time expressions and verbal tenses are linked to how I think about time. When I say 'yesterday' there is a mental idea of yesterday which is much deeper than just the letters. When I read I go yesterday what I perceive is a clash between the mental images that go with those two different points in time.

What tells me which word to use, which tense to select is the mental image connected to each time expression. The language I use is tied to how I think about time. Each verbal tense evokes in me a feeling, an image, a way of thinking which is related to the time it expresses.

And that is, in my opinion, what my students lack. They know the rules but behind the rules there is nothing, no mental construction, no inner time landscape. And that lack allows them to go tense - jumping, whereas I feel a physical wrench every time they go from one tense to another in their compositions.

If I am right, then it follows that one way of helping my students to learn to use verbal tenses correctly will be by giving them ways to connect the foreign language structures to their inner representation of time. In others words, to build purposely the link between language and thought. In order to do that first I need to understand how we think about time.

NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) has studied how we think about time and how we represent time in our minds. It has found that, although each of us has its own way of thinking about time, we all organise our experience of time somehow. This internal organisation is what allows us to know whether something we remember happened a long time ago or just yesterday and to know if something has already happened or not.

Let's do a little experiment. Select a simple behaviour that you do in your daily routine (having breakfast, combing your hair, brushing your teeth, etc.)

• Think of a time about 5 years ago when you did this activity. It does not have to be a specific instance, you can pretend you remember yourself doing this.
• Now think of doing that same behaviour last year.
• Now think of doing it last month.
• Now think of doing it last week
• Now think of doing it right here and now.
• Now one month hence.

How did you think about each of those situations? What sort of mental representation did you create?. It is probably a visual image of some sort, maybe a movie or a snapshot.

Pay attention to the traits those mental images have. What are the differences between them? The following questions will help you to identify those differences:

• What sort o colouring do your mental images have?, are they in colour?, or are they black and white?, or maybe some are in colour and some are in black and white?
• Are they moving pictures or still pictures? Or maybe some of them are moving and some of them are still?
• What size is each mental image? Are they life size, bigger, smaller, how much smaller?
• Are all your mental representations in the same size or do they vary in change? If so, which ones are bigger?
• Where do you place your images?, in front of you, behind, to the left......?
• Do you put them all in the same place or each of them has a different position? How far away is each of them from you?

When you think about situations in different points in time, how do you do it? For most of us we organise time in such a way that it is a sort of line, (hence the NLP name 'timelines'). There are all sort of timelines. Some people see their past behind and others see it in front. Some of us place future events in front of us and to the right, other people place both the past and the future in front of them going from left to right, or from right to left. There are people who do no use straight lines but curves, or spirals, and people for whom the future is up and the past is down. There are all sort of combinations, including those who do not represent time visually, but using auditory or kinaesthetic elements, for instance some people hear present conversations louder than past conversations.

But each of us seems to have a way of organising time which goes beyond language but which is tied to language.

Read the following sentences and make a mental picture for each of them. As you do so, pay attention to your mental pictures traits (size, colour, movement, position, etc.)

• I was walking
• I walked home

What's the difference between the two?
For lots of people continuous tenses are moving pictures, whereas the simple past is like a still snapshot, physically separated from the speaker.
Each verbal tense triggers in us some sort of representation with specific traits. As with timelines each of us may, and probably will, represent the differences between the verbal tenses in a different way. In any case, the traits of the mental images we associate with the past simple will be different from those of the mental images associated to the present perfect, regardless of content.

We know which tense to use when we are able to link language to those mental markers. Therefore we need activities which bring to the forefront those internal representations and then link them to the foreign language structure.

The main outcome will be to make students aware of how they think about time. Let them explore their particular way of thinking about time. With beginner students I usually do this in their mother tongue. Once they are aware of how they think about time we move to identify the specific traits they link to each tense both in mother tongue and in English.

Here is an example of the activities I use with my students: Read the following sentences and as you read then create an internal representation of the sentence and answer the questions below:

• I am here now
• I heard it on the radio yesterday
• I bought that a month ago
• That film was a hit last year
• Do you imagine them in colour or in black and white? Or some in colour and some in black and white?
• What size is each image?, are they all the same size or are there differences?
• If there are differences in size, pay attention to which ones are bigger and which ones are smaller
• How far away from you is each image? Are they all at the same distance from you or not?
• Where do you place your images?, in front of you, behind, to the left......?
• Or maybe some to the right, some to the left, some in front... If so, which are where?
• Is there movement (like a film) or are they like photographs, with no movement?
• Are the images isolated and separated from you, or are there somehow connected to you?

Do the same with those sentences:

• I have never eaten fish
• They haven't seen him since Monday
• I have always done it
• I have lived here since 1995

Now answer the following question:
What is the difference in how you think about the sentences covering a stretch of time and those which refer to a single event?
How do you represent that passage of time?
Get into groups of three or four people and compare your answers with the answers of the people in your group. Define the main traits for each verbal tense.
What do the sentences in the simple past have in common?
What do the sentences in the present perfect have in common?
Working together, choose a symbol and colour to represent each verbal tense and then draw a diagram representing the different sentences. Identify the different tenses with the symbol and colour you have chosen.

This sort of activity allows the students to explore their internal representations and become aware of the world behind the language, so that they can link both.
The students first work individually, focusing in their specific way of thinking about time and then they work with other classmates, commenting and sharing the differences and similarities.
This process of sharing and commenting is the crucial step. By talking and discussing about how they represent each sentence they have to access their inner world and bring it forth.
It also has an important side-benefit that it fosters the students awareness of the different ways of learning, and of the different learning strategies available in any given situation.
The last step, creating symbols and linking tenses to colours is intended to help them process the information using the right brain capabilities, too.
Naturally this sort of activity doesn't preclude more traditional grammar explanations and exercises. In any group there are bound to be all sorts of learners. For some of them grammar explanations will make more sense, for many others NLP timeline exploration will offer a way of linking inner landscape to the new language.