Why Europe Rocks: Reason #7

English Rules

As an English speaker, I constantly get questions about verb tenses, when do you use "I have been" vs. "was" and "I will" vs. "I'm going to," etc etc. And, as an English speaker (as opposed to: an English student) I never know. Since the best way to learn is to teach, I decided to teach the tenses in my English clubs.

So Wednesday I stood in front of the group of high school seniors with my internet notes. "Who can tell me how you make the present perfect tense?" They all started talking at once, and one girl said, "I HAVE BEEN...he HAS DONE...we HAVE LIVED...." I looked down at my notes, back at them, back at the notes. "Well, close, but that's not what englishpage.com says. It's: has/have + been + verb+ing." Dorota said, "No, that's present perfect CONTINUOUS." Dang it. After more discussion--because I really didn't get WHY a present tense would be composed of past tense verbs--they explained the difference to me in a way that made sense, and I realized I'd just forgotten to write the word CONTINUOUS on my paper. Who's teaching who? The only comfort I have is that whenever I ask questions about declining Czech nouns, I'm met with similar confusion: "Pozdravuji Milanovi!" "Leah, it's MilanA" "Oh, right, because it's the 2nd case...or is it the 4th?" "Uh...koho co? I don't know..."