SIMPLE PAST/USED TO/WOULD used to refer to PAST

When referring to actions that happened in the past but don’t happen anymore (past habits/states), we do so three main ways. 

We can use the Simple Past, the expression Used to and the modal Would. 

The Simple Past is used to express both past habits - actions that existed during a period of time in the past; and past states. This period can be implied or expressed with a time expression or a clause, like, for example, in:

 When I was a child, I visited my grandma every weekend. (habit) / When my brother was young, he liked eggs. (state). 

Simple Past is also used when we talk about past events: I went to the United States in 1998 / I played soccer yesterday. 

Used to refers to past habits and states which were true, used to happen in the past, but are not true nowadays: 

On Sundays, my parents used to take me to dance school / I used to hate dancing in those days / I didn't use to like dancing in those days (state verb).

These are actions that happened isolated in the past, and don´t have any link with the present, as we can observe, for example, when it comes to the Present Perfect tense. 

The most important difference between Would and Used to / Simple Past, is that the first can only be used with action verbs, as we notice in

From time to time, he would call her to ask if she wanted to meet for lunch / On weekends, I would invite my friends to play tennis.

Students who don´t prepare their homework

 How to convince them of the importance of doing it?

Mistakes are a great way to start talking about homework, since they are, besides the famous excuses like “I´ve been working too much”, “I didn´t have time”, or even “Something strange happened to my computer”, one of the greatest justifications they are used to using when asking us not to “click on ‘undone’”. Fears they bring from their lives, their study background (due to unprepared and repressor teachers) and other personal experiences – obviously, here, taking into consideration the adult students, can interfere specially when it´s time to be called to answer or to interact with others in class.

When you refer to mistakes not as a fail, but a profit from which they can take an enormous advantage, they start seeing homework – and to this, I would also include class participation, with a different mindset. Of course, we are not psychologists, and will never be able to delete fears have been feeding for years. But, in our specific educational environment, we can help them to overcome in some way these fears, and provide them with quality and responsibility.

Other important tool to be used is Wise up Online. As mentioned in the video but we are already aware of, is that some students usually (try to) prepare classes, for example, during the shuttle to the school, seated in the waiting room, few minutes before the class starts.

If we reinforce the idea of preparing homework watching the Wise up Online, with an good English-English online dictionary (I always talk about Mc Millan Online Dicionary) taking advantage of having the episodes, the book opened, inside a proper, comfortable and silent environment, we can push them further into the direction of preparing classes in a profitable and proper way. We have to convince them that they need silence and focus to prepare a good class. Preparing classes inside a bus or a train, or even a car, will be considered for the purposes of the Assessement Charts, and their development will be in danger.

Students who prepare classes, have the opportunity (and time) to know more new things. When the homework is prepared, teachers have time to work with other ways to get to the goal of the class.

As we know, and we have to say to the students, Wise up methodology is thought as a whole and big system or, as the teacher of the video said, a “box”, and preparing classes is an important part of this engine. If it fails, their performance probably will do as well.

Possessive Pronouns and Possessive Adjectives

One of the greatest difficulties we find when dealing with Basic I students is teaching the difference between the POSSESSIVE PRONOUNS and the POSSESSIVE ADJECTIVES. Since that, the most basic way to explain the meaning of both is telling students that a pronoun is a term used to replace of a noun: I, He, She, It = Marcus, Pedro, Suzane, and our imaginary dog, Rex. (slight examples of people and things I´m used to envolving in these interactions in class), her, his, its, my, your; and that adjectives are qualities we give to nouns. The same will happen with the adjectives pronouns - they don´t replace, but modify the noun: Beautiful woman. Funny man / My woman, My man (it´s important to raise these rudimentary adjectives, since they are in the context of the lessons) So, they should be told that the possessive pronouns will appear after the verb be.

This type of initial distinction must be put on board, for them to realize it better. In these cases, we use the following chart, which have as its goal to clear up the position of each pronoun in a sentence:

Rex is my dog. (my = a beautiful)

No, Rex is his dog. (his = a funny)

No, It´s hers!

In these cases, my and his are in place to give quality, modify the noun cat, exactly like beautiful and funny.

Obviously, a chart like this will be always modified. The contexts must be clear to them and the teacher should attempt always to vary the amount of people and things involved in the situation in order to let all of the students play their part in the game, show them the plural forms and provide a proper interaction. Besides that, they must be presented using many gestures, eye contact, pointing the finger (in)directly to the persons involved as well, and mime.

After that, it´s necessary to raise questions to check their understanding, such as:

Suzane, is this/Rex your dog? Expected answer: Yes, it (most of times they use “the dog” or “Rex”) is mine.

Pedro, is this/Rex your dog? Expected answer: No, it (most of times they use “the dog” or “Rex”) is hers.

In these cases, if they don´t use the Subjective Pronouns I try not to raise it – in fact, they never difficulties on mastering them.