The topic for this meeting was how to teach the past tense with question and answers such as “What did you do yesterday?” and “I played tennis.” We showed how this could be taught step by step through the Basics of the MAT METHOD. With a song, we also showed how the language could be learned easily with good retention.
With Practice Key 1, we practiced the Basics of the MAT METHOD. At the Fukuoka SG, we always review this for the benefit of the newcomers and regular members as well, however, nobody says “I already know this.” Instead we get comments like, “I made some new discoveries as to how to teach,” or “I was able to brush up on my techniques,” etc.
After showing the demonstration, the participants were divided into groups and became a teacher or a student. They all practiced the introduction of verbs and sentences. This practice session was on present tense sentences: “can – like to” (What can you do? I can … / everyday, like to ) Also some groups tried teaching the Yes-No question forms.
With Practice Key 2, the teachers learned how to teach the past tense. This is done after the students have learned the present tense. There are two forms of the past tense, the regular past tense adding “ed” or “-d” form and the irregular forms such as go-went/eat-ate. These should be practiced with the time words like “yesterday”. Choosing words that are used in daily life are easily understood by the students. In this session, we covered patterns such as, “.What did you do yesterday? I ate hamburger yesterday.”
Where did you go yesterday? I went to school yesterday.
We have an action for the past tense, which helps students remember the tense. We recommend reading “Koushite Oshieru Kodomo no Eigo” by Ritsuko Nakata for details of the gestures used in the MAT METHOD.
After the demonstration, the teachers practiced how to teach systematically, which went very well. It was followed by an activity, the Whisper Game to reinforce what the students learn.
After a short break, we had more fun singing, “This Little Pig Went to Market” together. It is better to introduce the verbs in the song in advance. We also showed some activities such as, “Where did you go yesterday?” Game, Yes-No Question Game, etc. Everyone had a lot of fun!
At the end, we showed some books from the Oxford Reading Tree series for storytelling,
The Toy’s Party and Kipper’s Dairy
Thank you very much for those who came to our meeting. We hope you are enjoying your lessons using the tips and the activities we introduced.
We are looking forward to seeing you and many newcomers in September for our Halloween meeting.