Something More about Simple Past

◆何文婷

(英国布里斯托大学)

1 Introduction

The past tense is used to refer to something which occurred at a particular time in the past(Willis 2003:34).This seemingly simple rule could be very confusing and difficult for English learners in China.Simple past is crucial for it first introduces the concept of"tense"and a good grasp of simple past would lay a solid foundation for future learning of more complicated tenses and aspects like present perfect and past continuous.This paper will analyze what simple past is，why it is difficult，and how to teach it to Chinese students.

2 Explanation of simple past tense

Literally past tense is closely related to the time past＇.Sinclair(1990:250)defines four circumstances where simple past tense is applicable.They are:events occurred or cases in the past，past situations，something happened in a past situation whether or not that situation still exists and activities regularly or repeatedly took place in the past but which no longer occurs.These completed events，states or actions，being expressed in simple past tense，are usually used as a time anchor＇to establish the key time frame＇to move stories forward(Parrott 2000:185).Quirk et al(1972:86)also explain the basic meaning of simple past in a similar way as to denote definite past time.However，he points out some exceptional cases where past tense does not refer to past time，such as indirect/reported speech，attitudinal past(relate to the speaker＇s attitude rather than time)，and hypothetical past especially if＇clause.

Whereas attitudinal past is treated by Quick only as a exceptional case，Yule(1998:61)challenges the wildly used image of timeline as the basis of grammatical category of tense，and debates that"perhaps a better image would have the time of utterance(speaker＇s now)at the center and other referenced situations being viewed as extending in different dimensions of time or possibility away from that center."The term remoteness＇(Yule 1998:60)or distance＇(Batstone 1994:19)，may not only refer to time，but also to the psychological，social，hypothetic relevance to the speaker＇s state of mind.It can suggest that the speakers＇choice of past tense represents that he/she is distanced or remote from a proposition either in time or in other senses(Willis 2003 100 － 1).In all，simple past tense is a complicated grammar feature which may indicate past time or other subjective state of mind of the speaker.

3 Causes of difficulty

The biggest difficulty for many learners is to know when to use past simple as opposed to present perfect(Parrott 2000:183).Due to the context－sensitive feature of simple past tense and the lack of equivalent rules in Chinese，English learners in China often need a long time and plenty of exposure to English before they can use it appropriately.And even when they are clear about the rules，they may continue to make mistakes when under pressure to communicate(Parrott 2000:191).

The complexity and subtlety of past tense might only be one possible reason why learners always find it hard to comprehend.Another issue contributes to its difficulty may be that the traditional pedagogic models are unsystematic and incomplete(Willis 2003:97)Traditional classroom presents a static view of grammar:an object of study in isolation from context(Batstone 1994:66).For example，when teaching simple past，most teachers would simply explain its application as being employed to indicate things happened or situations in the past.This kind of rule，proved by statistical evidence provided by corpora，has oversimplified the issue(Thornbury 1999:11).Although this traditional approach might seem to be easy and straightforward for teachers at the beginning，it would hinder students from a more systematic and holistic understanding of the real language in use.

4 Teaching simple past

Even though oversimplified generalization may be misleading，it is easy and learnable at the beginning，it provides a useful starting point and can be refined at a later stage(Willis 2003:111)Especially for junior high school students，clear rules like using simple past to refer to past circumstances＇would help them to form a initial basic concept of simple past tense.In addition，a range of past simple past adverbials such as yesterday＇one month ago＇could be introduced early in the learning process.This gives elementary learners the capacity to operate in lexical mode signaling time by adverbials＇(Wills 2003:114).For beginners，functional expressions as Could you＇can be taught as independent chunks，with little or no highlighting of their grammatical constituents(Batstone 1994:17).

However，idealized rules and fixed grammatical forms isolated from context of use are only expedients for beginners.To provide a more authentic and more complete image of language，teachers should be encouraged to teach grammar forms in terms of the functional patterns，how they are expressed in whole texts(Butt et al 2000:255).Therefore，in later stages，varied input of simple past including magazine articles，academic writing，and spoken discourse should be presented to learners(Yule 1998:69).So learners may be able to identify past tense not only by time adverbials but also by the preceding language context and the context outside language(Leech and Svartivic 2002:69).Simple past forms used for politeness，hypothesis and reported speech should also be enhanced through input and communicative activities.Meanwhile，teachers should not insist on immediate accuracy since some grammar items like simple past take long time to learn(Thornbury 1999:10).

5 Conclusion

As discussed above，simple past is a subtle and complex grammar structure which is hard for Chinese students.To teach it more effectively，teachers would be recommended to adopt different approaches based on the stages of learning process.

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