In today’s feature post, regular blog contributor Ruth Breindel shares two resources for helping students understand tenses.

Teaching tenses and their meaning is a difficult task. English is so sloppy with tenses that most students don’t know what a future perfect is (I have resorted to bringing in examples!). I have so many ways of teaching this that I will give them in several blogs.

This first set has a powerpoint and a movie. The powerpoint is humorous and shows how the various tenses can be placed on a Christmas tree. The movie includes music and a centaur – what’s not to like?

Ruth Breindel taught Latin, Greek, Linguistics and Mythology at Moses Brown School for 30 years.