This had to be among the most challenging of all the lessons I presented while I was a CELTA trainee. But it was the one lesson that helped me develop a solid understanding of all the tenses. In fact, just last week, when I had to explain the differences between perfect tenses in the present, past, and future to a new student, I was able to do it without once referring to a grammar book. Aaah, score! You can download the lesson plan at the bottom of this post.

The differences in the usage of present perfect tense and present perfect continuous tense are so many that it can sometimes be daunting for both the ESL tutor and ESL student. In fact, though native English speakers can almost always use the correct tenses during speech, they often fumble while constructing written sentences using these tenses. A lot of writers try to do without these tenses as much as possible, which really constricts their writing.

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Here’s the second in the series of lesson plans I promised to post. These are all lesson plans I made during my CELTA course, which I did at St. Giles International in San Francisco. You can see the rest of the lesson plans here. If you want to download the lesson plan, there is a link at the bottom of this post.

So this was the second lesson I presented to my group of ESL elementary students. I didn’t know it then, but I would grow really fond of some of the students in the weeks to come. But on that day, I was a nervous wreck. I was teaching the Present Perfect Tense. I’d heard of the dreaded thing before but I hadn’t really examined it in my life, never having needed to teach it to anyone before!!

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