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Talking About Experiences/The Present Perfect And Past Simple

Class Profile
Location: English Dept., Foreign Language College, Hanoi National Univ., Vietnam.
Level: Second-year (equivalent to intermediate)
Age of students: approx. 18-19 yrs old.
Class size: 18-20.

Rationale
This is a task-based lesson with a focus on revising the present perfect and relevant English tenses for
relating to experiences. The students in question are supposed to have achieved an sufficient
understanding of language forms and vocabulary for talking about experiences. The aim of the tasks is
mainly to provide them with opportunities to consolidate their knowledge of this formal area through
using it in communicative situations where lots of interaction is made available and where they could
gain more insights into the use of such grammatical items to express their own ideas more confidently.

Input: A recorded song and tapescript

Brighton in the rain

I've never been to Athens and I've never
been to Rome
I've only seen the Pyramids in picture
books at home
I've never sailed across the sea or been
inside a plane
I've always spent my holidays in Brighton
in the rain.
I've never eaten foreign food or drunk in a
foreign bar
I've never kissed a foreign girl or driven a
foreign car
I've never had to find my way in a country I
don't know
I've always known just where I am and
where I'll never go.
I've studied several languages like Hindi and Malay
I've learnt lots of useful sentences I've never been able
to say
The furthest place I've ever been was to the Isle of Man
And that was full of tourists from Jamaica and Japan.
I've never been to Athens and I've never been to Rome
I've only seen the Pyramids in picture books at home
I've never sailed across the sea or been inside a plane
I've always spent my holidays in Brighton in the rain.
(From The New Cambridge English Course 2,
Teacher's Book)

I've read books by writers who have been

to Pakistan
I've heard people telling stories of
adventures in Iran
I've watched TV documentaries about
China and Brazil
But I've never been abroad myself; it
makes me feel ill.

N.B-The underlined words are all removed for Task 1.

A-The teacher gives a briefing on the song, focusing on building up a context for the following tasks,
and relating to the students' past learning of the present perfect and other formal areas relevant to the
theme of the lesson, rather than actually explaining the song in detail.

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 2

Task 1: Study the tapescript in pairs/groups and decide on lexical items that can fit in the blanks. It
does not matter whether or not each lexical item consists more than one word, as long as the item
forms a past participle and makes sense where it is placed, at both sentence level and with respect to
the whole song.

B- The song is played once or twice. The students are asked to listen for the removed words as used in
the song, and to pay attention to the phonological features of the present perfect patterns as delivered
by the singer.
C- Feedback
Each pair/group reports on their choices for Task 1 questions. Next, the teacher leads a short class
discussion on the acceptability of the choices, drawing student attention to the meaning, function, and
form of certain choices and their suitability at both sentence and text level. The students then can
compare their choices with the original words from the song among themselves.

* To raise student consciousness of the use of the present perfect in relation to other tenses at this
stage, such questions as follows can be used:
- What do you think the man wants to tell us with his song?
- Is he happy with his life? What is his life like? What does he want to do? Has he done most of
what he wants to?
- What is the only away trip he's ever had? What was it like? Why is the simple past used together
with the present perfect in this case? etc.
Task2: Note down five things you've always wanted to do but somehow you've never done, and five
things you've done which you wish had never happened in your life?
When you've finished, compare your notes with your neighbours'. Talk about those experiences,
relating to the reasons, circumstances, or other factors that caused things to happen or prevented things
to happen.
Walk around the class to see if other students have any stories similar to yours or interesting to you.
Make notes for such.

D- Feedback
Individual students or group representatives report their findings. Comments and discussion are open
to the whole class with the teacher keeping a focus on the grammatical items being practiced while
allowing students enough space to talk naturally.

Task3: What do the following words or phrases bring to your mind? What can you remember doing or
happening to you in association with these words/phrases?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
the nicest present attacked by a dog Rome the funniest thing
the best compliment the worst day in my life
hallucinations joy ghost the best football match
nicest dream/boy/girl that's not food! longest rain
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Now write a short story of your own within 15-20 minutes. You can organize your story in any way
you like, provided that the story includes at least 2-3 sentences in the present perfect and that it retells
an experience.

E- Feedback
When the students have finished their stories, the teacher could organize a self-editing or peer-editing
session, the focus of correction should be on the grammatical items being practiced regarding its
appropriacy in terms of form, function, and meaning at text level.

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