English Students Struggle With The Present Simple As Much As With The Present Perfect

I've been teaching English as a second language since 2002 and I was really young when I started doing it.
Though I had been trained to teach English, my first class was not what I had expected. My students were old enough to be my parents or even grandparents.

No training can prepare you for real life. To me, there is nothing like practice. It is in the classroom, or in my current case on a Skype call, where we discover our students' needs and difficulties and how to address them.

I remember learning that students would have "heart attacks" when we started teaching the Present Perfect, for instance, but though it is a complicated verb tense, especially to Brazilians (we don't have this verb tense in our native language), what I realized is that Simple Present was not as easy for my students as I had anticipated or been trained to expect. Most of my students make mistakes when using this tense, probably the same amount of mistakes they make when using Present Perfect.

Sometimes I hear my students say things like "I'm like to travel",  I'm work for the government",  I'm go to the gym twice a week" when they should say "I like to travel", I work for the government", I go to the gym twice a week."

I guess this happens because the first thing most students learn is the famous Verb To Be and they probably think saying "I'm" is the same is saying "I", so they just stick verb to be everywhere.
Maybe Verb To Be should not be the first thing to be taught.

Another thing they struggle with is when the subject is not a pronoun. They will say things like: "My mother and my father works for Unilever". In their minds "my mother" is "she" and "my father" is "he" and when it's he or she we put the letter S in the end of the verb. Other times they think the S in the end of the verb represents the plural and since there are two people, then they must say "works". 

These mistakes are often made by adult learners and I sometimes wonder if this happens because of anxiety. Adult learners put a great deal of pressure on themselves and that might get in their way. There is no fun in learning for most of them.

With that in mind, when I teach the Simple Present to adults I always have them talk about the things they do for fun. 
I ask them to describe their weekends, to talk about celebrations, such as Easter, Christmas, New Years and they seem to enjoy it a bit more than talking about their routines.

If you are reading this and you are a student, how about writing about your favorite celebrations. What do you usually do? Where do you usually go? Who do you spend them with? What do you usually eat? 
(You could even record yourself speaking and send your audio to me. I'll be happy to check it for you. Send it to suporte@elearningforall.org)

If you are a teacher reading this, I'd love to read your comments on this topic and your suggestions.

VALENTINE'S DAY

Hi Everyone,
I'm back! Today is one of my favorite holidays in the world. It's Valentine's Day!
Do you know this holiday? Do you have any idea why it is celebrated on  February 14th?
Well, many years ago I was looking for those answers and I found a nice text on the internet that explains all that. I do not know who the author of this text is, but I really liked it and I hope you will  too.

St. Valentine's Story

Let me introduce myself. My name is Valentine. I lived in Rome during the third century. That was long, long ago! At that time, Rome was ruled by an emperor named Claudius. I didn't like Emperor Claudius, and I wasn't the only one! A lot of people shared my feelings.

Claudius wanted to have a big army. He expected men to volunteer to join. Many men just did not want to fight in wars. They did not want to leave their wives and families. As you might have guessed, not many men signed up. This made Claudius furious. So what happened? He had a crazy idea. He thought that if men were not married, they would not mind joining the army. So Claudius decided not to allow any more marriages. Young people thought his new law was cruel. I thought it was preposterous! I certainly wasn't going to support that law!

Did I mention that I was a priest? One of my favourite activities was to marry couples. Even after Emperor Claudius passed his law, I kept on performing marriage ceremonies -- secretly, of course. It was really quite exciting. Imagine a small candlelit room with only the bride and groom and myself. We would whisper the words of the ceremony, listening all the while for the steps of soldiers.

One night, we did hear footsteps. It was scary! Thank goodness the couple I was marrying escaped in time. I was caught. (Not quite as light on my feet as I used to be, I guess.) I was thrown in jail and told that my punishment was death.

I tried to stay cheerful. And do you know what? Wonderful things happened. Many young people came to the jail to visit me. They threw flowers and notes up to my window. They wanted me to know that they, too, believed in love.

One of these young people was the daughter of the prison guard. Her father allowed her to visit me in the cell. Sometimes we would sit and talk for hours. She helped me to keep my spirits up. She agreed that I did the right thing by ignoring the Emperor and going ahead with the secret marriages. On the day I was to die, I left my friend a little note thanking her for her friendship and loyalty. I signed it, "Love from your Valentine."
I believe that note started the custom of exchanging love messages on Valentine's Day. It was written on the day I died, February 14, 269 A.D. Now, every year on this day, people remember. But most importantly, they think about love and friendship. And when they think of Emperor Claudius, they remember how he tried to stand in the way of love, and they laugh -- because they know that love can't be beaten!

Business Meeting - Part I

Let's start this lesson a bit differently. Click on the button Click here. It will open another window. You will see the topic Business Meeting. Under that there will be: I. Pre-Listening Exercises. You can ignore this part and go straight to II. Listening Exercises. I suggest that you read the questions before listening if you are a beginner, this will help you know what to look for when you are listening. Answer the questions and finally click on the button Final Score. It will show you your result.
At the end of the page there is a box with the Correct Answers. After that you will see Review Quiz Script. Click on the Quiz Script to read all the conversation you listened.

CLICK HERE

To be continued...