[shun]

Originally Posted by riverkid

I have to say, Shun, that I'm well aware of this and knowing what a bright fellow Mr P is, I firmly believe he does too. If "I brush my teeth everyday", it's quite apparent that I can readily state, "I brushed my teeth everyday last week".

Originally Posted by riverkid

As to the future, it's not so, ... cast in stone. The likelihood is that "I'll brush my teeth everyday next week" but even a little thing like death could step in to prevent this from happening.

My reply: You here just repeat what I have said, without the conclusion. Here is the conclusion: Simple Present, Simple Past, and Future Tense can all describe "repeated actions that are habits and routines". What I mean is, repeated actions have nothing to do with tenses.

Because people cannot define present time, so they don't know how to define the use of Simple Present.

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Originally Posted by riverkid

We can, however, set a particular meaning for an isolated sentence in order to help explain certain things.

My reply: I don't think so. You cannot set thing in an isolated sentence so that there is no confusion with other tense. In many other forums, no one can define any use of tense on one-sentence basis, under my scrutiny.

Tense is used to tell the time relations between sentences. On one-sentence basis, you cannot define any tense at all, without being confused with other tenses.

Further, your isolated setting will again lead to more misuse of one isolated sentence. And the students will see the same thing as you do:

Originally Posted by riverkid

Language isn't simply cold grammar rules. Those rules are used to give to language differing meanings, often deep nuances.

Originally Posted by riverkid

This is why language so baffles us. We know how to produce these nuances, the ones that escape ESLs, but we just don't know how to describe them.
Language really is rocket science.