Hi, Mr Ben
Thanks for reply
There have been more than just 12 tenses in English, yeah, right. And it has always been a complex to explain English tenses to non-English speaking students and this is a #1 problem. I like an idea helping students to acquire a preliminary knowledge first and then move on the conventional definitions of tenses.
Aside of number of tenses discussion those symbols would be useful in quick marking each particular tense in example sentences as well as in highlighting differences between tenses—both done on the class board and in writing books. And drawing diagrams you mentioned you like to do… symbols can be used in this job as well. Teacher just marks a tense with the correspondent symbol above the tenses parts in a general discussion or when comparing and opposing tenses. I came across the idea a while ago and now exploit them in my Tenses For Total Newbies article for my English site.
I believe tenses symbols would be very helpful to non-English speaking student coz symbols can help managing in creating a preliminary knowledge. Just help students to get their bearings in tenses first… I know from my teaching practice that this way students are free to just concentrate on the logical side of the things instead of spending their vigor on memorizing regular tenses definitions like Past Progressive for given <=2 (or Past 2). Then, after getting through the complexity of understanding the principle rules and codes of tenses, having gotten in their minds a simple tenses table and having moved on the second stage of study, then the conventional definitions can be used with more success. This is the idea of Tense Badge and tenses symbols. It’s about a non-English speaking state of mind and difficulty understanding the foreign language.
Sorry ‘bout my monkey English. Sincerely, Alex Povazhnov. Saint-Petersburg, Russia