Thursday, November 27, 2008

Good Question

I recently finished teaching my fifth and sixth graders about verb tenses. We used a very simplified method that focused on past tense, present tense, and future tense. On my last day teaching this lesson, one of my 6th grade students raised her hand and asked, "Teacher, what is the past participle?"

I will give anyone in the US 1000 Won if you can answer that question without looking it up.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

isnt it a word that is used to describe a noun like.... beaten or talked.

Anonymous said...

its a verb in the past tense...right?

Anonymous said...

oops..

Anonymous said...

The 'past participle' was the most difficult part for me too when I learned in English at school. Actually the part is still I use incorrectly sometimes. In my memory, I learned it my 3rd grade of middle school (14 or 15 years old). I'm surprised that it is taught at elementary school.
How to explain? Well...I think it is too challenging part for American teacher to explain the concept for elementary students. It might be better to ask help to the Korean co-teacher to explain the concept in Korean with examples.
It's not easy job to teach English, is it?

Unknown said...

The past participle is used with a helping verb
is, are, was, were, be, am,being been,do,does,did,have,has,had etc..

Andrew M said...

Mom, Megan, Mike, thanks for posting. Everyone is correct, but not completely correct. By my understanding, all three answers taken together provide a pretty accurate definition.

To clarify, it is a past tense form of a verb, but not the only past tense form. For many verbs, the preterite, or simple past tense form, is identical to the past participle. However, they often differ in irregular verbs (e.g. the verb eat: preterite:ate, past particple: eaten). They can be used with helping verbs to form the perfect aspect of a verb or the passive voice. They can also be used to modify nouns, verbs, or entire sentences.

I found my answer in a grammar book that I brought from the US (in preparation for this exact situation). A more detailed form of the above explanation can be found on wikipedia's participle page.

Andrew M said...

SK, for the record, this was not actually part of our tense lesson. Rather, one of my students asked this question after I taught a basic lesson of past, present, and future tenses. Nevertheless, it is obviously a difficult topic to understand, let alone teach.
And yes, teaching English is definitely a hard job.

MIKE EC said...

alright so seeing as i am not in korea or have ever been there what is the exchange rate from won to us dollars?... are we dividing a million here? i hope so lol

Unknown said...

Mike,
I think we each get about 23 cents