EFFECTIVE PEDAGOGICAL APPROACHES TO TEACHING NARRATIVE TENSES IN EFL CLASSROOMS: PAST SIMPLE, PAST CONTINUOUS, AND PAST PERFECT

Аннотация

This article examines effective approaches to teaching narrative tenses—specifically the Past Simple, Past Continuous, and Past Perfect—in English language instruction. These grammatical forms are frequently confusing for English language learners because they require a complex understanding of aspect, background positioning, and relative chronological order within a unified text. Learners often struggle to differentiate between the functional boundaries of these tenses, which leads to grammatical and communicative errors such as narrative flattening or chronological distortions. The article discusses the linguistic and conceptual background of these forms and identifies common learning difficulties such as aspectual overgeneralization, translation interference, and lack of contextual timeline awareness. Furthermore, it presents a range of pedagogical strategies including timeline mapping, contrastive analysis, visual storytelling aids, communicative role-plays, and task-based learning. The study emphasizes that effective grammar teaching should combine explicit conceptual explanation with meaningful communication practice in order to improve both accuracy and fluency in learners' language use.