To the teacher:
In their book Metaphors We Live By, Lakoff and Johnson (2003) show how different metaphors, expressed through language, structure our way of thinking. One such metaphor is that of time as space. The fact that we refer to time as being long or short, the past as being near or far is just a basic example of how time and space are interlinked in our system of thoughts. This book is an attempt to take advantage of the metaphors that exist in language in order to help children learn better. In this particular case, the focus will be the metaphor of time as a line and verb tenses as covering segments of this line. The author's experience, and that of many other teachers of English as a foreign language, has shown that teaching tenses by representing them on a time line helps students learn them.
Another inspiration for this book comes from Egan's (2005) model of teaching through story-telling. The author hopes that, by associating tenses with characters in a story, the students will be more engaged and more willing to go through an otherwise boring grammar lesson.
The book is meant to provide a revision lessons for past tenses and it assumes that students have some familiarity with using these tenses. The goal of the book is that of putting things in perspective, revisiting and (re)organizing some material that has been previously learned. Part of the goal is also to have fun while doing this. Enjoy!
References:
Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. (2003). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Egan, K. (2005). An imaginative approach to teaching. San Francisco: Jossey - Bass.
