Timelines

Timelines are a teaching aid we use to help explain how different tenses are used. They are a visual representation of the passage of time.

This is an empty timeline:

Here, the timeline shows an event in the past (last night) and can be used to explain the Past Simple:

For explaining continuous tenses, we tend to use a wiggly line:

Timeline Activities

Life Timelines

An interesting activity for the classroom is getting the students to prepare a Life Timeline. Ideally the teacher should prepare their own timeline first as an example and to encourage the students with their timelines.

This is an abbreviated version. It contains both serious and frivolous items.

There are different ways of exploiting this idea.

1) Students prepare their own timelines. They are all anonymous; the teacher collects them and hands out one at random to a student who reads it out: In 1984 this person went to Spain; in 1988 they were living in Seoul; next year they are going to France on holiday, etc with the rest of the class trying to guess who it is.

2) Students interview and prepare timelines for each other. When were you born? When did you go to university? How long have you been married? When are you going to graduate?

Timeline Conversion

Using an timeline (historical ones are useful here) students can convert between them and written texts. For example, give the students a timeline of the highlights of space exploration. From this they must write a narrative based on that timeline:

Alternatively, give the students a written text and ask them to read it for comprehension and then prepare a timeline based on the salient facts in that text.