Современные исследования в изучении времён английского языка предлагают использовать тексты не только в методологических целях, но как необходимый инструмент для обучения иностранному языку. В этой работе будет проиллюстрирована методика обучения четырём временным формам, которые используются для выражения событий в прошлом в разное время: в обычном прошедшем (Simple Past), в предпрошедшем времени (Past Perfect), в прошедшем длительном времени (Past Progressive) и в настоящем совершённом времени ( Present Perfecr). Предложенный текст покажет взаимоотношение форм (временных флексий и флексий временных аспектов) в их понимании и употреблении, а так же контраст в значениях при использовании различных временных форм. Использование текстов позволяет представить реалистичный портрет распределения времени временных аспектов в контексте. Использование текстов позволяет увидеть употребление времён в связанном и завершённом в смысловом плане рассуждении, увидеть, как эти времена функционируют в различных жанрах текста; в тексте можно чётко увидеть взаимосвязь времён друг с другом, равно как и их отличие и тот контраст, который происходит за счёт употребления разных временных аспектов. Более того, если взять во внимание подход обучения языку в классе , то использование текстов в методике обучения позволяет охватить более широкий диапазон способностей обучающихся, нежели просто прямое фокусирование на грамматическом упражнении или презентации правила.
На обычном уроке, когда не используется текст, ученик, как правило, сфокусирован только на одном структурном моменте. Если ученик пропустил предыдущие уроки или не изучал данную тему ранее, то он или она получат меньше пользы из данного урока или из презентации правила, которую учитель представляет сегодня. Напротив, использование текста делает любой урок широко доступным для всех обучающихся в классе, предлагая для изучения что-то новое для каждого уровня знаний обучающихся. Таким образом, используя текст как пример временной системы, ученик, например, в данный момент изучающий только Past Simple, найдёт в нём только этот временной аспект, тогда как другой учащийся может пойти дальше и обнаружить, что в тексте используется так же и Past Perfect. Другие учащиеся могут улучшить свой словарный запас или увидеть использование множество различных лингвистических единиц.
Итак, рассмотрим вышеизложенное на примере текста-повествования “ All Things Considered “ ( “ Всё учтено”), October 6, 1989

1 I was walking one night. It was bitterly cold, around Christmas
2 1978, and I was walking. I think I was walking down to the river just to
3 clear my heard or to go for a walk. I love to walk. There was a man on
4 the heating vent across the street from the State Department at 21 st and
5 E which was only a block from my apartment, and he colled out to me. He
6 said he wanted a buck to buy something to eat. I was very irritated with
7 him for calling out after me. I didn't want to be bothered and I didn’t
8 believe him either. I thought, “well he just wants to get something to
9 drink;” and I thought to myself, “well I’ll fix him. I’ll go and get him
10 something to eat and that way he’ll be frustrated and angry and didn’t
11 get what he wanted but at list I’ll give him what he asked for.” So I
12 I went up to my apartment, got him a bowl of soup, got him a sandwich and
13 a cup of tea, and brought it down. I set it down and walked away. I
14 continued my walk, didn’t say a word to him,and didn’t acknowledge his
15 thanks. I never saw that man again, but I went home that night and I
16 just thought: ‘well, you know that made me feel preatty good. That’s the
17 least I can do. That’s all it takes to make me feel good and to think
18 well you know here I’m helping the human being. I can do that. I mean
19 what effort did that take .”
20 So I went home, and the next night I went out again with the same
21 type of meal (I think a little bit more but the same type of meal). I
22 just set it down on the heating vent where other people were, and I
23 walked away. They thought that I was a little bit crazy bringin out this
24 food and setting it down, but I did. I simply went back to my apartment
25 and that was the end of it. But I kept doing that, and I kept doing it
26 night after night after night and eventually got to know some of these
27 people bcause I was consistent. I went down there.
28 One of them said to me one time “what is this, kind of a project?
29 Is this a homework assignment or something?” I said, ‘No.” I said,
30 “I just feel I want to do it.” Another night. One of the guys down
31 there was so angry with my doing this. I had taken a gallon jug down
32 of hot splitpea soup. It was a cold night, and he took the jar of hot
33 split pea soup and broke it over my heard. He was so angry. He said,
34 “You are bringing food out to the dogs. You’re setting it down here and
35 walking away.” I said “Sir, you’re exactly right.” I said, “I’m
36 embarrassed but what I’m doing, and I’m afraid. I don’t know how else
37 to do it.” That guy really opened my eyes to the fact that I was being
38 very insensitive, very unfriendly. I really shouldn’t have done it at all
39 if that was going to be the way I was doing it.
40 So the following night I came down. I set the food down. I purpose-
41 fully sat there for a while with some of the people and talked to them,
42 and all of this was fine. I think they were waiting for me to stop doing
43 it. They were waiting to see how long I was going to keep this up.
44 Secondly I think they were beginning to enjoy the visits and the food,
45 and I was getting to know some of them. For me this was a very very big
46 barrier that was being broken because I had always resented them or
47 looked through them or been annoyed by them or thir condition, and I
48 had never really encountered any of them on a personal basis.
49 Everything was fine until about three months after I’d begun. A man
50 asked to come up to my apartment and to shower and to shave. I said,
51 “Absolutely not.” I said, “I live in a dorm.” I said, “You know,
52 it’s graduate housing.” I said, “We are not allowed to have people in-
53 just strangers off the street.” He was dirty. He smelled, and he was a
54 little bit inebriated. I said, “No.” I said, “ I can bring the food out
55 but I can’t have any people up there.” I didn’t want to, and I was
56 embarrassed if I had been seen with him. Nobody was aware of what I was
57 doing.Nobody in the dorm or anybody else was aware that I was taking
58 this food down, and that’s the way I wanted it. So that was fine, but he
59 persisted for three days after that. Finally I said, “All right, Glenn.”
60 I said, “ Come up to the apartment.” But I said, “You’ve got to leave as
61 soon as you have your shower and shave.” So it was fine. I took him up,
62 and he went into the bathroom. I went into the kitchen. I was washing
63 some dishes, and I came back into the living room abouy twenty minutes
64 later. There he was in the chair. Fast asleep. He had come out and he
65 had gone into the chair. Right away-because he was so tired-he had
66 gone to sleep. I had given him some clean clothes and he had put those
67 on. So he looked fine. He looked a lot better than he did on the grates.
68 He slept.
69 He slept all night there, and the next morning I went to work
70 because I was working too. I debated whether to leave him there, and I
71 said, “well you know he’s certainly sober because he hadn’t brought any
72 liquor in.” He looked very clean and he looked very wholesome. I
73 thought, “well you know, I’ll just let him stay here during the day and
74 when I come home for lunch you know I’ll see what the circumstances
75 are.” I came home, and he had made lunch. He had straightened the
76 apartment out and he was listening to the Ring Cycle of Richard Wagner
77 on the stereo. Of course that endeared me to him because I liked what he
78 was listening to-Lowengren. He was wonderful, and it was good to come
79 home to that. It was good to come home to somebody that had taken the
80 time and the effort to do that. He filled in a very real sense a void in
81 my life. I wasn’t married. I wasn’t doing anything really but going to
82 school and going to work, and it felt kind of good to come home to
83 something like that. I really identified with him.
84 He didn’t leave for 30 days. When people found out that he was up
85 there, that he was doing fine, that he was safe, and that he was clothed
86 and well fed, a lot of people on the gratest asked to come up. I had 15
87 people in my room by the end of the winter. We were fine, and then one
88 Saturday morning a young man came up. He was 24 years old. He came up
89 and asked if he could shower and shave in the apartment. I said, “Yes.”
90 I had never seen him before and he went in to the bathroom. After about
91 an hour he didn’t come out. We went in there, and he was dead in the
92 tub. He had died of drugs and alcohol.
93 Of course, I had never been around anyone that had died-certainly
94 not in my own home. I got on my phone and called my mother. I said,
95 “ What am I supposed to do? Here is this man dead in the tub.” I said,
96 “You know I have all these guys in the apartment.” She said, “Well you
97 have to call 911.” This made sense, but I hadn’t thought of it. I called
98 911, and I was not ready for the response. All of a sudden these fire
99 engines came racing down the street. The rescue squad came down the
100 street. The homicide detectives came in the door. The university
101 officials came in the door and the coroner. I was not ready for anything
102 like that. They just took one look at this apartment with all these
103 people and this man, and finally it dawned on the university where these
104 people were coming from. They knew people were coming into the buildlng
105 because the students were telling them, but they coulden’t figure out
106 where they were going once they got in and who was letting them in
107 because I had given them all a key. So now they knew. They said not only
108 did I have to get rid of these people but I had to leave.
Повествование демонстрирует хронологический порядок, выраженный посредством согласования прошедших времён глаголов, а так же путём контраста между Simple Past Tense и другими прошедшими формами глаголов и ролью этих времён в структуре повествования.
Повествование представляет собой согласованные последовательно связанные предложения, представленные преимущественно в Past Simple. В строчках (12-14), например, порядок глаголов отражает хронологический порядок. В строчках (75-76) события представлены не по порядку ( поэтому идёт использование Past Perfect); а одно из событий произошло одновременно с другим, представленным в Past Progressive. Учащиеся, испытывающие сложности с определением хронологического порядка, могут сами без труда определить этот порядок, если ответят на такие, к примеру, вопросы как “In lines 75-76 did Kerwin see the man cleaning the apartment?” и “Did Kerwin hear the music plaing?”
Изучение текста также помогает учащимся сопоставлять флексии временных форм и аспектов. Первой ступенью в распознавании такого сопоставления послужит обращение внимания ученика на тот факт, что один и тот же глагол в тексте имеет разные временные формы. В данном повествовании есть четыре глагола, которые можно увидеть как в Past Simple так и в Past Progressive.
Past Progressive Past Simple Line
was walking (lines 1-2) --------------------------- 13
was taking (line 57) --------------------------- 61
were coming (line 104) --------------------------- 75
were going (line 106) --------------------------- 91
Следующая ступень сопоставления разных временных форм одного и того же глагола – это понимание значений этого глагола в разных временах и его использование. Выбор флексии должен оставаться за учащимися и рассматриваться с “точки расположения”. Если то или иное событие рассматривается как единое целое и может быть только в одной точке временного отрезка в прошлом, то тогда следует использовать Past Simple. Если же это событие растянуто на какой-то период времени в прошлом (занимает определённый промежуток времени на отрезке времени), то необходимо использовать Past Progressive. Сравните использование walked away (13) и was walking (1). В строках 104-106 показано использование Past Progressive для повторяющихся действий (функция повторений в Past Progressive). Учащиеся также могут перефразировать отрывок с повторяющимися действиями, используя Past Simple и обстоятельства такие как again and again, over and over, или regularly.
Времена и временные аспекты также вносят свою окраску в структуру повествования. Past Simple, как правило, используется для того, чтобы показать основную линию повествования или “передний план” (foreground) текста. События переднего плана происходят в хронологическом порядке ( о том, что произошло в самом начале и сообщается в самом начале). Другие временные формы и аспекты показывают “задний план текста” (background). Задний план даёт нам информацию, которая детально раскрывает или оценивает события переднего плана. Таким образом хронологический порядок не характерен для заднего плана, и его события могут использоваться как комментарии к основному событию или как предсказание к будущим событиям. Такие различные структуры текста и подразумевают различное использование временных форм и аспектов. Past Simple также может встречаться и в отражении событий заднего плана. Самое важное, чтобы для отражения событий переднего плана мы не употребляли другие временные формы, кроме как Past Simple. Следующий пример показывает, как такое правило работает в данном повествовании.
Foreground Background

I was walking one night. It was
bitterly cold, around Christmas !978, and I was
walking. I think I was walking down to the
river just to clear my heard or to go for a walk. I
love to walk. There was a man on the heating
vent across the street from State Department at
21st and E which was only a block from my
apartment,
1. and he called out to me. [this is what he called:]
He said he wanted a back to buy
something to eat.
2. I thought , “well he just
wants to get something to
drink;” and I thought to
myself, “...”
I was very irritated with him for
calling out after me. I didn’t want
to be bothered and I didn’t believe
him either.
3. So I went up to my apartment,
4. got him a bowl of soup, got
him a sandwich and a cup of
tea, and
5. brought it down.
6. I set it down and
7. walked away. I
8. continued my walk
[several lines deleted]
9. and the nrxt morning
I went to work
because I was working too.
10. I came home
and he had made lunch.
He had straightened the apartment out
and he was listening to the Ring Cycle



В данном повествовании мы видим только Past Simple для событий основной линии сюжета (переднего плана). Но для заднего плана мы видим использование таких времён как Past Simple (he said, I was), Present Simple (I love to walk), Past Progressive (I was walking, he was listening), и Pasr Perfect (he had straightened the apartment).
Концепция структуры повествования может использоваться для того , что бы помочь учащимся определить основную линию всей истории, установить связи между временными формами и их функциями, и, несомненно, показать естественным способом употребление или распределение временных аспектов и форм в контексте. Определение переднего плана также позволяет установить хронологический порядок событий в тексте. Для более продуктивных заданий учащихся можно попросить записать основные моменты рассказа-повествования, который они прочитали, посмотрели на видео или создали сами. Как только будут записаны основные события , можно будет добавить к ним какие-то детали, комментарии или пояснения. Хотя это и будет являться искусственным воссозданием текста, но как упражнение , повышающее сознание учащегося, оно показывает все функции времён и временных аспектов в повествовании.

Источник: http://Functional Approaches to Written Text: Classroom Aplications,Tom Miller, 1997