Tense Toons

By Lauren Holt

I realized that the world of ESL was gravely bereft of a necessary resource: a photocopiable book of grammar cartoons, carefully developed by a well-seasoned teacher. Rather than creating a thousand page text in which every grammatical function is expressed in illustration, I opted for a smaller book geared towards clarifying the foundation of the English language: the twelve complicated, expressive, frustrating and oh-so-indispensable English verb tenses. In addition to being a grammar resource, Tense Toons can also act as a discussion tool. The humor in the cartoons is often topical, sometimes satirical, always politically correct but potentially debatable in multi-cultural classrooms. I invite all instructors to use this text as a catalyst for discussions of American humor, social issues, cultural viewpoints, or any other topic the cartoons bring to mind.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lauren Holt
• Release date: Sep 8, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370500413

Lauren Holt

As an avid believer in the power of visual images on memory and language acquisition, I have been using photographs and cartoons in my classrooms since I began my career as an ESL instructor. My students have written stories about comic strips, discussed simple sketches in order to build vocabulary, employed political cartoons in advanced discussion groups, and learned the detrimental impact of certain human habits through unforgettable photographs. This book, however, was conceived in a grammar class, a class wherein I was teaching one of the many uses of passive voice with a comic I’d been given at the start of my career by a veteran instructor. The image was accessible to individuals from any cultural background, universally humorous, and unintentionally perfect for grammar instruction. It helped to spice up a course that had the potential to be dry, and it aided the visual learners in remembering one of the more obscure functions of a challenging grammatical form.

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