| Hi everybody, my name is Alisha. |
| In this lesson, I want to talk about storytelling. |
| How do you choose between simple present tense and simple past tense when you want to tell a story? |
| In this lesson we're going to break down the differences between the tenses and talk about how you can choose when you want to tell stories. |
| Let's get started. |
| Okay, first let's talk about present tense. |
| So So when I say present tense for this lesson, I mean all the present tenses. |
| So when you tell a story using present tense, that means it includes simple present tense, it includes present progressive, and it includes present perfect. |
| So it's not only one type of verb, we have a few different types of present tense verb that we can use to express our story in this sense. |
| So typically we use present tense in this manner, this red star point here. |
| So it feels like the action is happening now. |
| The listener or the reader feels they are experiencing the story. |
| So when we use present tense, we tend to use it when we want the other person to feel like they are part of the experience, to feel like they're experiencing the story at the same time as the character or at the same time as the person telling the story. |
| So using present tense is very common in casual everyday conversations and sometimes you read this in books and so on. |
| So let's take a look at an example story. |
| We're going to use this example story in today's lesson. |
| We're going to change the tenses so that you can see how the feeling of the story changes. |
| So let's Let's read through this story with a focus on present tense. |
| So all the verbs here are going to use a form of a present tense verb. |
| Let's take a look. |
| Okay, the story starts. |
| This morning, my boss says, "Today we have some visiting clients in town. |
| Can you take them out for lunch?" |
| I say, "Sure, no problem." |
| So we go to lunch and we're eating. |
| We've been chatting for a while and one of the clients, a senior manager, offers me a job at their company. |
| I go, "Let me think about it, head back to work and call my family." |
| So in this short story about someone like receiving a surprise job offer, all of the verbs use a form of present tense, yeah? |
| So we have simple present tense here with my boss says and I say and so on. |
| And then we have here we're eating. |
| So here's a progressive form. |
| And then we have we've been chatting, which is a present perfect form. |
| So we've used a few different types of present tense verbs here in this story to express the different like types of actions, which is very normal. |
| So using present tense to express this story sounds like everything is happening in the moment. |
| We have more of a feeling that we are experiencing the story together with the person who is telling us the story. |
| So using these present tense verbs sounds natural. |
| This story is 100% correct. |
| All of the stories we're going to look at in this lesson are 100% correct. |
| We just want to look at how the feeling changes along with the changes in tenses of the verbs. |
| So this is the basic guide to using present tense for telling stories. |
| We feel like we are part of the action. |
| Let's compare this to past tense. |
| So when we use past tense to tell a story, this like present tense, it includes simple past tense, it includes past progressive tense, it includes past perfect. |
| So when we say simple past tense or using past tense to tell a story, it doesn't mean only one type of past tense. |
| Yeah? |
| There are many different ways to create past tense verbs, so we can use all of them to tell our story. |
| So the difference between past tense and present tense for telling a story is in this red point here. |
| So it feels more like a report or it tends to feel more like a report. |
| The action has finished, right? |
| The listener or the reader does not feel they are experiencing the story in real time. |
| So in present tense we kind of feel that we are together with the person in the story. |
| We are experiencing it in real time or close to real time. |
| However in past tense stories it sort of feels like the action is done. |
| The action is finished. |
| We don't need to experience it at the same time. |
| It's not so important. |
| For this reason you will often see things like news reports It's like on the nightly news or in the newspaper, in past tense, because it's not so important to feel that we are experiencing the story at the same time. |
| So past tense is typically used in these situations, but of course, we also use past tense in our own lives to talk about our daily life stories. |
| So let's take a look at the same story from before and see how it changes feel in past tense. |
| So, same situation, we've just changed the verbs. |
| Let's take a look. |
| This morning, my boss said, "Today we have some visiting clients in town. |
| Can you take them out for lunch?" |
| I said, "Sure, no problem." |
| So we went to lunch and we were eating. |
| We had been chatting for a while when one of the clients, a senior manager, offered me a job at their company. |
| I went, "Let me think about it." |
| headed back to work and called my family. |
| So in this story, all of the verbs use a form of past tense. |
| So we have simple past tense here, simple past tense here and here. |
| We have a progressive form, we were eating, and we have a past perfect form here. |
| We had been chatting for a while. |
| So all of the facts are exactly the same. |
| You can see all the vocabulary words are the same. |
| The only difference here is that the tenses of the verbs are different. |
| As a result, this story feels more like a report. |
| I'm just telling someone what happened to me today. |
| So this story, maybe I'm talking to my coworker at the end of the day. |
| I want to tell my coworker about this really interesting surprise that happened today. |
| I might use simple past tense to do this because it feels like a report. |
| So this is the reason we might choose to use simple past tense. |
| For that kind of reported, everything's finished type of feel. |
| Okay, so with this in mind, with present tense and past tense uses in mind, I want to finish this lesson by looking at a mix. |
| So this is probably the most common thing that native speakers do when they tell stories. |
| We don't use only present tense or only past tense or only even future tense sometimes. |
| Usually when we tell stories, we mix the two and there's a reason for this. |
| When we switch between two tenses like present tense and past tense, it helps us to emphasize the most exciting parts of the story, okay? |
| So we can use, for example, past tense to show background information, so stuff that we cannot change or just important pieces, but they're not like so exciting, they're not the main highlight of the story, but it's good to know. |
| We can use past tense to show that, and we use present tense to highlight the actions, the main focus of the story, the exciting parts. |
| So let's take a look at the same story, but I've mixed the tenses together. |
| This is a very typical way that a native speaker might tell this story, using a mix of these two tenses I talked about. |
| So let's take a look at this, and then I'll talk about why I chose one tense for one section and why I didn't choose another one. |
| So same story. |
| Let's take a look at how this might be explained by a native speaker. |
| So this morning, my boss said, today we have some visiting clients in town. |
| Can you take them out for lunch? |
| I said, sure, no problem. |
| So we go to lunch and we're eating. |
| We've been chatting for a while when one of the clients, a senior manager, offers me a job at their company. |
| I went, let me think about it, headed back to work and called my family. |
| So in this story we have again the same facts, but maybe you noticed this part, the initial part, the beginning part, my boss asking me to take the clients to lunch, me accepting. |
| This part is past tense, yeah? |
| The highlight part is the lunch. |
| I changed this to present tense. |
| I have here. |
| So we go to lunch and we're eating, we've been chatting for a while, the client offers me a job. |
| I used present tense in this case because this is like the highlight of the story. |
| This is where the action happens, right? |
| Something surprising happens. |
| By switching to present tense, you kind of give the reader or the listener a big hint like, "Oh, something special is happening here. |
| Pay attention because this is where the action starts." |
| And then after that, I went, "Let me think about it, headed back to work and called my family." |
| This shows that this is also kind of background information. |
| This is not the main highlight, the main focus of the story. |
| So in this part, I've switched back to simple past tense to express these points. |
| So this is a very, very common or a very, very typical example of a way that a native speaker might use different tenses to express a story. |
| And the reason for that is that we want to highlight certain parts as the action points. |
| And we also want to indicate certain points are kind of background information, or they're less important than the highlight points of the story. |
| So we can do this by changing our tenses. |
| This is a really, really good skill to have once you feel comfortable with the different tenses and can use them fluently and can use them smoothly, you can make choices like these in your writing and in your speaking to really help the other person understand your story better and have a better experience of it too. |
| So I hope that this lesson helped you understand the differences between these tenses when you're telling stories and also helped you to see how mixing these tenses can really make your story come alive in a different kind of way. |
| So of course if you have any questions or comments, or if you want to practice writing a short story with this information, please feel free to do so in the comment section of this video. |
| Thanks very much for watching this lesson, and I will see you again soon. Bye! |
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