My name is Mark and I’m a teacher of English to speakers of other languages. I live in west London and work at a language school in central London. I also teach English privately. I have been teaching English for the last six years and I worked for two years in Prague before moving to London in 2007. I have a degree in English Literature and graduated in 2006. After university I did a few temporary jobs and then did a course in order to be able to teach English as a foreign language. I thought it would be a good qualification to have and would allow me to find work in many different countries. I really enjoyed teaching in Prague and decided to continue teaching when I returned to England. In addition to my job at the language school I’m also registered with a tutoring agency called TEFL jobs in London which helps me to find private students.

Although the past simple tense is one that gets a lot of practice as we love to talk about the past, there are some difficulties that make it a quite difficult tense to use.

The first difficulty concerns the pronunciation of the regular verbs. There are three different sounds for the past simple tense, which are:

1. The /t/ sound, which is used for verbs in the past such as: watched, kissed, washed etc.
2. The /d/ sound, for example: played, covered, stayed.
3. The /id/ sound, which is the only sound where an extra syllable is added. Examples of this sound include: started, wanted, added.

The three different sounds cause hesitations, especially during spoken English.

Another difficulty with the past simple tense is that there are lots of irregular verbs in English. These verbs don’t follow the same pattern as the regular ones, and need to be learned separately in order to be used.

The positive thing about the irregular verbs is that they are also some of the most common verbs. This is initially a problem for learners, but as you end up using the most common verbs again and again, you also get the most practice out of them, meaning that your ability to form them correctly will improve.

As you can see, there are some difficulties when using this tense. If you would like more information, click here for the past simple tense explanation with lots of exercises.

People travel to Italy for a vacation and some travel to Italy to learn Italian. Whatever reason you may have, learning is a slowly process that you have to be patient in learning. If you plan to travel and learn Italian in Italy, it requires good planning. Planning includes preparing for your travel, your stay and the school you are going to enroll at. This will require a more detailed planning compared to traveling for a vacation. Just the same, you still have to learn Italian since you are in one way or the other get into a conversation. Dinging in restaurants and asking for directions will require knowledge of the language. You can always take a crash course in Italian to learn the basics and enable you to go about Italy without getting lost. When you get to learn Italian, it will indeed give you a sense of fulfillment and it will allow you to enjoy your trip all the more. When you learn Italian in Italy you are not only learning the language but you are going to make use of it during your stay there.