Bob was seeing Mrs. Smith...

My story about progressive tense.
(cf. "I'm lovin' it" entry Oct 5th http://barefootphilolo.blogspot.jp/2016/10/im-lovin-it.html).

I teach English grammar to teenagers, and I quite enjoy it. I discover a lot about the language from teaching and also checking my students' mistakes. Some grammar mistakes make me (with my wild imagination) imagine really surreal scene.

There is an exercise worksheet that focuses on usage of simple past and continuous past. The verb is given, and you have to change the tense to either simple past or continuous past to complete the sentence. In one exercise, there is a boy called Bob and it tells about what he did one morning.

Some students answer like this:

     While he ( was walking ) to class, he ( was seeing ) Mrs. Smith.

Verbs of sense usually do not take progressive tense, but when it does, it carries a different sense. "See" when used in the progressive tense would mean "to spend time with someone".

And here is where my wild imagination comes into action.

Well, Bob was seeing Mrs. Smith before going to school. Is there something going on between those two?

Simon & Garfunkel's "Mrs. Robinson" starts playing in my head.

An innocent grammar exercise is now a scene of an affair...
Imagine, the world is full of fun.