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My students are having difficulties with the concepts of "used to" as in was at one time, and "used to" as in accustomed to. Does anyone have any suggestions??

provner wrote:My students are having difficulties with the concepts of "used to" as in was at one time, and "used to" as in accustomed to. Does anyone have any suggestions??

Try translating those uses directly to their own language.

Are you just focussing on the two words used to? It helps to draw attention to the difference in structure:

used to + BASE FORM

as opposed to

BE used to (+ BF-ing)

That way the students have no excuse for not knowing which one is being referred to.

My simplified Venn Diagram:
http://www.geocities.com/endipatterson/Cat.html
(don't even go near the original diagram for students) some of the links from it may be OK, though.)

Don't forget there is also utilisation. I give my FCE students this (from the yin yang link):

There are three verbs spelt "use" with three unrelated meanings. These verbs are generally considered to be different verbs rather than different forms of the same verb.

A Use followed by the object, "to" and the infinitive indicates the use to which the object is being put.
B Use in the past tense followed by "to" and the infinitive indicates that something was true in the past, but isn't any more.
C i) Be use to and ii) Get use to followed by the gerund mean respectively:
i) Be accustomed to and ii) Become accustomed to.

Examples
A. I used a hammer to knock in a nail.
B. He used to be fat. (But he isn't any more.)
C. i) John is a miner, he is used to working very hard.
C. ii) Mining is hard work, you have to get used to working very hard.

Then I give practice questions to make sure they've got it.