LEVEL 5 GRAMMAR, APRIL 25TH, 2017

We continued with the theme of past tenses - past simple, past continuous and past perfect.

We began with a little story. To complete it, we had to use the 3 past tenses......Solution below......

Yesterday, I _____________ at 7am. I ___________________ badly because my neighbours ______________________ a party, so I _______________ terrible. While I _____________________ breakfast, I ________________ my favourite song on the radio, which made me feel better.


Yesterday, I got up at 7am. I had slept badly because my neighbours had had/ were having a party, so I felt terrible. While I was having breakfast, I heard my favourite song on the radio, which made me feel better.


We then continued to p.86 and we completed the story there about a motorcycle accident.


We then listened to a story about another accident, and tried to remember the details, again using the 3 past tenses.......

ACCIDENT

(Speed limit – the maximum speed allowed, hail – little pieces of ice falling from the sky like rain, steering wheel – what you use to change direction in a car, swerve – to change direction quickly, ditch – the area at the side of the road, often at a lower level than the road)

One day, I was driving through country roads in the south of County Sligo. It was just getting dark and it was raining a little bit.

I had arranged to meet someone and I was late, so I was driving at just on the speed limit or a little above. The roads were a little wet, but were not too bad.

Suddenly, it started to hail. The hailstones that were falling were very small, and they soon formed a layer of ice on the road. I turned a corner and realized, too late, that the roads were now quite dangerous. I felt the car slipping, and when I turned the steering wheel a little, I lost control of the car.

The car swerved, and went very fast towards the ditch. Within seconds, the car had come to a stop. I was shocked and I couldn’t see anything because my glasses had flown off in the accident, but I soon realized that the car had turned on its side. I managed to get out of the car, with difficulty.

A man who had been driving past had seen the accident, and had stopped. He rang an ambulance, even though I felt ok. The ambulance came and took me to the hospital. The doctors there examined me, and told me that I had been very lucky, and that I had not injured myself.

I rang a taxi to take me home. When I was walking out of the hospital, I heard someone calling my name. It was my friend Patrick. He was standing there with a bandage on his head. He had also had an accident and had gone to the hospital. It had happened at almost exactly the same time as mine. He too was fine, though he had a little cut on his head.

I was physically ok, but my car was not. I had to buy a new one. It was a small price to pay for something that could have been much more serious.

 We continued on to look at the Passive. ......

William Roentgen discovered X-rays.

X-rays were discovered by William Roentgen.

The first sentence is an Active sentence - it has the normal word order - subject + verb + object
The second sentence is a Passive sentence - the object comes first, as we consider it the most important part of the sentence. 

To make the passive, we need 
To be (am, is, are, was, were, have been, has been....) + past participle (3rd part of the verb)

For homework, we had to complete sentences with the following table.
eg. America was discovered by Columbus in 1492.

The airplane Penicillin The telephone America Paper The printing press The theory of evolution Modern numerals (1,2,3,4…..) The World Wide Web (Internet) Algebra Radioactivity DNA

was were

invented discovered  developed

by the Chinese 2200 years ago. by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876. by the Wright Brothers in 1903. by Johannes Gutenburg in 1439. by Marie Curie in 1898. in India 2000 years ago. by Columbus in 1492. by Alexander Fleming in 1928. by Crick and Watson in 1953. in 1991 by Tim Berners-Lee. by Al Khwarizmi in Arabia twelve hundred years ago. by Charles Darwin in 1859.