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Didactic Objectives
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COMPETENCES
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GENERAL OBJECTIVES a. Exercise their democratic right and obligations as citizens, from a global outlook, and -inspired by the Spanish Constitution and by Human Rights- develop civic awareness which fosters co-responsibility in the building up of a fairer, more equal and sustainable society. SCC |
ASSESSMENT PROCEURES
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Session 2 – Vocabulary – Reading
Natural disasters in the News
-ed -ing adjectives
Session 2 and 3 – Grammar notes
Past tenses
The past perfect simple expresses an action that happened before a definite time in the past:
I got to his house at 10 o’clock, but he had already left.
She started to cry because she had had such a terrible day.
I asked him if he wanted a coffee but he had already had one.
The continuous is used for longer activities that had been going on up to a definite time in the past:
He was a wreck. He hadn’t been sleeping well because he’d been worrying so much about his money problems.
The continuous is used for repeated or continuous activities, while the simple is used for completed or single actions:
He was drunk. He had been drinking all day. (Repeated activity)
He was drunk. He had drunk a whole bottle of whisky. (Completed action)
Past perfect and past simple
The past simple can tell a story in chronological order:
She was all alone in the world. Her parents got divorced when she was a girl, her sister got married and went to live in Turkey, and her boyfriend left her after five years of living together.
The past perfect can be used for dramatic effect, looking from one point in the past to another point even further in the past:
She was all alone in the world. Her parents had got divorced when she was a girl, her sister had got married and gone to live in Turkey, and her boyfriend had left her after five years of living together.
The past simple can be used when one action follows another and it’s obvious that it happened afterwards:
When the doorbell rang I got up to answer it.
I heard the milkman and went to order an extra carton of milk.
If it’s important to show that the second action started after the first one was completed, the first action must be in the past perfect:
When I had finished reading the paper, I threw it away.
I didn’t leave the house until I had made sure that all the windows were closed.
WATCH THIS VIDEO FOR A VERY SIMPLE EXPLANATION:
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Abrir en una nueva pestaña Present perfect
I’ve been working all afternoon, but I’ve finished everything now.
It’s important to remember this because when you use the present perfect you’re making a connection between something in the past and something in the present. If what you’re referring to only relates to the past or the present, then you’ll need to use a different tense.
Experience
When we talk about experience, we’re usually talking about something that happened at an unspecified time in the past. The important thing is that we did it or it happened, and that today we remember the experience of it. This is the connection between the present and the past.
The most typical way you learn to talk about experience during an English course is by using a question including the word ‘ever’:
Have you ever been to Tanzania?
Have you ever eaten snails?
Have you ever recorded a video?
The question is asking for general information, but if you want to give specific details, then you will have to change tenses.
Yes, I have. I went there on holiday two years ago.
No, I haven’t. I’m a vegetarian.
I’ve tried, but I always get someone else to do it.
It would be very difficult to use the continuous form to talk about experience. A question like ‘Have you ever been flying in a glider?’ looks like the continuous, but the infinitive of the verb is ‘to go flying’, so in fact it’s the simple.
Sometimes it can be difficult to see the difference between talking about experience and talking about the present result of something that happened in the past:
My colleague’s been to The Seychelles (experience).
My colleague’s gone to The Seychelles (he’s there now, not here).
As long as you remember both uses are the present perfect, it doesn’t really matter what category you think a sentence belongs to.
Present result of something in the past
The way we use the present perfect here is self-explanatory and basically the same as Spanish.
Imagine you see a friend in the street, a friend you haven’t seen since you left school years ago. It’s very likely they’ll look different, and the conversation might include sentences like these:
You’ve changed a lot since I last saw you.
You’ve lost a lot of weight.
Past continuing into the present
In Spanish you have more than one way of expressing this idea, but in English you have to use the present perfect. It describes a verb action that began in the past and continues into the present and quite possibly into the future.
I’ve lived in Spain for over ten years.
Some comparisons with Spanish
Many people in Spain usually use the present perfect to refer to anything that has happened today. We can only do that in English if we are in the same time period:
What have you done this morning? (It’s 11.30 am)
What did you do this morning? (It’s 1.30 pm)Have you had a nice day? (the day is continuing)
Did you have a nice day at the office? (the day at the office is finished)
If an action is completely finished, even if it happened seconds ago, we use the past simple and not the present perfect. In class it’s not impossible to hear someone ask someone else:
¿Qué ha dicho?
What did he say?
Watch these videos for an easy explanation:
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Session 4 – Speaking – Pronunciation
QUESTIONS – INTONATION
What to do in an emergency situation
What happens when you call 999
Session 5 – Listening – Writing
NARRATIVE TENSES
A NARRATIVE
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Session 6 – Revision
Click on the image to revise for the exam
Or do the activities on the burlington app
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