Your three openers
Read out the three story-openers you noted. Then say which one you could use tonight, about yourself.
One prediction before you read anything.
1. When someone tells you a story about their past, how do you know what happened first?
Two leavings
Read each one once at normal speed. Then go back and put a mark over every word that tells you when.
Sofia
I left in September 2011. But the decision happened much earlier than that — in the spring, I think, though I did not admit it to anyone for months.
Before that I had a job I liked. I worked in a bookshop for four years and I was good at it. Then the owner died, and his son closed it, and suddenly there was nothing.
I applied for three things that summer. Two of them said no. The third one was in another country and I took it, and two weeks later I was on a plane with two suitcases and no plan at all.
I went back the following year, just to look. The bookshop was a phone shop by then.
Marcus
The day I left was completely ordinary. I remember that clearly. Nothing happened.
It was different a month before. A month before, my brother and I argued about the house for six hours and did not speak afterwards for a year. That is really when I left, if you want the truth.
Anyway. I packed on the Thursday, I got the bus on the Friday, and by Saturday morning I was four hundred kilometres away, in a flat with no furniture. I slept on the floor for three weeks.
I have not been back since. My brother came here once, in 2019. We did not talk about the house.
Sofia does not tell it in order. Put her six events into the order they actually happened.
Work from both texts.
1. Sofia says Before that I had a job I liked. What does Before that refer to?
2. Marcus opens with the day he left, then goes back a month. Which phrase signals the jump?
3. Marcus writes I packed on the Thursday, I got the bus on the Friday, and by Saturday morning… What is this doing?
4. Which connectors move a story forward?
The connectors, sorted
Two directions, plus one that holds still
| Direction | Connectors | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Forward | then · after that · two weeks later · the following year · by Saturday · in the end | Then the owner died. |
| Backward | before that · a month before · earlier · until then | Before that I had a job I liked. |
| Still | at the time · meanwhile · that summer · by then | The bookshop was a phone shop by then. |
Match each connector to what it does to the timeline. Two go back, three go forward, one stays where it is.
The epenthesis check, third pass. Past-tense storytelling is where a Portuguese speaker's final consonants get an extra vowel. Say these six and stop dead:
left · worked · packed · closed · asked · slept
Lesson 3 gives you the full rule for which sound the -ed makes. Today the only job is: no vowel after it.
Signal the order
One word per gap. All of them are connectors. Read the whole story before you start — the order is not straightforward.
I moved to the city in 2015. that I lived with my parents in a village forty minutes away. I got a job in a warehouse, and two months they made me a supervisor, which surprised everyone including me. I met Rosa, and a year we moved in together. In the I stayed in that job for six years. I went back to the village last spring and by my parents had sold the house.
Now do Marcus. Put his five events in the order they happened, not the order he tells them.
Tell it out of order, on purpose
Task card · Speaking
A time you left somewhere — a house, a city, a job, a school.
Two minutes. Start at the end, then go back. Use at least two backward connectors and three forward ones, and never lose your listener.
- Open with the leaving itself, in one sentence.
- Then go back with Before that… and fill in what led to it.
- Then come forward again to what happened afterwards.
- Your teacher will draw a timeline as you speak. If they cannot place an event, they will say When?
One decision.
1. You have just said when you left. You want to go back two years. Which opener?
The timeline
Look at the timeline your teacher drew.
1. How many times did they have to ask When?
2. When they asked, what was missing?
Before the rule
Thirty seconds. Match each connector to its direction.
Before Lesson 3. Say these ten past-tense verbs out loud, twice each, and record yourself on your phone:
walked · stayed · wanted · closed · asked · needed · stopped · lived · started · worked
Do not look anything up. Next lesson you listen back and sort them into three groups yourself.