Two things
One thing you do every week. One thing you are doing this week that is not normal. One sentence each.
One prediction before you start.
1. Three minutes switching between two tenses. What will go wrong?
A model that switches nine times
Model — Vera, on her week
What I normally do. I manage a team of six in a logistics company. Normally I spend most of the week on scheduling — I work out who is going where, and I fix it when it goes wrong, which is most days.
What is different this week. Two of my six are on leave, so I am covering the routes myself. I am also training a new supervisor, which is taking about two hours a day. So I am doing three jobs and none of them properly.
One thing that is going well. We are rolling out new tracking software and it is actually working. Normally these things take months. This one went live on Monday and nobody has complained yet, which never happens.
One thing that is not. We are behind on the backlog — about three weeks. I know we will catch up in February, but I do not like looking at it.
Work from the model.
1. Which words signal the switch from permanent to temporary?
2. She writes I know we will catch up, not I am knowing. Why?
3. In the third paragraph she uses both tenses in three sentences. What is each doing?
4. Her last sentence is I do not like looking at it. Why the simple?
Signposting the switch
Switch signals
Six phrases. Each one tells the listener which tense is coming, and buys you the half-second to produce it.
The signal comes before the tense, not after. Saying At the moment… commits you to the continuous, and your mouth follows. Without it you have to choose the tense and the words at the same instant, and one of the two loses.
Match each signal to the tense it commits you to.
Switch on cue
Write the verb in brackets in the right tense. The signal before each gap tells you which.
Normally I (work) from home on Tuesdays, but this month I (go) in every day because we (train) three new people. Usually what happens is that the training (take) two weeks. At the moment it (look) more like six. I (not / mind), honestly — I (like) that part of the job.
Vera's three minutes has four sections. Put them in the order she uses them.
Three minutes, both tenses
The longest speaking stretch of the unit.
Task card · Speaking
Your work or study this week, told to somebody who has never heard about it.
Three minutes, four sections, no notes. At least six switches between the tenses, each one signposted.
- Say the signal out loud before each switch. Normally… but at the moment…
- At least five collocations from Lesson 4.
- At least three state verbs, all in the simple.
- Then swap, and ask three questions about their week — two continuous, one simple.
Stop at ninety seconds and answer. Then carry on.
1. How many times have you switched tense?
2. Which tense have you settled into?
Four counts
Answer before your teacher reads the four counts.
1. Did you fill the three minutes?
2. Which error was most common?
3. Did you signpost every switch?
Carry the log
One question.
1. What keeps a three-minute turn switching tenses?
Before Lesson 6. Write down the two tense errors you are most sure you made — from memory, without asking.
Lesson 6 compares your two with the log.