Announce, do not explain
Read out only the three announcements you wrote — the perfect ones, with no details attached. Your partner has to guess what the details are.
If they cannot guess anything, the announcement is too vague. I have changed a lot is not an announcement.
Six ways of introducing an experience in a long turn. Match each to what it promises the listener.
Four minutes, transcribed
Yara · three experiences that changed her
The obvious one is leaving home. I moved to Coimbra when I was eighteen and I have not lived in the same town as my parents since. That is nineteen years now. It sounds ordinary and it is, and it is still the thing that changed the most.
The one nobody asks about is a job I had for four months in 2011. I worked nights in a petrol station and I hated it, and I have never since taken a job because it looked good on paper. Four months. It cost me a year of my twenties and it has saved me about three bad decisions since.
And this is the one I am least sure about. I have become much less certain about everything, and I do not know whether that is wisdom or just tiredness. It started around the time my father got ill — that was 2019 — and I have not gone back to being the person who had opinions about everything.
So: leaving, which was obvious. The petrol station, which was not. And the certainty, which I am still losing.
Four questions about how Yara built four minutes out of three facts.
1. Each experience contains both tenses. What decides which appears where?
2. I moved to Coimbra when I was eighteen and I have not lived in the same town as my parents since. Why do the two halves take different tenses?
3. The second experience lasted four months in 2011. Why is it in a turn about change?
4. The last paragraph is twenty-two words and repeats all three. What is it for?
Announce, detail, consequence
The three-move block, and its tense
| Move | Tense | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Announce the change | Present perfect, no time stated | I have stopped taking jobs that look good on paper. |
| Give the detail | Past simple, with a finished time | I worked nights in a petrol station in 2011 and I hated it. |
| State the consequence | Present perfect, reaching now | It has saved me about three bad decisions since. |
| Rank it | Present, as commentary | The one nobody asks about is… |
| Summarise, at the end | Noun phrases, no verbs needed | Leaving. The petrol station. The certainty. |
Five parts of one experience block. Put them in the order the model uses.
Build the four minutes
Task card · Planning · Individual · 6 minutes
Four minutes from a page of notes. Words and phrases only — full sentences get read aloud and everybody can hear it.
Three blocks, five lines each.
- The ranking phrase you will open each block with.
- The announcement, in the perfect. No date in it.
- Two details, in the simple, each with a real finished time.
- The consequence, in the perfect, reaching today.
- One thing you are still unsure about — at least in the third block.
One to three words per gap. This is what one of your three blocks should sound like.
The one nobody asks about is a course I when I was twenty-three. It four months and I it at the time. I since used a single thing I learned on it. But I two people there who my closest friends ever since, and I whether I would still know anybody in this city without it.
Four minutes, twice
Task card · Speaking · Round one · 4 minutes each
Your partner does not know you well. Notes on the table; you may glance at the three ranking phrases only.
Four minutes. Three experiences, each in the three-move block.
- Rank each block out loud before you start it.
- No date in any announcement. Every detail has one.
- At least one of the three has to be small — a job, a course, a conversation — not a life event.
- Finish with the summary: three noun phrases, no verbs.
- If you run out at three minutes, add a consequence, not a fourth experience.
Listener’s job. Three columns, all three filled:
1. Every announcement, written as you hear it. Mark any that had a date in it.
2. Every detail sentence that used the perfect instead of the simple, and the reverse.
3. One question, asked at the end, beginning Have you ever… or How long have you…
Between the rounds — three minutes, silent. Read column two. Where did the tense break — in the announcements, in the details, or in the consequences?
Write down the one block you are going to rebuild, and nothing else.
Task card · Speaking · Round two · New partner · 4 minutes
Same three experiences, new listener, same clock, notes face down.
Four minutes with the broken block rebuilt and the summary sharper.
- No notes. The content is yours by now.
- The block that broke is the one to watch. Say the announcement slowly.
- Your new listener keeps the same three columns.
- Compare the two pages. Column two is the one that should have shrunk.
Where the tense broke
Five sentences from round one. Fix each.
1. I have left home in 2006.
2. I never worked nights since then.
3. It changed everything and I am different since.
4. I did that course when I was twenty-three and I have hated it.
5. I have met two people there who are my friends since ten years.
Where yours broke
Two questions about your own two rounds.
1. You ran out at three minutes. What is the fix?
2. Your announcements had dates in them. What does that do?
Before next lesson. Keep both listeners’ pages. Count column two on each, and note which of the three moves the errors sat in.
Next lesson is built out of exactly that, and this is the single most common error at B1 in any language background.