Foreground and background
Think of something that happened to you in the last month. Not dramatic — a delay, an awkward conversation, something that went wrong in a small way.
Hold it. First, a sorting task, and it is about attention rather than grammar.
Eight clauses from one story. Match each to the job it does — is it what the story is about, or what the story happens against?
The same event at two lengths
Ninety seconds
Our train was cancelled at Santa Apolónia and everybody had to get the replacement bus. It took four hours instead of two. A woman next to me missed a funeral.
The same afternoon, told properly
It was the Friday before Easter and the station was already too full when I got there. It was raining, the departure board was not updating, and about four hundred people were standing under it pretending that staring would help.
I was near the barrier with a coffee I did not want. The man beside me was on the phone to somebody, explaining very calmly for the third time that no, he did not know, nobody knew.
Then the announcement came. Not the board — a voice, and you could hear it change halfway through the sentence. The train was cancelled. There would be a bus.
And while everybody else was moving towards the doors, one woman just stood still. She was holding a small bag and she was crying, quietly, in the way people cry when they are trying not to. Her mother’s funeral was at two in Coimbra.
She got on the bus. It took four hours. I have thought about her most weeks since, and I never even asked her name.
Five questions comparing the two. Both are accurate. Only one is a story.
1. The long version opens with four continuous clauses before anything happens. What are they for?
2. How many background strands are running at once in the first two paragraphs?
3. While everybody else was moving towards the doors, one woman just stood still. Why is stood simple?
4. The short version contains every fact the long one does. What is missing?
5. The last paragraph is three short sentences after four long paragraphs. What does that do?
The two layers
What each tense is for in a narrative
| Layer | Tense | Contains | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Background | Past continuous | Conditions, processes, what everybody was doing | It was raining. The platform was filling up. |
| Background | Past simple, with state verbs | What was already true | I knew nobody. She had a small bag. |
| Foreground | Past simple | Events, decisions, changes | The announcement came. I gave her my ticket. |
| Foreground | Past simple, negative | Things that did not happen, told as events | The train never arrived. Nobody moved. |
| The seam | when · while · as | Where one layer breaks the other | While everybody was moving, she stood still. |
Six lines of a short narrative, out of order. Put them into the order that builds background before foreground.
- Nobody moved.
- Two people from accounts were arguing about a spreadsheet in the corridor.
- We all just looked at each other for about four seconds, and then everybody moved at once.
- It was half past six and the office was almost empty.
- Then the fire alarm went off.
- I was writing an email I had been putting off all week.
Choosing the layer
One to three words per gap. Decide which layer each clause belongs to before you write.
It about nine and the restaurant to empty. Two waiters the tables by the window. I for a friend who forty minutes late. Then the door and it was not her.
Six sentences from real narratives. One error each.
1. I waited at the barrier when the announcement was coming.
2. While she was crying, I was giving her my ticket.
3. Everybody was looking at their phones and nobody was moving when the alarm was going off.
4. I was knowing nobody on that platform.
5. The train wasn’t never arriving.
6. It rained hard the whole afternoon and then the sun was coming out.
Two minutes, and then the same two minutes
Task card · Speaking · Diagnostic · 2 minutes each
The small thing that happened to you in the last month. Tell it to a partner who was not there.
Two minutes. At least three background strands before anything happens, and one clear foreground event.
- Open with the conditions — weather, time, place, what everybody around you was doing.
- Do not let anything happen for the first thirty seconds. Your partner is timing that.
- One event breaks the background. Say it in a short sentence.
- Finish with something that did not happen, or with what you still think about.
Listener’s job. Two columns. Left: every -ing verb you hear. Right: every past simple event.
Then say one sentence back: the thing that stood out was ___ . If you cannot name one, the story had no foreground, and that is the most useful thing you can tell them.
What two minutes produced
Five sentences of the kind this task produces. Fix each.
1. I sat in the waiting room and the nurse called my name.
2. While I was walking home, I was seeing the whole street was closed.
3. Everybody talked and nobody listened and then the manager came in.
4. It was raining and I was forgetting my umbrella.
5. I was wanting to say something the whole time.
One decision, every clause
Three questions.
1. What is the past continuous doing in a narrative?
2. A story where every clause is past simple —
3. Nobody moved. Foreground or background?
Before next lesson. Listen to two stories from The Moth. For one of them, write down the first four clauses exactly as the teller says them.
Four exactly. Next lesson we count how many of them are in the background, and the answer is almost always the same.