Count your four clauses
Read out the four opening clauses you transcribed. As a class, count how many are background and how many are foreground.
Write the class total on the board. It is usually about three to one.
Eight opening clauses from real stories. Match each to what it puts in place.
Four openings, four stories
The first forty seconds of four stories
Aidan: It was the summer I turned nineteen and I was working nights at a bakery, which meant I was awake from ten until six and asleep from seven until three. I had no idea what day it was for about four months. My mother was ringing the house phone every Sunday and I was never awake to answer it.
Priya: We were two hours into a four-hour drive and my brother was doing the thing he does where he does not say anything for a very long time. The heating was broken. It was February. Neither of us had suggested stopping and neither of us was going to.
Sema: The house was full of people I did not know and I was standing in a kitchen holding a plate I did not want. Somebody was playing something loud in another room. I had been in the country for eleven days.
Wilson: I was twenty-three and I thought I was extremely clever, which is the sentence that should tell you where this is going. I was managing a shop I was far too young to manage. My area manager was on holiday for two weeks and she was not answering her phone, which was the whole point of a holiday.
Seven statements. Decide which speaker each one is true of. A speaker may be the answer more than once.
A Aidan
B Priya
C Sema
D Wilson
1. Signals in the opening that they were about to be proved wrong.
2. Describes a silence that both people were choosing to maintain.
3. Establishes that they were a stranger in the place the story happens.
4. Describes a repeated action of somebody else that they kept failing to meet.
5. Names a specific number of days, which makes the discomfort measurable.
6. Explains why the person who could have helped was unreachable.
7. Uses their working hours to explain a state of general confusion.
Say these at speed. The past continuous almost never gets its auxiliary stressed.
I was working → /aɪwəzˈwɜːkɪŋ/ · they were arguing → /ðeɪwəˈrɑːɡjuːɪŋ/ · she was standing → /ʃiwəzˈstændɪŋ/
The negatives keep their stress, because that is where the meaning is: wasn’t /ˈwɒznt/ · weren’t /ˈwɜːnt/. If you stress was in a positive sentence, you are contradicting somebody — I WAS listening.
What forty seconds of background contains
The five things an opening establishes
| Thing | Question it answers | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Time | When, roughly, and where in your life? | It was the summer I turned nineteen. |
| Situation | What did your life look like then? | I was working nights at a bakery. |
| Conditions | What was the weather, the room, the noise? | The heating was broken. It was February. |
| Other people | What were they doing, generally? | Somebody was playing something loud in another room. |
| A problem already running | What was wrong before the story started? | She was not answering her phone. |
Four clauses have been removed from this opening. Put each one back where it belongs.
It was the week between Christmas and New Year and nobody in the building was working properly. [1] The lift had been broken since the twenty-second and nobody was going to fix it until January.
I was on the fourth floor with two colleagues I did not know well. [2] One of them was eating crisps very slowly and reading something on his phone.
[3] My phone had four per cent and I was choosing not to look at it.
And outside, four floors down, somebody was reversing a van into the loading bay, badly, over and over. [4]
While, when, as
Three connectors, three shades
| Connector | Sits next to | Feels like |
|---|---|---|
while | The long thing — usually a continuous | Two things overlapping across a stretch of time |
when | The short thing — usually a simple | A single moment; also fine for two events in sequence |
as | Either, but especially two things at the exact same moment | Simultaneous and close — slightly more literary |
just as | The precise instant | Just as I sat down, the phone rang. Bad timing |
by the time | A deadline that had passed | By the time I got there, everyone had gone. |
the whole time | A background running under everything | She was crying the whole time and nobody said anything. |
One to three words per gap. Some gaps want a connector; some want a verb form.
I was locking the shop, a man came to the window and knocked. I turned round he was already walking away. I there with the keys in my hand for about ten seconds. everybody else was going home, I went back inside and checked every room, I knew perfectly well there was nobody in the building.
Six situations. Match each to the connector that fits it exactly.
Forty seconds of nothing
Task card · Speaking · Pairs · 5 minutes each
Your story from Lesson 1. This time you may not let anything happen for forty seconds.
Forty seconds of background, then the event, then the rest.
- The five things: time, situation, conditions, other people, a problem already running.
- At least four continuous verbs before the first past simple event.
- Your partner has a watch and will tell you if you start the event too early.
- Use while, when and as at least once each.
Listener’s job. Time the forty seconds. Then write the five things down — time, situation, conditions, other people, problem — and mark any that were missing.
A missing one is not a failure. It is the thing that would have made the next round better.
From the openings
Five sentences from the openings. Fix each.
1. It was February and the heating didn’t work.
2. While I turned round, he already walked away.
3. Somebody played something loud in another room.
4. My area manager wasn’t answer her phone.
5. I was standing there and I was not knowing what to do.
Five things before anything happens
Two questions.
1. Which connector fits terrible timing — one thing landing precisely on another?
2. Why do storytellers wait forty seconds before the first event?
Before next lesson. Write your opening out — forty seconds of it, all background, no events. Underline every verb.
Next lesson we look at two things the past continuous does that you have not met: complaining about somebody, and describing something that never got finished.