Thirty seconds of background, standing up
Round the room. Each person gives thirty seconds of pure background from their story — conditions, other people, a process running down. No events at all.
If you reach an event, you stop and the next person starts. It is harder than it sounds and it is the last drill of the unit.
Eight clauses. Match each to the layer it belongs to and why.
The page is not the telling
On the page
The light was on a timer and it kept going out every ninety seconds, which meant standing up and waving at it.
Out loud
And the light — right, so the light in that stairwell is on a timer. Ninety seconds. So every ninety seconds you are in the dark, and you have to stand up and do this — wave your arm about like an idiot — and then it comes on and you sit down. And then ninety seconds later. For four hours.
Three questions comparing the two.
1. The spoken version names the light first, then explains it. Why?
2. The spoken version switches to the present — you are in the dark. Is that an error?
3. The spoken version ends on For four hours. as a fragment. Why?
Turning 230 words back into five minutes
Three conversions
| On the page | Out loud | Why |
|---|---|---|
| A neighbour came past twice and did not ask. | And a woman from the third floor came past. Twice. Did not say a word either time. | Speech breaks one sentence into three and lands each |
| My phone went from eleven per cent to nothing. | Eleven per cent. And you know how it goes — eleven, then eight, then it just gives up. | Speech can dramatise a process the page states |
| We had not spoken properly in five months. | We had not had a proper conversation since about the previous September. Five months. In the same flat. | The fragment does the work of an adjective |
Six moves. Put them into the order you will speak in — the written shape with one change at the end.
The unit task, in three parts
Task card · Part one · Hand in · 4 minutes
Your clean rewrite goes into your portfolio today.
A final check against five things, then hand it over.
- About 230 words, count at the bottom.
- Paragraph one has no events in it at all.
- The longest paragraph has at most two events.
- One line of direct speech, in somebody’s exact words.
- Every verb agrees with its B or F mark, and no connector contradicts its sentence.
Task card · Part two · Speaking · 5 minutes each
A new partner who has not read your piece and will not. Your page stays face down on the table.
Five minutes, in the six moves, without looking at anything.
- Forty seconds of background before anything happens. Your listener is timing it.
- One plan that failed, and the event that broke it.
- A long middle where almost nothing happens.
- One line of direct speech, said the way they said it.
- Finish on then, now, and the one thing you would do differently.
- If you lose your place, say anyway, where was I and keep going. Do not pick the page up.
Listener’s job, and it is assessed too. One page, three columns:
1. A minute-by-minute tally of continuous verbs against past simple events.
2. Every layer collapse, marked with which direction it went.
3. The one sentence you would repeat to somebody else tomorrow.
React out loud at least ten times across the five minutes. Silence for five minutes is not neutral.
Task card · Part three · The comparison · 5 minutes
You now have a marked written piece and a listener’s page from somebody who never saw it.
One sentence about the gap.
- Count the layer collapses in the writing. Count them on the listener’s page.
- Look at column one minute by minute. Which minute is thinnest?
- Which direction do your spoken errors go — events demoted, or background promoted?
- Write one sentence: After about ___ minutes I stop choosing the tense, and I default to ___ .
Closing the unit
Eight errors, one from each lesson. Fix each and name the lesson it belongs to.
1. I stood at the barrier when the announcement was coming.
2. It was February and the heating didn’t work all week.
3. I was about to leaving when the phone rang.
4. He always was losing his keys.
5. Out of nowhere, the bus was late, as it always is.
6. Meanwhile I was sitting there the whole time.
7. I was ringing the bell three times.
8. At the time I am thinking she was wrong.
One final narrative paragraph, both layers. One to four words per gap.
It the last night of the festival and it since about four. Most people home already and the ones who were left under the awning by the bar, pretending they did not mind. I to go and find my coat when the music stopped. , the generator had failed and nobody could fix it until morning. about sixty of us stood in the dark for ten minutes, and then somebody started singing, badly, and everybody joined in.
What this unit was about
Four questions covering the whole unit.
1. What is the past continuous doing in a narrative?
2. I was reading your report. What does a colleague hear?
3. Which connector means "at the same time, somewhere else"?
4. How do you make a long wait feel long?
The unit in one line. At two minutes the tenses are a rule. At five they are a decision you make every clause, and the decision is not about time — it is about what you want the listener to look at.
Everything else in this unit exists to give you enough background that minute three has something to demote.
Next unit. You have been reaching for one tense all through this one and it has not been available — the event before the event, the thing that was already true when the story started.
Next unit is the past perfect. Keep the sentence you wrote in part three; the minute where you stop choosing is the minute a third tense will land in.