What was it reaching back from?
Read out your three had sentences and, for each, the later event it reached back from. Your partner draws the two points on a line.
Nine clauses. Match each to the job it does in a narrative.
Four travellers, four disasters
Four openings from travel-narrative podcasts
Rin: We were standing in the rain outside a bus station in northern Greece at one in the morning, and the last bus had gone four hours earlier. Nobody had told us the timetable changed in October. We had been in the country for eleven days and had not once thought to check.
Marcus: The customs officer was holding my passport and reading something on his screen and not saying anything. I had been in that line for ninety minutes. Behind me a family were arguing about whether they had packed the right documents. I had, and it made no difference at all.
Dalia: I woke up on the train and it was light, which was wrong, because we had been due to arrive at four in the morning. Everybody else in the carriage was asleep. We had passed my station some time in the night and nobody had woken me, which was fair, because I had not asked anybody to.
Tomas: The hire car was making a noise it had not made an hour earlier and the nearest town was forty kilometres behind us. My brother, who had insisted on the cheapest option, was saying nothing at all. It was getting dark and we had about a third of a tank.
Seven statements. Decide which traveller each is true of. A traveller may be the answer more than once.
A Rin
B Marcus
C Dalia
D Tomas
1. Realised something was wrong because of the light rather than a person.
2. Names somebody whose earlier decision made the situation worse.
3. Says explicitly that having done the right thing changed nothing.
4. Admits that the problem was partly their own failure to check.
5. Excuses the other people involved rather than blaming them.
6. Describes a long wait already completed before the opening moment.
7. Places the nearest help at a stated distance behind them.
One extra form, in three of the four. had been + -ing — the past perfect continuous. It does for the past perfect what the past continuous does for the past simple: it holds a stretch of time rather than a point.
I had been in that line for ninety minutes. — a state, already true.
We had been in the country for eleven days. — a duration reaching up to the moment.
Use it when the length matters. You are not tested on it this unit; notice it and borrow it where it fits.
The three layers, stacked
The complete B1 narrative system
| Layer | Tense | Question it answers |
|---|---|---|
| Behind | Past continuous | What was going on when this happened? |
| In front | Past simple | What happened? |
| Underneath | Past perfect | What was already true before it happened? |
| Underneath, with length | Past perfect continuous | How long had it been going on by then? |
| Outside | Present | What do I think about it now? |
Four sentences have been removed. Put each back in the gap where its layer belongs.
It was half past eleven at night and the ferry terminal was almost empty. [1] A man in a booth was doing a crossword and had not looked up when we came in.
The last sailing had gone at nine. [2] We had bought the tickets online in March and neither of us had thought to check them since.
[3] She had been driving for six hours and I had promised to take over at the border, which I had then not done.
We slept in the car park. [4] I have never once mentioned the tickets since, and neither has she.
Stacking them
One to four words per gap. Behind, in front, or underneath — decide before you write.
It dark by the time we reached the border and about forty cars in front of us. We for two hours already. The guard out of his hut, looked at our plates, and waved us into a side lane. Somebody something on a form in March that nobody since, and it took four hours to find out what.
Six lines of a travel story. Put them into the order the teller uses — which is not the order things happened.
- Eventually a neighbour came out and asked, quite reasonably, who we were.
- We had booked it three months earlier and had exchanged about forty messages with the owner.
- She let us sleep on her sofa and we have sent her a card every Christmas since.
- We got to the apartment at about one in the morning and the code did not work.
- We sat on the step for an hour trying every combination we could think of.
- It turned out he had sold the flat in August and had forgotten to take the listing down.
Start at the discovery
Task card · Speaking · Pairs · 5 minutes each
Your story from Lesson 1, told again — but this time you may not begin at the beginning.
Open at the moment you found out, and let the earlier events come out underneath.
- Forty seconds of background before the discovery. Where you were, what was going on around you.
- The discovery itself, in one short past simple sentence.
- At least four had clauses explaining what was already true.
- Then the story forward again, in the past simple.
- One use of had been -ing if the length of something matters.
Listener’s job. The timeline again. One horizontal line, every event placed in the order it happened.
Compare it with your line from Lesson 1. The same story should now have fewer question marks on it.
From the tellings
Five sentences from the task. Fix each.
1. The code didn’t work because he sold the flat in August.
2. We had been waiting an hour when the neighbour was coming out.
3. I had realised that I had left my bag on the train.
4. We had booked it and then we had flown and then we had arrived.
5. Nobody had told us that the timetable changes in October.
Behind, in front, underneath
Two questions.
1. Which layer does the past perfect occupy?
2. I realised that I had left my bag. Which clause is the later event?
Before next lesson. Write six sentences about your travel story: three that reach back, three that move forward. Underline the auxiliary in the three that reach back.
Next lesson we build the form properly, and find the four words that tell you the tense is needed before you have decided anything.