Last check, at speed
One to four words per gap. Do not check your notes. Whatever stalls is what you watch for in ten minutes’ time.
The samples every morning and the same day. Anything that fails again tomorrow. The results already, so nothing more until Monday. The report next week, and staff by email.
What is being assessed
Three parts. Four minutes explaining a process to somebody who may stop you, three minutes of their questions, and the written description with a short reflection.
The criteria are below, and they are the criteria.
Six criteria. Match each to what it looks like when somebody is doing it.
The whole unit on one card
Hold these three
| Hold this | Because |
|---|---|
| Choose the subject first | The passive is a decision about what the sentence is about. The verb form follows from it; it is not a transformation of anything. |
| The news test | Write by only if you could add "and that is the interesting part". Most passives in English have no agent at all. |
| The two unstressed words | It’ll be checked. It’s been sent. Both are inaudible, and both are what goes missing. |
Fast. No discussion.
1. Which is correct?
2. Which by-phrase survives the news test?
3. Which cannot be made passive?
4. They gave me a reference number. Which passive?
The unit task
How the thirty minutes run. Two to set up, then rounds of seven: four minutes explaining, three minutes of questions. Pairs work in parallel and swap. Four minutes at the end for the written reflection.
Part 1 · Spoken process · 4 minutes · No notes
Explain your process to somebody who has read your written description and is allowed to stop you.
Four minutes, five moves, one subject held as long as the process allows.
- Open by denying the obvious assumption and giving the real mechanism.
- Take the stages in order, and signal it whenever the subject has to change.
- Name the bottleneck. Say first what people wrongly think it is.
- Finish with what the process explains about something the listener already experiences.
Part 2 · Questions · 3 minutes · You do not choose these
Your listener now asks three questions. Two are fixed; the third is theirs.
Three minutes. Answer what was asked, including the one you cannot fully answer.
- Question 1 — who actually does that stage, and does it matter? Answer both halves.
- Question 2 — what happens when it goes wrong at that point?
- Question 3 — the listener’s own: the stage you moved past quickly, or the thing that did not add up.
- If you do not know, say so and say what you would need to find out. Do not invent an agent to fill the gap.
Part 3 · Written · 4 minutes at the end
Hand in the 250-word description from Lesson 7 with a short reflection underneath.
Sixty words. Three sentences will do.
- What was your subject count, and what would you change to lower it?
- How many by-phrases did you write, and how many survived the news test?
- Which process that you rely on every week do you still not understand? Name one.
Where the unit landed
Self-assessment · tick honestly, this is not collected
| Not yet | Getting there | Yes | |
|---|---|---|---|
| I can hold one subject across several sentences | |||
| I form the passive correctly across present, past and future | |||
| I do not lose be after a modal or been in the perfect | |||
| I write a by-phrase only when the agent is news | |||
| I can name a bottleneck, and deny the wrong guess first | |||
| I can tell an ordinary agentless passive from an evasive one |
Three questions. Answer for yourself.
1. Under questioning, what went missing first?
2. How many of your by-phrases would you now cut?
3. What is the passive actually for?
What you can do now
Since Lesson 1 you have added: the passive across ten forms, with one participle and a moving be; the two unstressed words that go missing and how they sound; five good reasons to leave an agent out and the two-question test for the one bad one; the news test for writing by; the sequencing language a process description runs on; and the habit of naming the bottleneck with the wrong guess denied first.
And one thing that is not grammar: the ability to tell an ordinary agentless sentence from one that has been built so a question cannot be asked.
Two questions. Twenty seconds.
1. What decides whether you use the passive?
2. When is an agentless passive a problem?
Next unit — Places That Shape Us. You have spent eight lessons describing how things are done. Next you describe where — and meet the smallest words in English doing the largest amount of quiet work: a, the, and nothing at all. I grew up in the north, I went to school in a village, she is at university, he is at the university. Four small words, four different claims.