Last check, at speed
Eight gaps. Five seconds each. Verb, pattern or tense.
The operator that no data had been lost. It later that the system had been offline for eleven hours. A union the company cutting overnight staff, and criticised it responding slowly. The company to publish a full account, and for the disruption. The service running normally today.
What is being assessed
Three parts. Five minutes presenting a story to a desk, three minutes of their questions, and the written 320 words 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 |
|---|---|
| The verb is a position | said · claimed · admitted · alleged · conceded — each one tells the reader what you think before you have said it. |
| The pattern comes with the verb | accuse sb of doing, blame sb for doing, deny doing, apologise for doing, urge sb to do. Not derivable; stored. |
| Backshift is a choice | Modals that are already past forms cannot move. Live facts need not. Shifting everything applies a uniform distance you did not choose. |
Four items. Rewrite using the word given.
"You cut the overnight staff," the union told the company. ACCUSED
"We will publish a full account," the company said. PROMISED
"You must submit it by Friday," they told us last year. HAD
"Did you see the report?" she asked me. WHETHER
The unit task
How the thirty minutes run. Two to set up, then rounds of eight: five minutes presenting, three of questions. Threes work in parallel and rotate. Four minutes at the end for the written reflection.
Part 1 · Spoken presentation · 5 minutes · No notes
Present your story to a desk that has read your written piece.
Five minutes, five moves, every claim attributed.
- What was announced or published, by whom, and when.
- What was found, in the source’s own terms — not in the headline’s.
- The exchange, attributed on both sides, with the verbs chosen.
- Your own question, marked as yours, and aimed at method.
Part 2 · Questions · 3 minutes · You do not choose these
The desk asks three questions.
Three minutes. Answer what was asked, including the one you cannot answer.
- Question 1 — who says that? on the claim you stated most confidently.
- Question 2 — why that verb? on the reporting verb that leaned most.
- Question 3 — the desk’s own: the claim that did not have a source, or the number that was a projection.
- Where you do not know, say so. An invented source is the only unrecoverable answer here.
Part 3 · Written · 4 minutes at the end
Hand in the 320-word piece with a short reflection underneath.
Sixty words. Three sentences will do.
- Which reporting verb did you have to defend, and did the defence hold?
- Which claim in your own piece turned out to have no source?
- What did you backshift that was still true — and what did that do to it?
Where the unit landed
Self-assessment · tick honestly, this is not collected
| Not yet | Getting there | Yes | |
|---|---|---|---|
| I attribute claims rather than stating them | |||
| I choose reporting verbs, and can defend each choice | |||
| I get the pattern right — accused of, blamed for, denied doing | |||
| I shift modals correctly, and know which cannot shift | |||
| I leave live facts unshifted when I mean them to stand | |||
| I aim a critique at method rather than at agreement |
Three questions. Answer for yourself.
1. Under questioning, which verb was hardest to defend?
2. What happened to your claims when you presented somebody else’s story in Lesson 5?
3. Why is a summary made entirely of said not neutral?
What you can do now
Since Lesson 1 you have added: a working range of reporting verbs and what each one claims before you have; the six patterns they demand, stored with the verbs rather than derived; the modal shifts and the modals that cannot shift; backshift as a choice about whether a claim is still live; the news conventions — declined to comment, it is understood, has not been independently verified; and a critique aimed at method.
And one idea that is not grammar: there is no neutral setting. There is only a default, and a default has effects you did not choose.
Two questions. Twenty seconds.
1. What does admitted assert?
2. Which modals cannot backshift?
Next unit — Mobility and Migration. You have spent eight lessons on carrying other people’s claims. Next: holding several positions in one argument without losing the reader — discourse markers and cohesion, which are what make a long stretch of English one thing rather than a sequence of sentences.