Last check, at speed
Eight frames. Match each to what it does.
What is being assessed
One question, asked of every sentence
The assessment for this unit is a single question, and it can be asked of anything you say or write today: who did the work? If a listener can answer it for every sentence — you, a trade, an authority, a thief, a storm — the unit has done its job. If any sentence leaves them with the wrong person, it has not, and the fact that the sentence was grammatical is not a defence, because that was the whole problem in Lesson 1.
Underneath that sit four things. Reach: the construction appears where it should, not once for show. Form: the thing between the auxiliary and the participle, the right infinitive after the person, and both auxiliaries where a perfect is needed. Range: you use more than one point on the ladder — a habit, an arrangement in the future, something already finished before something else, and at least one thing that simply happened to you.
And sound, which is quick to fix and audible from across a room: weak have, full-length participle, and we’d had it done rather than a laboured pair of stressed auxiliaries.
What is not being assessed is how impressive the arrangement was. A dentist appointment described accurately scores better than a house renovation described as a chain of and then.
Three questions.
1. What is the single overarching test?
2. Is “but the sentence was grammatical” a defence?
3. What counts as range?
The whole unit on one card
Everything from Unit 30, in the order you will need it
| Move | Frame | Watch for |
|---|---|---|
| Arrange | We had the flat rewired. We are having the kitchen done in March. | The thing goes between the auxiliary and the participle. Always. |
| Arrange, with effort | We got it rewired in the end. I got the landlord to answer. | get carries the chasing. With a person named, it takes to. |
| Name the person | We had the surveyor check the roof. | Bare infinitive after have, make, let. Name somebody only when the identity does work. |
| Stack a perfect | By June we had had everything done. We have had it serviced twice. | Two auxiliaries. It looks like an error and is not. Contract the first when speaking. |
| Report a misfortune | She had her bag stolen. We had two windows broken in the storm. | Same grammar, nobody hired. Word order alone decides who the victim is. |
| Ask the question | Did I do this, or did I pay somebody? | At the moment of the verb, not afterwards. This is the only one that needs a habit. |
Four questions. Fast.
1. We are having ___ next month.
2. We got the agency ___ the contract.
3. By the time we exchanged, we ___ everything checked.
4. Your car was towed away by the council. Which is right?
The unit task
How the thirty minutes run. Six alone to prepare, sixteen in threes for the assessed description, eight to finish the written piece and record ninety seconds. Two portfolio pieces come out of this hour: the 320-word piece from Lesson 7, finished, and a recorded spoken description.
Stage 1 · Alone · 6 minutes · Prepare
One arrangement, told to somebody who has never heard it: a renovation, a move, a visa, a course of treatment, a car, a legal process, a business you set up, a service you now pay for and used to do yourself.
Six lines, and line six is the one that is easiest to leave out.
- 1 · The span and the surprise — how long, and what people assume wrongly about why.
- 2 · Four events, each with the person who did it, in the order they happened.
- 3 · One thing that happened inside another. Mark the overlap.
- 4 · One thing that simply happened to you, that nobody arranged.
- 5 · One thing that was already finished before something else started — we had had…
- 6 · The comparison at the end, and what you would have done differently.
Stage 2 · Threes · 16 minutes · The assessed description
Four minutes each to describe, and a minute each for the two listeners to do their jobs.
Speaker describes. Listener A asks the question. Listener B listens for the sound.
- Speaker (4 min): tell it, no notes in your hand after the first thirty seconds.
- Listener A: after every few sentences, silently answer who did the work? Mark any sentence where the answer came out as the speaker holding tools.
- Listener B: mark three things — a stressed have, a clipped participle, and any had had that came out laboured or was missing entirely.
- One minute of feedback each: A reads back the sentences that put the speaker in the wrong role. B says the three words to re-say aloud, with the stress.
Stage 3 · Pairs · 8 minutes · Piece and recording
The 320-word piece goes into the portfolio in this stage, and so does ninety seconds of you speaking.
Four minutes on the piece, four on the recording.
- Read your partner’s piece with one question in your hand and mark every sentence that fails it. Write the count at the top; it is the most useful mark on the page.
- Check the two auxiliaries. Any perfect sitting on an arrangement needs both, and this is where they go missing in writing.
- Record ninety seconds: the span, three events with the people named, and the comparison at the end.
- Play it back once and listen only for the auxiliary. If had is stressed, record it again — that single re-take does more than another written draft.
Where the unit landed
Four questions.
1. Could Listener A answer who did the work? for every sentence?
2. How many points on the ladder did you actually use?
3. What did Listener B hear?
4. Compared with Lesson 1, what has changed?
Worth two minutes in your three. Go back to the number each of you wrote at the top of the page in Lesson 1 — how many of your ten first versions had you doing work you did not do. Say today’s number next to it. The gap between those two figures is the only measurement this unit has, and it is a better one than any mark, because you produced both ends of it yourselves.
What you can do now
Three questions. Thirty seconds.
1. What does the causative actually encode?
2. How do you tell a causative from something that only looks like one?
3. What is the habit you leave this unit with?
Next unit — Imagining Otherwise. This unit was about what actually happened and who it happened to. The next one is about what did not: I wish I had had it checked, if only we had got somebody in sooner, I wish they would answer. Three different times, three different forms, and Portuguese blurs all three into one — which is why the regret you mean and the regret you say are so often about different moments.