Telling Tales

Week 28^th - 30^th

Hello!

We started the week correcting Easter homework.

·         How long has he had his car? He’s had his car for three years.

·         They’ve lived in Hollywood since 2004.

·         James used to have short hair.

·         He didn’t use to wear glasses.

·         All the singer’s clothes are made especially for her.

·         Where’s cricket played?

We listened to and read the tale about “Gluskap and the baby”

Gluskap was an Indian warrior very pleased (happy) with himself. He had fought many battles and boasted (showed off) that he had never lost. One day a woman told him there was a person, in a village, who could beat him. That person was a little baby. He was very little but he cried in such a loudly way that Gluskap felt terrified (very scared) and ran away!(escaped running)

It was a way of contrasting past simple, perfect and continuous tenses. It also served us to revise the pronunciation of the ‘-ed’ ending in regular verbs.

Remember:

DON’T PRONOUNCE “e”, ONLY AFTER “t” OR “d”

Want   wanted                land     landed                wait    waited

                   /ɪd/                                   /ɪd/                                    /ɪd/

When the verb does not end in “t” or “d”, “e” is never pronounced. Sometimes it sounds like “d”; sometimes it sounds like “t”. Don’t be lazy and try to read it in Spanish because native people won’t understand you and it sounds awful (terrible!)

 If you want to practise pronunciation, follow this link.

Pronunciation of Regular Verbs

We did a couple of pair work activities focused on questions so as to complete different pieces of information every one of us had.

‘The Tale of Two Waves’ was amazing (very surprising). A huge (very big) wave knocked Wanda’s designer sunglasses into the sea. And the following day, another huge wave brought the sunglasses back to the beach!

Kaori Sato’s biography was also interesting. She was a UN Goodwill Ambassador.

(UN stands for United Nations)

Finally, let’s revise the use of the three past tenses:

Past Simple	Actions that happened one after another.	When Carol arrived home, Mark cooked dinner. (Carol arrived, after that, Mark started cooking dinner)
Past continuous	An action in progress at some time in the past.	When Carol arrived home, Mark was cooking dinner. (Mark started before Carol arrived and continued cooking afterwards)
Past Perfect	An action that happened before another action, in the past.	When Carol arrived home, Mark had cooked dinner. (Mark finished cooking before Carol arrived)

And that was about it! We’ll continue next week!

Nice long weekend!!