Madrid Teacher: Anecdotes -walking home at night

In our Madrid Teacher series this week two teachers tell us about a scary situation when they were walking home late at night.

This gives us the opportunity to see the way they talk about past situations and the way they combine the use of the past continuous (for longer, background situations) and the past simple (shorter actions that interrupt the action in the past continuous).

Self-study activity:
Listen to the two teachers telling their anecdotes. Try to take some (telegraphic) notes of the main ideas in their anecdotes.

Listen as often as necessary until you feel you've got the grasp of what really happened to them.

Then retell the teachers' anecdotes in their own words. Make a point of using the past simple and past continuous all the time, and don't jump to the present.

Finally, can you think about a scary situation in your life? Retell the anecdote using the past continuous and past simple.

The activity is suitable for Intermediate 1 students.



So, something really strange happened to me yesterday.
OK.
I was walking home, and it was quite late, and it was a bit dark, it was like eight o’clock and it gets dark now. And I was walking through from the train station to my house and there is like this forest, a mini forest, that I had to walk through and it was a bit scary. Ah, sometimes, you know, you see shadows and you think you see people.
OK.
And I was walking through and suddenly saw the figure of this woman between the trees. And…
Scary.
Yeah, a little bit. It was like a woman in ah, she was wearing like white, white clothes it was a bit strange. I wasn’t expecting to see anyone at that time. And then she started coming towards me and but it was like she was walking, it was like she was floating or something.
OK.
And I got a bit scared. And I… anyway started running, and I was running and I fell down and then when I looked up she was standing above me. She had a really strange white face, it was like she was a ghost or something. And she just said… “Don’t come in here again.” And I just jumped up and ran home. I was just like really scared. Nothing like that had ever happened to me before. And I’ve been in that forest again, and I‘ve never seen her again.
OK.
Don’t know who she was or what she was doing… She might have been just a drunk who lived in the forest, but I don’t want to have to go through there again.
Is there any other way you can get home or?
Yeah, but it would have to be a bit longer, and I was thinking of leaving my bicycle in the train station, but I heard that if you leave your bike there people might steal it, or a friend of mine did leave his bike there and they slashed his tyres, so…
OK.
So, anything strange has happen to you before or any interesting stories?
Well, one day… similar. I was walking home. I was walking home, but… er… not through a forest. No, no. I was just walking on the sidewalk, and I was just walking and it was getting dark. It was bit earlier than in your case. It was getting dark, and suddenly yes  I saw a group of teenagers, you know, a group of teenagers.
They can be very dangerous.
Well, let’s just say it was uncomfortable to pass next to them.
Did they say anything to you?
Well, it wasn’t so much what they said… it was just you know it was a group. It was group of five or six so it was the way they looked. So, it wasn’t… yeah… they didn’t really say but they looked very strangely. So, well I had nowhere to go let’s say so, I had to go straight and they were on the right. I had just to keep walking, but you got the sensation.
Yeah, but nothing happened.
No, no again, this was just one time. I guess they were coming back from a late class or something but it was uncomfortable.
Yeah, you have to be careful walking home at night.

30 years since Lennon's death

John Lennon was shot to death by Mark David Chapman when he was on his way home after 10.30 pm on 8 December 1980.

The New York Times has created a thread where readers express their views on this event and remember what they were doing when they found out that Lennon had been killed.

Discussing what someone was doing at momentous historical times is a classic conversation topic. In the English speaking world people used to talk about John F. Kennedy's death in Dallas on 22nd November 1963, or about Apollo 11's first landing on the moon on 20th July 1969.

More recently, these events have also had great relevance:

- Franco's death on 20th November 1975.
- Tejero coup on 23rd February 1981.
- The fall of the Berlin Wall on 3rd October 1990.
- The terrorist attack on the Twin Towers on 11th September 2001.
- The announcement of Prince Philip's engagement to Leticia on 1 November 2003.
- The terrorist attack in Madrid on 11th March 2004.

Self-study activity:
Get together with an English speaking friend or relative and discuss what you were doing when you were told about any of the above-mentioned events or other momentous events you can think of.

As well as conversation practise, the activity will be good revision to practise the past simple, past continuous and past perfect. Example:

When I found out about the 11 March attack in Madrid I was driving on my way to work. I had dropped my daughter at school and was heading for work. I decided to tune in the radio to keep me company and there was this talk show on the station that came on. In the beginning I could make no sense of what they were talking about...

The past

From Kalinago English comes this presentation about how to use the past in English (past simple, past continuous, past perfect simple, past perfect continuous).

Click on the title (The Dark Past) if the slideshow doesn't load.

The Dark Past

           

Past continuous

Self-study activity:
Watch the first part of this Mr Bean video (up to minute 4'00) and answer these questions:

What was Mr Bean doing at eight o'clock yesterday?
What was Mr Bean doing at quarter past eight yesterday?
What was Mr Bean doing at half past eight yesterday?
What was Mr Bean doing at ten to nine yesterday?



In English we use the past continuous to show that an action was in progress at a specific moment in the past. Examples:

At eight o'clock yesterday Mr Bean was sleeping.
At ten to nine yesterday Mr Bean was shaving / getting ready to go to the dentist.

Sometimes, we combine the past continuous with the past simple to express an interrupted past activity:
Mr Bean was sleeping when the alarm went off.
Mr Bean was getting ready when his shaver got stuck with his nose hair.
When the phone rang, I was having a shower.
While we were playing tennis, it started to rain.

You can read a more detailed explanation of the past continuous in Englishpage.com. You can also do some online activities there.

Self-study activity: Get together with an English-speaking friend and ask each other what you were doing at specific times yesterday xample:
What were you doing at quarter past eleven yesterday?