RECOUNT TEXT

Section One

Activity 1

Your teacher may ask these questions.

Discuss with a friend.

Do you tell stories to a friend?

What do people say to start a story ?

Do people sometimes write their stories?

Do you write a diary?

Do you write your experience on a post-card? Why?

Do some of you also write it for the school magazine?

Vocabulary Building

Activity 2

The words in the box are things people write on. Match the words with the questions.

1. What is a thin book that you buy each week or month?

2. What is a newspaper with a lot of photographs in it?

3. What is a story of someone’s life written by someone else?

4. What is a book that tells you about past events?

5. What is a small notebook in which you write what has happened during your day?

6. What do you call sheets of paper with words and pictures printed on them? You read this to find out about world events.

7. What is a list of words and their meanings arranged in alphabetical order?

Grammar Focus

1. The Simple Past Tense

To tell something that happened in the past you use simple past tense.

- How do you do that?

- It’s quite simple. Change the verb into the past tense form.

Verbs in the past tense often end in –ed or -d.

The verbs are called regular verbs.

Activity 3

a. Change these regular verbs from the present tense to the past tense.

Today we Yesterday we

stay

look

start

ask

bake

b. Now try these tricky ones. These are irregular verbs.

They don’t get –ed to change into the past tense.

Today he Yesterday he

goes

eats

makes

lose

Activity 4

Complete these irregular verbs. Use your dictionary to get help. Then compare your list with a partner’s.

Base Form Simple Past Tense

a. do did

b. come ____________

c. see ____________

d. wake ____________

e. feel ____________

f. ____________ drove

g. make ____________

h. ____________ wrote

i. buy ____________

j. ____________ read

k. have ____________

2. Simple past: questions and negatives

We make questions and negatives with did and didn’t.

Example:

Did you get up early yesterday? Yes, I did.

Did Tina get up early yesterday? No, she didn’t.

We didn’t watch football match last week.

They didn’t watch football match last week.

Simple Past Question

· Simple Past Negative

Activity 5

With a partner, try to ask questions and answer based on the pictures below. Do as the examples.

Examples:

1. A: Did Tina get up late yesterday?

B: Yes, she did. She got up at seven.

2. A: Did she go to school?

B: No, she didn’t. She stayed at home.

3. A: Did she have breakfast at 8:00?

B: No, she didn’t. She had breakfast at 7:30.

These pictures show what Tina did on a holiday last weekend.

a. get up at 7.00 b. have breakfast c. wash the dishes

d. wash her clothes e. watch TV f. stay at home

a. Now, take turn with a partner to tell what Tina did that holiday.

You may begin the story as the following. Don’t forget to change the verbs into the past tense form.

Activity 6

Tina’s aunt, Najwa Shihab, worked late last night.

On her way home, she was robbed. She reported the crime to the police. The police asked her questions and wrote a report.

a. Complete the police report with the past tense of the verbs. Make sure you spell the past tense correctly.

b. These statements about the police report are all wrong. Discuss with a pair to correct them. Number 1 is done for you.

Example:

Najwa left the office early last night.

Najwa didn’t leave the office early last night. She left the office late.

She went home by taxi. _____________________________________

The robbery happened near her office. _________________________

A man pulled her. __________________________________________

The thief took the purse away. ________________________________

The police caught the thief. __________________________________

Najwa cried. _______________________________________________

She walked toward a taxi. ____________________________________

The thief stopped at Sudirman Street. __________________________

The robbery happened before 10:00 p.m. _______________________

Guess what

What do zebras have?

Section Two

Activity 1

a. Tina’s father had his birthday last night. Tina told her friends about what she did with the family.

· Find out how her father celebrated his birthday.

· What did Tina eat at the restaurant?

Tina also wrote the experience in her diary.

b. Answer these questions with a partner.

· How did Tina’s father celebrate his birthday?

· What did Tina eat at the restaurant?

· What did Tina and the family do after dinner?

· How did Tina begin her story?

· What did she tell her friends about?

· Did she tell the events in the order they happened?

· In conversations, people usually use expressions like: Hi, every body, and well. Find the rest in Tina’s story.

________________ _______________ ______________

· How did Tina end her story?

· Do you like the story?

Guess what

What do you wear?

Activity 2

Tina wrote what she told in her diary.

Your teacher will read the entry for you.

But some words in the entry are missing.

Listen to your teacher and write the missing words in the blank spaces.

b. Answer these questions.

1. Is the message in Tina’s story and diary different?

2. What expressions were not used in her diary? Why?

3. What words or phrases are used to order the events?

When you write in a diary you often use past tense. This is because you usually tell what happened in the past.

4. Write the verbs in Tina’s diary here.

_____________ _____________ _____________ _____________

The verbs above are past tense. They tell us that the actions happened in the past.

Tina did these things one after another.

5. Put these in the order they happened.

____ She went home.

____ She went to a restaurant.

____ She ate some ice cream.

____ She ate a pizza and salad.

Section Three

Activity 1

Let’s create a story.

This is your basic story.

Try to add details.

The words in (brackets) should help you.

Do this in groups of four.

Example:

(Your group may come up with something like this.)

A truck driver stopped for a lunch at a small restaurant one afternoon. The driver was eating fried rice and drinking coffee when some young men from a motorcycle gang came in and started causing trouble. ….

Activity 2

Choose one of the group members to tell the class. Let him or her practice reading it aloud in the group before telling it to the class.

Section Four

Activity 1

Meet five of your friends.

Ask them where they were and what they did last weekend.

Then, fill up the table below.

Number one is done as an example.

You may use these questions to ask your friends.

· Where were you last weekend?

· What did you do? What time?

· What did you after that?

· What did you do then?

Name

Event/Where?/When?

1. Tina

Tina went to the market in the morning to buy some fruit.

Then, she bought a tabloid at a newsstand. After that she went home.

Activity 2

Then, tell your friend sitting next to you about what your five classmates did at last weekend.

Activity 3

With a friend, discuss what you can tell about what you did yesterday or last weekend. Then, take turn to tell about what you did.

Follow these:

a. Use what Tina did last Sunday as a model.

b. Tell you what you did first, what next, … and last.

c. Take turn to practice telling to your friend.

d. Tell to the class.

Activity 4

Get ready to tell to your class.

Remember that you should:

a. begin your story by telling

- when and where it happened

- who the character was/were

b. tell the happenings in order they happened

c. end your story with good ending.

You could:

Section Five

Activity 1

Discuss these questions.

Do you send a post-card to friends?

· Do you tell a friend about a trip you had?

· Do you keep a diary?

· Some people keep a diary. They write their interesting events. They want to keep them as memories.

· Do you read history books?

· Do you like reading biographies?

When we talk or write about past events, we are giving a recount. So what you write on a postcard telling a friend about your trip, for example, is a recount.

Writings in some history books, biographies, and

diaries also use recounts. It’s because they tell

about past events.

Activity 2

Discuss with your friends what other writings can be recounts? Consider your daily experience with various texts.

Vocabulary Building

Activity 3

We use adjectives to describe things. Match the words with the meaning.

big having many colours

colourful not small

scenic nearer

beautiful very good to look at

closer having beautiful views

Activity 4

We use groups of words to describe things we saw or experienced.

Examples:

big garden, colourful flowers, closer look, beautiful sceneries.

We call this group of words a noun group or noun phrase. This noun group is made up of mostly nouns and describing adjectives.

Find three more noun groups from what we have in the classroom. Examples are a good book, blue pencils, a thick dictionary, etc. Write them in the boxes below.