Talking about past eventsExchange past personal information,

anecdotes, biographies.

• 1) action finished in the past• I visited Berlin last week.• 2) series of completed actions in the past• First I got up, then I had breakfast

Simple Past Time expressions

• Yesterday• last week, year, month etc.• a month ago• in 2002

Read the following story.

• Yesterday Mrs. Hubbard had a very rough day.

• In the morning, she went to the kitchen and looked in the cupboard for some food for her dog, but the cupboard was empty.

• Her poor dog stared up at her with its hungry eyes, and she knew she had to do something quickly.

• She hurried to the grocery store to buy some dog food, but unfortunately the store was out of her dog's favorite brand, so she had to catch a bus downtown..

• After buying the food, she waited for a half hour in the rain to get a taxi. When she finally got home, her dog was sound asleep on the living room sofa.

Sentence connectors

• First• First of all• Then• Next• After that• Besides• Moreover• Furthermore• However• Finally

Time expressions

• Yesterday• A year ago• Last week/Monday• The other day• Yesterday morning…

When you narrate events use:

• Past simple:

• When I saw the strange creature, I screamed.

• Sally was scared so she got up and ran away

Time linkers

• When• While• As

• As soon as• Before• After that• During• Later• Soon

• At the beggining• Finally

Expressions or phrases like:

• Once upon a time, • All of a sudden/ suddenly,• (un) fortunately,• To my surprise,• (un) luckily• I couldn´t believe my eyes• However,• Besides,

References

• H.Q, Mitchell, (2010) On track 3 student´s book. MM Publications