1.1

Activity 1

Fill in the blanks with simple past tense.

(1) Ken _______ (work) in North Point.

(2) I ________ (ask) Mr Chan some questions.

(3) We _________ (play) football in the park.

(4) The dog _________ (bark) at him.

(Arnold, W. (2005). Magic: Grammar book (p. 10). Hong Kong: Oxford University (China) Ltd.)

In this activity, students should change the verbs in the brackets to past tense forms.

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1.2

Activity 2

Listen to the following statements and decide whether each statement refers to an activity that takes place now or took place last summer in London.

Now Last summer [sentences heard by learners]

(1) □ □ People worked overtime at work.

(2) □ □ People visit London for the first time.

(3) □ □ People celebrated different festivals.

(Benati, A. G., & Lee, J. F. (2008). Grammar Acquisition and Processing Instruction: Secondary and Cumulative Effects (p. 178). Bristol; Buffalo: Multilingual Matters.)

In this activity, students are asked to listen to ten sentences containing past tense or present tense. It should be noted that time adverbials (e.g. “yesterday”, “last night”) are absent from the sentences so that students do not rely on the adverbial phrases but verb endings (e.g. -ed, -es, -s) to decide whether the activity takes place now or occurred last summer.

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