Matakuliah
Tahun
Versi
: Writing I
: 2006-2007
:6
Pertemuan 6
Experiences
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Learning Outcomes
At the end of this session the students would be
able to:
 Write sentences about their experiences;
 Use past tenses correctly;
 Put sentences in a sequence according to the
time they happened.
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Outline Materi
• Past tenses
• Possessive Pronouns
• Narrative
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WHAT HAPPENED?
• Your friend came to your house one day.
He was soaking wet, but it wasn’t raining
outside.
• You asked him, “What happened?”
• This is his story:
– It was a beautiful morning. The sun was
shining. It wasn’t very hot, so I went out to
have lunch in the park. I sat on the grass. I
was eating my sandwich. Suddenly, there
was a spray of water from behind. I got very
wet. The gardener was watering the plants!
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Past Tenses
• In that story the person used simple past and
past continuous (past progressive)
• These are the verbs:
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
was
was shining
wasn’t (=was not)
went
sat
Was eating
got
was watering
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Past Simple
• Past Simple tense is used to describe a
completed action happened at a point in
time in the past.
• The time signal includes yesterday, this
morning, last year, two minutes ago, when
I was a child, etc.
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Past Continuous
• Past continuous is used for action that
happened in the past for a certain
period/length of time.
– e.g. I was eating my lunch at 1 pm.
(the process of eating has started and in progress at that
time)
• Usually used when another action
happened at a point in time.
– George was sleeping when I visited him.
– Clare was studying hard when the rain poured
down.
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• A story usually consists of events that happened
according to a time order. What happened first,
next, and what is the end.
• Try ordering the following events
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
I took a bath and got ready.
I woke up at 7.00 am this morning.
My lecturer told me to forget about the lecture.
I rushed to the university.
There was a traffic jam near the campus.
I came late to class.
My lecturer was not happy to see me.
The class finished 10 minutes after I arrived.
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Linking words
• You can link one sentence with another
with the words: First, then, after that, later,
next, and finally.
• You should also use subject pronouns to
replace repeated words like ‘my lecturer’.
• Rewrite the sentences now in the right
order.
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I woke up at 7.00 am this morning.
Then, I took a bath and got ready. After
that, I rushed to the university.
There was a traffic jam near the
campus. I came late to class. My lecturer
was not happy to see me. He told me to
forget about the class. Finally, the class
finished 10 minutes after I arrived
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Conclusions
• Past tenses are used to describe events
completed in the past.
• Simple past is used to describe action happened
at a certain time. Usually there is a time signal
(e.g. yesterday, last week, etc.) in the sentence.
• Past continuous is used when an action was in
progress when there was another action
happened.
• Linking words are used to connect events in a
story.
• Usually events in a story are arranged according
to a time sequence.
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