Day- 7

Language focus

Time and Tense

The Three Times

1. The past time: The time gone
2. The present time: The time now
3. The Future time: The time to come

The two tense forms of the verb

• ❦   The English verb has just two tense forms: the present tense form and the past tense form
• ❦   How do we express the three times using the two tense forms of the verb?

►    The past tense form of the verb is used to express the past time.

Example

• I visited my grandpa yesterday.
• We played a match last evening.
• My sister left for Tokyo an hour ago.
• Our students attended an interview last Sunday.

►     The present tense form of the verb has two functions:

          (i) The present tense form of the verb is used to express the present time:

Example

• I am an English teacher.
• We are in Mexico.
• Prof. Ruth teaches Hindi.
• These children go to Evergreen International School.

          (ii)  The present tense form of the verb is used to express the future time, too.

Example

• I get back to you after an hour.
• We leave here for Japan tomorrow.
• Our school teachers meet the parents coming Saturday.
• Of course we’ll have a nice leisurely lunch on your birthday
.

Four ways of expressing each time

1. The Simple: present simple, simple past, simple future.
2. The Continuous/ Progressive: present continuous, past continuous, future continuous.
3. The Perfect: present perfect, past perfect, future perfect.
4. The Perfect Continuous: present perfect continuous, past perfect continuous, future perfect continuous.

The Present Time

Please listen to the presentation and read it aloud four times as you have heard.

The present time can be expressed in four different ways:

• ❦   By using the present simple
• ❦   By using the present continuous/progressive
• ❦   By using the present perfect
• ❦   By using the present perfect continuous

The Present Simple

The present simple form of the verb is used to talk about ourselves, our family, friends, neighbours, job, weather, our habits, permanent truths…

Example

Singular	Talking about ourselves Plural
I am a student.	we are students.
I am healthy and smart.	We are comfortable here.
I am six feet tall.	My parents are of middle height.
I enjoy travelling with friends.	My friends love eating with me.
Reading is my favorite part of life.	We love to meet people of different cultures.

Our Family

This is my father. His name is Fog. He is fifty-five. He is a journalist and a travel writer. He travels around the world, meets people of different cultures and shares his experience in the social media. His little articles which appear in the social media are very much appreciated by the global community.

This is my mother. Her name’s Isabel. She is fifty two. She is a software engineer. She has a talent for painting. So she paints pictures during her spare time and gifts them to friends and neighbors. Everybody admires her paintings and adorn the walls of their homes with her paintings.

These are my grandparents. They are retired teachers. They are good at story telling. So we listen to their stories before going to bed every night. Believe me, sometimes we fall asleep while the stories are still in progress but that doesn’t stop their narration.

This is my brother Ajar. He is a college student. He attends National Institute of Biological Sciences in II M.Sc. microbiology. He wants to be a scientist. And this is my sister Natalya. She is a school girl. She is doing her grade xii at Evergreen International School. She is a voracious reader. She wants to be a short story writer.

Talking about weather

1. What is the weather like in your country?
2. How is the weather out there?
3. Is it very hot?
4. Is it foul?
5. We have a fine weather.
6. The weather is fine.
7. It is sunny and warm out there.
8. It is very cold and cloudy.

Talking about habits

One of the powerful forces, if not the most powerful, controlling our life is our habit. Do you agree with me? I hope so. From getting up in the morning to going to bed at night ninety percent of the things we do are habitual.

1. I am an early riser. So I always get up at 4.30 a.m.
2. We are vegetarians. We eat plenty of fruits and vegetables.
3. Some of our villagers smoke after every meal. Smoking is a bad habit.
4. My first food is a banana and a glass of warm water.
5. Our children brush twice a day.
6. Our ministers are never punctual.
7. Do you smoke? I hope you don’t.
8. Smart children do their home work in time.
9. Successful people generally plan their time and work their plans. It’s a good habit.

►    Are you the laziest creature in the world? If you think so, you may be wrong.

►    The koala is lazier than you are. It sleeps eighteen to twenty two hours a day.

The opossum is another lazy animal and very easy-going, too. They sleep for eighteen to twenty hours a day.

Let’s talk about our Job

1. What do you do?

I am a teacher. I’m an excellent teacher and I want to be more excellent everyday because teaching is the most essential profession, the one that makes every other profession possible. In my opinion, as long as teaching is excellent every service, including teaching itself, will be excellent and all of us will feel life is good. V.S. Ryan

2. Hello! My name is Alison. I am a home maker. My main job is to take care of my husband, children and home. I cook for the family, do the dishes, wash clothes, clean the house and help my children with their home work. At weekends I go shopping to buy provisions for the family.

3. Q: Hello friends, what do you do for a living?

A: We are news reporters. As news reporters we visit important places, meet people, interview them, investigate news worthy events, write news stories and get them published. Our duties include collecting information about the problems of the society and serving as a liaison between various departments of the government and the community. Kumara and Sushi. News reporters

4. With our farmer Chino Sami

Q: Would you please introduce yourself?

A: Of course, with pleasure. I’m Chino Sami. I’m a fourth generation farmer. Our main crops include paddy, banana and green vegetables.

Q: How successful are you in your service?

A: Rightly said it’s just a service. We have ten acres of land. My wife and I go to the farm every morning and work till noon. We have two farm assistants. They live in our farm house and take care of the farm. We generate some income to live by and educate our children. We live happily in perfect harmony with our neighbors.

Q: That’s fantastic. Would your children take to farming?

A: Um! They’d never. I have two sons and a daughter. They may leave the village and settle in cities or may even leave the country.

Q: Why, sir?

A: In our country farmers cannot survive. The government is very much against the farmers and agriculture. We have lost almost all our water bodies. How could any farmer survive in a country like this?

Q: Would our people learn lessons and vote people friendly leaders to power in the ensuing election?

A: We hope so.

My neighborhood

Hello, friends! Good morning everybody. It’s indeed my greatest pleasure describing my neighborhood. I live in the neighborhood of Evergreen village. Evergreen is a farming village. We have gorgeous mountains and luxuriant vegetation around our village and so it is beautiful.

Our village is located between Chennai and Bangalore on the Chennai Bangalore Highway. It’s around forty kilometers to the West of Chennai and there are posh restaurants on both sides of the highway. So tourists from both cities visit our village almost every day.

There are two higher secondary schools, a C.B.S.E. School, four primary schools, two play schools, an athletic complex and a primary health center in our village.

Our parents highly value education. So, all the children go to school. Our villagers are hard workers. Many of our men work in the gulf countries. Some few work in Europe, U.S.A. Australia, Japan and Africa.

We have a village parliament with neighborhood leaders who take care of Education, agriculture, water management, community welfare, sports, entertainment and all essential services. So life is very pleasant and people love everybody and live in perfect harmony. Thank you.

Description of weather

Activity

What's the weather like in your neighborhood today? Please describe the weather in your neighborhood. You are welcome to borrow sentences from the sentence bank.

Our English Sentence Bank

• ❦   We have a fine weather today. It’s neither cold nor hot. It’s pleasant.
• ❦   The weather is nice today. The weather is good today.
• ❦   The weather is awful today.
• ❦   We have a nice weather, haven’t we?
• ❦    It's a nice day, isn't it?
• ❦   A terrible weather, isn't it?
• ❦   It's warm today.
• ❦   It's very hot today.
• ❦   We have a foul weather. It's cold today. It is cold and stormy.
• ❦   It's getting colder every minute.
• ❦   It's humid. It's hot and humid here.
• ❦   It's cloudy, but there's no rain. Maybe it will rain at night.
• ❦   It looks like rain. It's going to rain. It's supposed to get warmer in the afternoon.
• ❦   It's raining. It’s drizzling. It’s pouring in torrents.
• ❦   It's snowing. It's snowing hard.
• ❦   I have to grab the umbrella and go out.
• ❦   It’s sunny. So I simply enjoy the fine weather.
• ❦   Look! How our kids enjoy the fine weather!
• ❦   Foul weather threatens.
• ❦   Lovely weather brings out butterflies.
• ❦   The weather is awful. We can’t go out.
• ❦   What a dramatic change in the weather today! Warm and sunny! Come let’s walk around the village.

Activity: Complete the following dialogues writing one word for each blank. Please feel free to borrow words from the word list and make sure you use them in their correct form.

List of verbs: be, see, meet, good, wonderful, nice, talk to, leave, go, convey, have, thank, speak, think, can, teach, remember, listen, make, repeat, hear, follow, learn, remember, communicate

1. Meeting, greeting and parting
A: Hello. How ----- you?
B: Very well thanks. How about you?
A: I---- fine. Nice to ----you again
B: Good to ----- you again. How…. everybody at home?
A: Good. ------ my warm greetings to your family
B: ----- you for the greetings. It’s getting late. I ---- a meeting at 5 o’clock so I have to----- now
A: I….sorry you have to -----. When shall we ----- again?
B: Shall we ---- over the week end?
A: Of course we shall. Till then good bye
B: Thank you for the good time. Bye

2. Learning English
A: ---- you ------English fluently?
B: No, not very fluently. ---- English easy to learn?
A: Of course, it---- very easy really.
B: But I ----- ----- so.
A: The difficulty-----not in the language. It ----in the method of teaching it.
B: Really! ----you----- me English?
A: With pleasure. ----you ----- your mother tongue fluently?
B: Yes I do ----- my mother tongue fluently and accurately.
A: Good. How ------ Children generally ----- to -------their mother tongue?
B: Well, by listening and speaking. The moment children are born their mom, dad, grandpa, grandma…everybody starts saying something in the mother tongue. Children just ----- to them with interest and ----- an attempt to ----- whatever they ----.
A: Fine. That --- basically the right approach to learning a language. What skills do children------first?
B: Listening and speaking.
A: Exactly. And what skills do they learn at school?
B: Reading and writing.
A: Wow! You ---- right. That exactly ---- the natural process of learning a language: listening, speaking, reading and writing. And so we ------ this process in our INCIDE Academy. No wonder, our students ------ faster, ------ words, phrases and sentences longer and ------- their thoughts and feelings and knowledge and ideas effectively with reasonable fluency and accuracy.
B: Thank you, sir. I ----- the confidence I can learn to speak English fluently by listening to English and speaking it. Bye.
A: Wish you well. Have a great day.

Module-1

Immersion- 7

My Past: The Person I was

I started school at Evergreen Play school when I was just three. I moved to St. Antony’s Primary School at five and passed my grade five from the same school. I went to St. Antony’s Hr. Sec. School at 10 and passed my Higher Secondary course in 1995. I attended Thirunelveli College of Engineering and passed my Bachelor of engineering degree course in computer science in 1999.

While I was doing my final year, I applied for job in several companies. I attended half a dozen interviews and finally found a job as sales executive in a reputed company. My monthly salary was Rs. 38, 000 and this was quite a good salary for Chennai. I needed this money for my family’s survival in Chennai. So I continued to work for the company.

My Present: The Person I am

I am able to work up to my company’s expectations and beyond and so I have been promoted to Marketing Manager and subsequently my salary has been increased to Rs. 85, 000 a month. I am comfortable with my career, but I have a dream, which is to start a school in one of our villages and serve the cause of education.

I know it is extremely expensive and I'll have to save up for years. However, this is fine with me. The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. And I am one. I know while it is important to dream, the actualization of our dreams is more significant. For that to happen it is essential that we plan our time and work our plan envisioning a happier future for the society we live in.

My Future: The kind of Person I want to be

I have a dream. I want to go to our villages, organize our neighbors into neighborhood communities and open Neighborhood Community Schools in partnership with the members of the community and serve the interests of people particularly education and employment.

J. Vensuslaus

Profile of J. Vensuslaus

J. Vensuslaus, now in his mid-60’s, is an Office Administrator with over thirty five years of experience. At the outset, he served for a couple of years as an understudy at small commercial offices in Mumbai to become familiar with business routines and office administration. He then started off with Steel Authority of India Limited, a Government of India Enterprise, in early 1970’s as an Administration Executive and worked there more than a decade. In this capacity, he was involved with a gamut of commercial and administrative activities. He also functioned as a reporter, attending meetings, preparing and disseminating minutes of such meetings. He was also engaged in the preparation of a slew of management reports.

In the early 1980’s, Vensuslaus moved on to the Middle East to take up a similar assignment with a multinational company where he came in touch with a multiracial, multicultural workforce. His background enabled him to discharge his duties to the entire satisfaction of the management and make contribution to the success of the company. As Administration Officer, among various other things, he had to write a lot on various issues to keep the communication going.

In the year 2000, Vensuslaus moved over to Kuwait to work for an educational training and informational technology consulting company called New Frontiers. His vast experience in administration and his effective writing skills are put to full use. He interacts and coordinates with scores of professors located in different countries, educationists, government officials and professional colleagues. He continues working for this company.

J. Vensuslaus holds a B.A. (Hons) Degree in Economics from the University of Bombay. He did his schooling at the St. Antony’s School, Azhagappapuram.

He has got a (Maharashtra) government diploma in higher proficiency English Shorthand.

He has been awarded diploma in computer: Microsoft Office. While in the Middle East, he has attended week-long Effective Writing Workshops conducted by the English Language consultants from the U.S.A.

He extensively writes opinions, comments, anecdotes and stories on Face Book, mostly in English.

J. Vensuslaus is married and has two sons, who are currently working in the U.S.A. as software engineers.

Up next

Day-8

Language Focus

The Present Continuous

Module- 8

A change for the better