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Tenacious Learner Posted 15 years ago
Grammar

Narrative Tenses

Hi teachers,
It is six o'clock on a very cold winter evening. All over England people are sitting down in their living rooms and are watching the news on television or listening to it on the radio. There is one very important piece of news this evening. It is this.
"In the West of England this evening, hundreds of policemen are looking for a man who escaped from Princeville Prison early this morning. The man's name is Coke........"

My first question is: Shouldn't it be a colon after 'It is this' instead of the period?
My second one: If I want the students to write the paragraph in the past and past progressive narrative tenses, should I include what the radio says?

For Example:
It was six o'clock on a very cold winter evening. All over Englan people were sitting down ...... It was that. In the West of England that evening hundreds of policemen were looking for a man who escaped early that morning. The man's name was Coke....

Is it right just like that?

Thanks in advance
  

Top answer

Hello! Yes. There should be a colon after It is this Your transposition into the "past" for reported speech looks good.

  • Hello!
  • Yes.
  • There should be a colon after It is this Your transposition into the "past" for reported speech looks good.
  • Although with the phrase It was that there seems to be a problem.
  • 'that' here is ambiguous, it could refer to what happens next in the story, or what you just talked about in the previous sentence.
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5 Answers
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Hello!

  1. Yes. There should be a colon after It is this

  2. Your transposition into the "past" for reported speech looks good. Although with the phrase It was that there seems to be a problem. 'that' here is ambiguous, it could refer to what happens next in the story, or what you just talked about in the previous sentence. In natural English we might he
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AFEHope that helps
Sure it does! Thank you very much for your long response.Emotion: nodding

By t
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Please can any teachers help me here with what I asked?
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Mmm that question was a little difficult to understand, but I'll give it a shot.
Thinking Spain"Did they say the man's name was Coke?"
I believe this shouldn't be in quotes if it is part of the writer's voice.
Thinking Spain"I wonder how Mrs. Bentley is?" the sergeant asked.
Perfect.

If you want to make that last se
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Hi Nick,

If you type 'The man who escaped' in Google you'll have all the episodes.
If you type this link, it will happen too.
http://webpages.charter.net/euroanglo/formatos/MWE.pdf

My question is about episode 2. I know that I can't include the conversations in the episod

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