Grammar ~20 min of the core left

Tell a life story

After this lesson you can

I can tell the story of a person's life — my own or someone else's — with dates.

Start the lesson Core 18–20 min · steps: 6 · optional: +2

Declared core time. Two of the core blocks carry no figure at all, so the real lesson is longer than this sum.

Grammar

4 min

A life story is told in the Past Simple: all the events are finished and tied to a time.

He was born in 1965 in a small town.
He studied medicine and became a doctor.
In 1990 he moved to London, where he worked for ten years.
He died in 2018.

The perfect appears in a life story only for a person who is alive — where there is a link with now:

She has written four books. She is alive and can write more.
He wrote four books. He has died; the number is final.

Years are read in pairs, but there are exceptions:

1965 nineteen sixty-five
1995 nineteen ninety-five
2000 two thousand
2005 two thousand and five
2015 twenty fifteen (or two thousand and fifteen)

Words for the order of events: at the age of, two years later, after that, from 1990 to 2000, until, during.

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Common learner errors

written for your language
1

A year read as one big number

✗ one thousand nine hundred and sixty-five

✓ nineteen sixty-five

Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese read a year as a normal number (mil novecientos sesenta y cinco); English uses two pairs, 19 and 65.

2

The perfect with a date

✗ He has moved to London in 1990

✓ He moved to London in 1990

German, French and Italian use the "have" form here; in English a named time means the Past Simple (lesson 20).

3

in with a year, on with a date

✗ He was born 1938, ✗ in the third of May → ✓ in 1938, ✓ on the third of May 1990. German and Dutch put a year with no preposition (1938 geboren); Portuguese uses one word for both (em 1938, em 3 de maio).

4

Age with have or with

✗ when he had fifteen years

✗ with fifteen

✓ at the age of fifteen

Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese "have" years (tenía quince años); German and Dutch say "with fifteen" (mit fünfzehn). In English you are fifteen.

Pronunciation

3 min

Years are said in one go, in two stressed groups: nineteen sixty-five. A pause between the pairs breaks the number.

2000 — two thousand, 2015 — twenty fifteen. From 2010 on both forms are correct, but in speech the short one is more common.

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Text

3 min

My grandfather was born in 1938 in a small town near the sea. He left school at the age of fifteen and started working in a factory. In 1962 he moved to Rio de Janeiro, where he met my grandmother. They got married two years later and had three children. He worked as an engineer until 1998. He died in 2011.

Reading aloud

Exercises

8–10 min

1. Read the years.

1965, 1995, 2000, 2008, 2015

Show the answers
nineteen sixty-five; nineteen ninety-five; two thousand; two thousand and eight; twenty fifteen / two thousand and fifteen.

2. Gap fill.

  1. He (move) to London in 1990
  2. She (write) four books — she is writing a fifth one
  3. He (die) in 2011
Show the answers
moved, has written, died.

3. Gap fill.

  1. 1990
  2. the age of fifteen
  3. 1990 2000
  4. He worked there 1998
Show the answers
in, at, from … to, until.

4. Order of events.

Put in order: got married, was born, died, left school, moved to Rio de Janeiro.

Show the answers
was born → left school → moved to Rio de Janeiro → got married → died.
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Summary

Covered

  • a life story in the Past Simple
  • the perfect for a person who is alive
  • reading years
  • words for the order of events

Next — lesson 35: writing a letter.

End of the core

The lesson counts as done once the exercises are done. Everything after this is optional.

Lesson 71

optional

Vocabulary for your deck

13 words
  • retire /rɪˈtaɪə/ to stop working because you are old
  • die /daɪ/ to stop living
  • grow up /ɡrəʊ ˈʌp/ to become an adult (I grew up in a small town)
  • get married /ɡet ˈmærid/ to become husband and wife
  • graduate /ˈɡrædʒueɪt/ to finish university
  • become /bɪˈkʌm/ to start to be (become a doctor)
  • became /bɪˈkeɪm/ past of become
  • leave school /liːv ˈskuːl/ to finish school
  • at the age of /ət ði ˈeɪdʒ əv/ when someone was (at the age of fifteen)
  • later /ˈleɪtə/ after now; at a time after this
  • until /ənˈtɪl/ up to a time (until six)
  • during /ˈdjʊərɪŋ/ all through a time; at some point in it (during the lesson)
  • medicine /ˈmedsn/ the science of treating illness; what doctors study

Writing

Six sentences — the life story of someone in your family, with four dates.

Example

My grandfather was born in 1938. He left school at the age of fifteen. In 1962 he moved to Rio de Janeiro, where he met my grandmother. They got married two years later. He worked as an engineer until 1998. In 2005 they bought a house near the sea.

Checklist

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Practise this lesson in the other sections

Dictationbased on this lesson Write down what you hear. The check shows every word that differs, and how. Write the dictation Reading aloudbased on this lesson Read the lesson text aloud — speech recognition highlights the words it did not catch. Read the text aloud Reading and listeningA1–C1 Texts at every level with comprehension questions; the transcript opens after you answer. Try it

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