Ex.61 Comment on the use of the Past Continuous or Simple Past tenses in the following sentences

Looking at Structures

A Day in the Life of a Traditional Housewife

She arose early, before dawn, in order to fix breakfast and to wake her family. She nudged, prodded, and yelled until everyone was finally out of bed. While everyone else was showering, shaving, and dressing, she was frying eggs, making coffee, and preparing sack lunches. One by one, the family members came down to the kitchen. When each person sat down, she served breakfast. She hustled and bustled, making sure that everyone was awake to face the day. After everyone had gone, she began her day's work. During the day, she mopped, swept, did dishes, vacuumed, mended clothes, washed, ironed, scrubbed....

And today's mother? She does everything that mothers used to do and more. Over one-half of mothers in the United States today maintain their homes while also managing to hold down eight-hour-per- day, forty-hour-per-week jobs.

1. What tenses appear in this passage? In which lines do the tenses shift? Were the actions in the third sentence happening at the same time or one after the other? In the fifth sentence?

2. Note the use of the construction used to in Line 11. From the meaning of the sentence, can you explain why the author chose this structure?

1. Life was changing very quickly during the second half of the ninetieth century.

2. I was listening to the radio when the sensational news suddenly came on.

3. They weren’t sleeping at the time of the earthquake, fortunately.

4. What was happening in the world when you were born?

5. Dr. Johnson was very busy at the hospital yesterday, she was delivering babies all day long.

6. How many people were sitting in the theatre when the fire started?

7. It was bright sunlight in the room when I woke.

8. He turned to him and said that the office smelt like a stagedressing- room.

9. During the study period in class yesterday, it was hard for me to concentrate because the student next to me was humming.

10. When Joan was a child she used to be very nervous, she was always biting her fingernails.

11. She said that she didn’t want to stay there any longer and that she was leaving the country in a week.

12. I looked at my watch, it read five minutes to eleven.

13. He saw that one of the students was having difficulty with the homework.

14. Philip made no haste to move from where he sat.

15. Then he noticed Jack. He was standing in front of the fire and was talking Italian to a man in glasses.

16. She stopped beside Tommy who was in a particularly scornful mood. He was leaving in the morning.

17. His steps slowed down as he mounted the stairs.

18. She left the house and went along a sandy path leading to the vegetable garden. Soon she saw that someone was moving among the tomato plants.

Дата добавления: 2014-10-31