A detailed proposal of a sequence of steps to adjust a lesson from the book English File 2 to practise past simple by having learners do different activities. Done with two fellow professors Nidia Angarita and Yolanda Leguizamón in 2009.

1. MATERIALS ADAPTATION Prepared by: Nidia Angarita Yolanda Leguizamón Víctor Lugo

3. Increased anxiety due to the complexity of the activity proposed.

4. Ss’ role is mostly passive.

6. DEALING WITH THE LANGUAGE ITEM First activity: Competition (mingling activity) The teacher prepares two sets of cards with the present and the past forms of the verbs from the reading text. These verbs will be written in different colours (e.g. blue for present forms and the red for past forms) for Ss to see the difference (helps revision and visual learners) Two big groups of twenty-five  two teams: blue and red Each team receives cards corresponding to their colour and they will find their matching present/past form within their group. The first group to finish will be the winner.

7. DEALING WITH THE LANGUAGE ITEM First activity: Practice T asks Ss to tell him/her one of pairs of verbs they have just matched and for, instance, they suggest: have/had. T writes on the board: I have a car now.  I had a bicycle at school. T asks Ss what the negative form of the previous sentence is and models: T: I do not(don’t) have a car now. (Eliciting, if possible) I did not (didn’t) have a bicycle. T repeats the same procedure for a sentence with be and can, which should already have been presented and practised in class before. T leaves the sentences written on the board because they will be necessary later.

8. DEALING WITH THE LANGUAGE ITEM First activity: Follow-up T asks Ss to tell him/her one of pairs of verbs they have just matched and they suggest: have/had. T writes on the board: I have a car now.  I had a bicycle at school. T asks Ss what the negative form of the previous sentence is and models: T: I do not (don’t) have a car now. (Eliciting, if possible) I did not (didn’t) have a bicycle. T repeats the same procedure for a sentence with be and can, which should already have been presented and practised in class before. T leaves the sentences written on the board because they will be necessary later.

9. DEALING WITH THE LANGUAGE ITEM First activity: Controlled practice T prepares a worksheet with ten sentences for students to practise the language item by transforming them from affirmative to negative and question forms. The aim here is to reinforce the proper use and to set an adequate basis for the next activity to be meaningful.

10. STRIP STORY T will show Ss the next photo

11. STRIP STORY T will tell Ss they are going to read a text about this French woman, who is a 52-year-oldmodel, when she was a little girl at school. T elicits Ss’ opinions about the kind of childhood she might have had and writes some of those opinions on the board.

12. STRIP STORY T prepares four posters with the story of Inès de la Fressange leaving the blanks as indicated in the activity in the book, but with the size of the cards used for the first activity. Ss get in four groups, hands out a poster and a set of cards with the verbs in past (in affirmative or negative form as required) to each one of the groups so that they can put them in the corresponding blanks. T monitors and helps if necessary. The first group to finish will be the winner.

13. SENTENCE TRANSFORMATION Using the sentences written on the board as reference, T will ask Ss to go back to their seats and tells them that the information in the sentences in Part c of the activity is all incorrect, so they will need to transform the sentence into the negative form first and write the correction based on the information in the text. Ss are assigned some time to work individually, they check their answers with a partner and T has a final round-up to check answers as a group, orally and writing specific items which need special attention on the board.

14. PERSONALISATION Ss will write some sentences about their own experience when they started primary school. They get in pairs and tell their partners about it and, if possible, they ask for additional information (though the focus of the lesson was not on question forms).

15. PERSONALISATION: Extension The aim of the previous activity is to obtain information to make a short composition for next class describing their own and their partner’s experiences. In this way, Ss might see more clearly how the he/she forms do not change in past and use real-life information to practise the language.

16. SUMMARY OF ADAPTATIONS We added some activities: competitions and the final expansion with their personalised stories. We modifiedthe instructions completely. We expanded it: including a review of past forms and structure before the activity given. We resequenced the activity by doing the review before the reading comprehension.

17. REFERENCES Oxenden, C., Seligson, P. & Latham-Koenig C. (1997). English file 2: Student's book. Oxford: Oxford University Press.