Activity 2.3 Using the past tenses 10 minutes
1. In the following passage, former President Nelson Mandela writes how, as an
older man, he visited the village in which he had grown up. He writes in the
past tense and refers to a time further back in the past. In your workbook,
write down the number and the correct tense of each verb in brackets. The
context should help you to decide which tense to use.
In seeing my village again after so many years, I was greatly struck by what
a) (change) and what had not ... What had endured was the warmth and
simplicity of the community, which b) (take) me back to my days as a boy.
But what c) (disturb) me was that the villagers d) (seem) as poor if not poorer
than they e) (be) then. Most people still f) (live) in simple huts with dirt floors,
with no electricity and no running water. When I was young, the village
was tidy, the water pure and the grass green and unsullied as far as the eye
could
see...
... But now the village g) (be) unswept, the water polluted and
the countryside littered with plastic bags and wrappers. We h) (not know) of
plastic when I was a boy, and though it surely improved life in some ways, its
presence in the village i) (appear) to me to be a kind of blight. Pride in the
communityj) (seem) to have vanished.