WRITING EVENTS IN THE PAST

Objectives

DESCRIPTION: Composing oral and written texts to state and ask about an action/event that is happened or done in the past by referring to the past times and times after and considering the right and suitable social functions, structure of text, and language unsure.

LESSON

Key Points

Writing events in the past is actually an easy thing to do if you know how to do it well and simply. Just keep in mind that it isn’t different from telling a common story yet the story is non-fictive and based on what really happened on you or others persons that you know. Based on this, there are many components you must mention directly or indirectly in writing events in the past. Here are they: 
• Setting of events or time and place when and where the event takes place 
• Characters. It can be you or and other persons you know
• Plot or chronological order either progressive or flashback
• Point of view, either to use first person (I or we) or third person (He/she/it/they)

Take a look at the examples below:

That was a crowded day when I went to school by bus. I went alone because all my friends already had their buses and I woke up lately. As usual, I was sleepy during the trip but I kept my eyes open to avoid any bad thing happened. However, after paying the bill of the bus, someone touched my shoulder and I felt like so sleepy that I closed my eyes. Later on, when I woke up, I was the only one passenger of the buss and the driver awakens me after the bus arrived at the bus station far away from my school, I got to know that my pocket, hand phone and even my school bag were stolen.

The above description contains minimum requirements of a past even telling. It has setting of time and place, i.e. on the bus in the morning before school hours. It also has character which is a single character, uses progressive order and first person point of view. Another thing you can notice is the usage of simple past tense. All sentences above use simple paste tense because they describe any event in the past.

If you are in a condition to tell and describe any story or event in the past, make sure you mention at least those four components. Make your tenses consistent and firmly showing that the event happened in the past. If you want to show any condition of the present as a result of the past event, for example, don’t forget to change your tenses or mention the time signal so the interlocutor or listener wouldn’t get loss and confused. Mostly, simple past is combined with present perfect to describe an event in past and another completely finished event before the time of speaking

Look at and pay attention to the example below

It was a very wrecking day for having my undergraduate thesis defense. I couldn’t sleep and eat well although everything was already prepared. However when I sat down in the classroom for beginning the defense and said the opening greeting, I felt nothing but enjoyable. It was out of my prediction. Now I am happy for being able to pass it through well and successfully. I have promised myself that I will make it as a good lesson for next phases of my life.

Take a look at that all sentences above use past tense except the last two which are the results of what happened in the previous sentences. It is also possible to combine them in a sentence like what you say in a sentence, I made a mistake and I have promised not to do it anymore. By having this as your description, no one will misunderstand your story or description especially about the time any event takes place.

One thing you have to pay attention well is about the regularity and irregularity of verbs in English. You need to master this lesson for making simple past and present perfect because, as what you learned in the last lesson, the former needs a second form of the verb while the latter needs the third form. It is easy to modify regular verbs into the second and third form because you just have to add d or ed like what you see in the following examples:

Wash washed washed
Watch watched watched
Fold folded folded
However, in dealing with irregular verbs, you must memorize the forms because there is not a few exact formulations to determine the second and the third form of the verb. Pay attention to the following examples.

Go went gone
Drink drank drunk
Sing sang sung

Other than the form of verb, a tense of sentence can be identified by the time signal included in it, although not every sentence has that kind of time signal.

Here are some time signals showing the past;
• ….before
• A day/week/month/year ago
• At that time
• Once upon a time
• Yesterday
• Last/previous day/night/week/month/year ago

Meanwhile, here are some time signals of the simple present; 
• Right now
• Now
• Today
• Nowadays
• At present
• At this time/era 
• Regularly/usually/normally
• Often
• etc

Some of time signals of the present perfect are as follow:
• Since 
• Once
• Twice/three times/several times
• Already 
• For an hour 
• So far
• Etc

Additionally, keep in mind that apart from all structure and language unsure as explained above, you shouldn’t forget about social norm to keep politeness, properness and suitability with the context when and where you tell your story or description of the past. The same way also happens in asking others to tell or describe the story of the past. The explanation about it was already explained in previous lesson.

From all above explanation, you can conclude that in writing events in the past, you should have, at least:
• Four main components (setting, character, plot and point of view)
• Time signals for either past or present
• Attention on social norm as well as context-suitability and properness of the speech.

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