English · Ancient Civilizations
Narrating the past — Simple Past tense & 'ago'
Reporting a civilization's finished events, and pinning them to a timeline
6 minutes
The academic content is in Arabic, as at the BAC and as in the app.
What the syllabus expects from you
- Simple Past for completed past actions/events
- 'ago' with a time expression to locate a past event
The method
- Anchor the narrative on a timeline; time markers (in 3000 BC, 500 years ago) cue the tense
The common mistakes
- Wrong word order with 'ago' (ago 3 years instead of 3 years ago)
- Using Simple Past where a habitual past (used to) is required
The kind of exercise that comes up at the BAC
-
Narrate a civilization's rise & fall medium
timeline of facts → narrate in Simple Past, locating events with ago
From the lesson
Most verbs simply add -ed: erupt becomes erupted, bury becomes buried. Some of English's oldest verbs, the ones history is built on, change shape instead.
The vocabulary
- ago (منذ)
- fall/rise (سقوط/ازدهار)
What is not on the syllabus
- used to / had to / was able to (treated separately, next concept)
- Present Perfect (treated later, other units)