ZSL/ English B2.

2
S. Mukherjee
Notes for Thursday, May 14, 2020

Don’t be tense!

Learning all the tenses in the English language (session II)

1. PRESENT SIMPLE

FORM: subject + verb (present / v1)

Function: HABITS AND ROUTINES:

Examples:

I drink coffee every morning.

Steven goes to the beach on Sundays.

Children often play video games after school.

Function 2: FACTS

John works as a teacher.

You sing very well.

Water boils at 100 Celsius.

2. PRESENT CONTINUOUS:

FORM: Subject + am / is / are + verb (ing)

Function: Actions happening now (at the time of speaking)

Examples:

I am drinking tea right now.

We are having a class.

It is not raining outside.

Function 2: Temporary Activities

Mike is learning to play the guitar.

I am watching a really interesting TV series at the moment.

My dad is staying with us for a couple of weeks.

Function 3: Changes taking place now

Remote teaching is becoming very popular.

The price of oil is falling rapidly.

Scientists say that the Earth is getting warmer.

3. PAST SIMPLE

Form: Subject + verb (past / V2)

Function: COMPLETED ACTIONS IN THE PAST

EXAMPLES:

I played basketball with my friends last Saturday.

Julia gave me a gift for my birthday.

We received the package this morning.

Robert lived in Malaysia for five years.

My grandfather built this house in 1934.

4. PAST CONTINOUS

-PAST--------------NOW -----------------FUTURE--

Example: I was having dinner with my family when the door bell rang.

UNFINISHED ACTION IN THE PAST --- THEN SOMETHNG HAPPENED

It was raining when Elisa left for work.

The power went out while the children were studying.

While we were waiting at the bus stop, we saw a car accident.

5. PRESENT PERFECT

FORM: subject + have / has + verb (past participle / v3)

Function 1 : to talk abut experiences when time is ongoing.

Example:

I have taught English to many students.

Mark has visited Germany 3 times.

We have seen 2 movies this week.

HOWEVER – IF THE TIME PERIOD IS FINISHED, USE THE PAST SIMPLE

EXAMPLE: I taught many students when I was a teacher

Ashley visited France in 2015.

We saw two movies last week.

Function 2: to talk about recent actions or events (when exactly? Not clear,
not important)

Examples:

I have finished my homework!

Paul hast lost his glasses.

The secret police have arrested a young man in connection to a robbery.

Continuation (Session 2 / Thursday May 14, 2020)

6. Present Perfect Continuous

Form: Subject + have / has been + verb (ing)

Function: to describe actions that started in the past and are still continuing

Examples:

I have been waiting to see the doctor for 2 hours / since 5 pm.
Common mistake:

I am waiting to see the doctor for 2 hours.

He has been playing football since he was a child / for 20 years.

Common mistake:

He is playing tenning since he was a child.

She has been learning English since last October / for 8 months.

It has been raining all morning / since 8 am.

7. Past Perfect

Form: Subject + had + verb (v3 / past participle)

Function: to show the first past action when there are two or more past
actions.

(Past Simple) example: When we got to the theater, the movie started

Now, consider these examples:

When we got to the theater, the movie had started

I was sick because I had eaten too much the night before.

Joel rushed to his boss’s office, but she had gone home already.

8. Past Perfect Continuous

Form: Subject + had been + verb (- ing)

Function: when the FIRST PAST ACTION is continuous

Examples:

I felt really tired because I had been driving all day.

She had been waiting for two hours when the doctor finally arrived.

The ground was wet because it had been raining.

LET’S NOW REVIEW THE 4 PERFECT TENSES WE DISCUSSED:

Present perfect: (notice how it is focused on the completion of the action and
there is no precise focus on exact time)

I have washed the dishes

Present perfect continuous: (notice how I started something and am still doing
it it)

I have been washing the dishes for half an hour

Past perfect:

When I left for work, I had washed the dishes.

Past perfect continuous:

When the phone rang, I had been washing the dishes for half an hour.

 Used to + infinitive
 

Repeated actions in the past

 We can use used to + infinitive to talk about things that we did repeatedly in the past.

 When I was a child, I used to go skiing every winter. 

 From the age of 12 till I was 16, I used to dance at weekends. 
 I didn’t use to smoke before I got this job. 

Situations or states that are no longer true

We can use used to + infinitive to talk about situations or states (stative verbs) which were true in the past,
but they are no longer true.

 As a child I used to be blond. 

 I used to live with my mum when I was a child.

 
Article (Reading Comprehension)

Stanford Prison Experiment – a social psychology study

Written by:The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Stanford Prison Experiment, a social psychology study in which college students became
prisoners or guards in a simulated prison environment. The experiment, funded by the
U.S. Office of Naval Research, took place at Stanford University in August 1971. It was
intended to measure the effect of role-playing, labeling, and social expectations on
behaviour over a period of two weeks. However, mistreatment of prisoners escalated so
alarmingly that principal investigator Philip G. Zimbardo terminated the experiment after
only six days.

More than 70 young men responded to an advertisement about a “psychological study of

prison life,” and experimenters selected 24 applicants who were judged to be physically
and mentally healthy. The paid subjects—they received $15 a day—were divided
randomly into equal numbers of guards and prisoners. Guards were ordered not to
physically abuse prisoners and were issued mirrored sunglasses that prevented any eye
contact. Prisoners were “arrested” by actual police and handed over to the experimenters
in a mock prison in the basement of a campus building. Prisoners were then subjected to
indignities that were intended to simulate the environment of a real-life prison. In keeping
with Zimbardo’s intention to create very quickly an “atmosphere of oppression,” each
prisoner was made to wear a “dress” as a uniform and to carry a chain padlocked around
one ankle. All participants were observed and videotaped by the experimenters.

On only the second day the prisoners staged a rebellion. Guards then worked out a system
of rewards and punishments to manage the prisoners. Within the first four days, three
prisoners had become so traumatized that they were released. Over the course of the
experiment, some of the guards became cruel and tyrannical, while a number of the
prisoners became depressed and disoriented. However, only after an outside observer
came upon the scene and registered shock did Zimbardo conclude the experiment, less
than a week after it had started.

The Stanford Prison Experiment immediately came under attack on methodological and
ethical grounds. Zimbardo admitted that during the experiment he had sometimes felt
more like a prison superintendent than a research psychologist. Later on, he claimed that
the experiment’s “social forces and environmental contingencies” had led the guards to
behave badly. However, others claimed that the original advertisement attracted people
who were predisposed to authoritarianism. The most conspicuous challenge to the
Stanford findings came decades later in the form of the BBC Prison Study, a differently
organized experiment documented in a British Broadcasting Corporation series called
The Experiment (2002). The BBC’s mock prisoners turned out to be more assertive than
Zimbardo’s. The British experimenters called the Stanford experiment “a study of what
happens when a powerful authority figure (Zimbardo) imposes tyranny.”
The Stanford Prison Experiment became widely known outside academia. It was the
acknowledged inspiration for Das Experiment (2001), a German movie that was remade
in the United States as the direct-to-video film The Experiment (2010). The Stanford
Prison Experiment (2015) was created with Zimbardo’s active participation; the dramatic
film more closely followed actual events.