Reading and writing : Report on significant events and life experiences

🔊 La maîtresse lit pour toi

Somebody asks you: “What happened to you last year?” and you answer “Nothing special.” It is almost never true. Something did happen — you changed school, you learned to do something with your hands, somebody left, somebody arrived — and the real difficulty is not that your year was empty: it is that you do not know how to tell it. Here is the story of two brothers whose whole lives turned on one sentence spoken by a stranger at a window. What makes an event worth reporting — and how do you show that it changed something?

🎓في نهاية هذا الدرس ستكون قادرا على:

قراءة نصّ سرديّ واستخراج الحدث الذي غيّر مجرى الأمور
التمييز في السرد بين الحدث (ما وقع مرّة) والعادة (ما كان يتكرّر)
استعمال ⁦used to⁩ و⁦didn't use to⁩ لرواية ما كان معتادا في طفولتك
إجراء مقابلة قصيرة حول الذكريات وتدوين أجوبتها
كتابة تقرير عن حدث مهمّ في حياتك : ما كان قبله، وما هو، وما تغيّر بعده

🔑يفترض هذا الدرس أنّك تتقن:

الماضي البسيط في الإثبات والنفي، والأفعال الشاذّة الأكثر ورودا
أنّ الفعل بعد ⁦used to⁩ يبقى مجرّدا دائما
قراءة نصّ والبحث فيه عن معلومة دقيقة دون قراءته كلمة كلمة

Read

اقرأ النصّ مرّة قراءةً سريعة لتعرف موضوعه، ثمّ قراءةً ثانية متأنّية للتفاصيل.

Read the text once quickly, just to find out how many people are in it and what they want. Then read it a second time, slowly, with a pencil: underline the one sentence that changes the direction of the whole story. Only then open the questions.

Equal Inheritance

A rich man had two sons. The older son was his favorite, and the man decided to leave all his money to him when he died. The mother felt sorry for her younger son. She asked her husband not to tell the boys about his plans. One day the mother was sitting at the window and crying. A traveller came to the window and asked her why. “How can I stop crying?” she said. “There is no difference between my two sons, but their father wants to leave everything to one of them and nothing to the other. I asked their father not to tell the boys this. But I have no money of my own to give my younger son.” Then the traveller said, “Tell your sons that the older brother will get all the money and the younger one will get nothing. Then they will be equal.” When the younger son learned that he wasn't going to get any money, he went to another country and he learned a trade. The older son lived at home and learned nothing; he was sure about his future as a rich man. When the father died, the older son did not know how to do anything. He spent all his money, and he became poor. But the younger son was prepared. He knew how to make money, and he became rich.

Skimming — the general idea

القراءة السريعة : الفكرة العامّة.

What is this text about? And where exactly does it turn?

عمّ يتحدّث النصّ ؟ وأين بالضبط ينقلب مجراه ؟

It is about two brothers who are given completely different futures by their father — and who end up with the opposite of what he had planned. The text turns on one sentence, and it is the traveller's: “Tell your sons that the older brother will get all the money and the younger one will get nothing. Then they will be equal.” ⟹ Read that sentence again. It sounds unfair, and it is the fairest thing in the story. Everything before it is a situation; everything after it is a consequence. That single line is what a report calls the turning point.

Scanning — the details

القراءة الباحثة : التفاصيل. ابحث عن الجواب في النصّ، لا في ذاكرتك.

1. Who is in the story? 2. What did the father decide? 3. Why was the mother crying? 4. What did each son do when he learned the news? 5. What did each one become?

أجب عن الأسئلة الخمسة انطلاقا من النصّ.

Five people: a rich man, his older son, his younger son, the mother, and a traveller who passes by once and is never seen again.
He decided to leave all his money to the older son, who was his favourite, and his wife asked him to say nothing to the boys about it.
Because there was no difference between her two sons, and their father wanted to give everything to one of them; and because she had no money of her own to give the younger one.
The younger son went to another country and learned a trade. The older son lived at home and learned nothing, because he was sure about his future as a rich man.
The older son became poor — he did not know how to do anything and spent all his money. The younger son became rich — he knew how to make money.

⚠️ Question 4 is the one that matters. The two brothers received the same news, on the same day, and they did the opposite with it. ⟹ In a report, an event never explains an outcome by itself: what explains it is what each person did with the event.

2. Find the five moments of the report, and what each one is for

استخرج لحظات التقرير الخمس، وحدّد وظيفة كلّ لحظة.

The moment	In the text	What it does in a report
The situation before	a rich man had two sons; the older one was his favourite	it says what was normal, so that the change can be seen
The problem	the father decided to leave everything to one son and nothing to the other	it names what is at stake, and for whom
The turning point	the traveller says: tell them the truth, then they will be equal	one sentence, and nothing after it is the same
What each person did	the younger learned a trade abroad; the older learned nothing	the same event, two answers — this is where people appear
The outcome	the older became poor, the younger became rich	it says what the event was finally worth

⭐ Count the lines the writer spends on each moment. The situation takes three lines, the turning point takes one, and the outcome takes three. ⟹ A report is not an event: it is a before, an event, and an after. Remove the before and the after, and the event stops being significant — because nothing is there to have changed.

Habits and events — the two pasts of a life story

ماضيان في السيرة : ما كان يتكرّر، وما وقع مرّة واحدة.

Which tense answers which question?

أيّ زمن يجيب عن أيّ سؤال ؟

The question	What it asks about	The form of the answer
Which primary school did you use to go to?	a habit, repeated for years	I used to go to … (base verb after used to)
Did your teachers use to punish you?	a habit again	They used to … / They didn't use to …
How did you use to go to school?	a habit — the ordinary way, every morning	I used to walk. · I didn't use to take the bus.
What happened on your first day there?	one event, once, and it is over	past simple — I arrived late and I cried.

⛔ And there is a spelling trap inside the form itself. In the affirmative you write used to, with a d. In the question and in the negative, the d goes away, because did has already taken the past: “Did you use to…?” · “I didn't use to…” ⟹ Never “didn't used to”.

Write — report an event of your own

الإنتاج : اكتب تقريرا عن حدث مهمّ في حياتك.

A report on a significant event answers four questions, in this order: What was normal before? — the habits, with used to: where you used to live, how you used to go to school, what you used to like. What happened? — the event itself, in the past simple, and in two or three sentences at most. What did you do about it? — your own answer to the event. This is the part nobody else could have written. What is different now? — the outcome, in the present if it is still true: “now I …” ⭐ And keep the proportion of the text you have just read: a long before, a short event, a clear after.

Your task

a. First, interview somebody in your class with these questions, and write the answers down: “Which primary school did you use to go to? · How did you use to go to school? · What used to be your favourite subject? · Did you use to eat at the canteen?” b. Then do the same for yourself, and choose one event that changed something: a move, a new school, an illness, a competition, the day you learned to do something. c. Write eight to ten lines answering the four questions above. Use used to at least twice for the before, and the past simple for the event. ⛔ Report only what really happened. An invented event has no before and no after — and that is exactly what a reader notices.

A model — the same method applied to the text you have just read

نموذج : المنهجيّة نفسها مطبّقة على النصّ الذي قرأته.

Write yours first. This model keeps the facts of the text above, retold by the younger brother as a report — so that you can see the method, not copy the content.

Model

Before, I used to live at home with my father and my older brother. My father used to prefer my brother, and everybody in the house used to know it. I didn't use to think about money at all. Then, one day, my mother told us the truth: my brother would get everything, and I would get nothing. So I left. I went to another country and I learned a trade. My brother stayed at home and learned nothing, because he was sure about his future. Now my father is dead. My brother has spent all his money and he is poor. I am not rich because somebody gave me something: I am rich because that day nobody did.

Check the model against the four questions: before (three sentences with used to), the event (one sentence, past simple), what I did (three sentences), now (the last three lines, in the present). And notice the last sentence: it says in seventeen words why the event mattered. That sentence is the only one that could not be replaced by a photograph.

At the BEM, reporting an experience is one of the subjects that come back most often in Written expression: “write a paragraph about an unforgettable day / an event that changed your life / your childhood memories”. Keep this ready: used to for what was habitual, past simple for what happened once ; ⛔ did you use to and didn't use to, without the d ; a before, an event and an after in that order ; and one closing sentence saying what changed. ⛔ The mistake examiners see every year: ten lines of events one after the other, with no before — so that nothing in the paragraph has changed by the end.

An event is not significant because it is dramatic: it is significant because something is different afterwards. So a report needs three parts and always the same three — what used to be, what happened, and what is true now. Give the habits their tense and the event its own, spend more lines on the before than on the event itself, and finish with the only sentence nobody else can write for you: what it changed in you.

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