Key to Letters with Different tenses

1.-Complete the following letter with a suitable tense of the verb in brackets

Dear Clare,

I am leaving leave Australia at the end of April and I am getting closer to Britain every day! I arrived in Munich two day ago and I am staying with my German pen friend, Suzanne, and her family now. They have a flat near the centre of Munich.

Suzanne has a job with a Japanese company. She gets up very early every morning and leaves the flat before six o’clock. It is not my sort of job!

Last night we went to a beer festival. It was great fun. Have you ever eaten real frankfurters? They are delicious! I drank a lot of beer and we didn’t get home until after midnight.

Tomorrow I am going to see “Swam Lake” at the ballet and on Wednesday I am going to Austria for a few days.

I hope everything is going well with you. I am looking forward to staying with you in Oxford next month.

Love, Lisa

2.-Jack Cooper has been a production manager at Weston Aeronautics for ten years. He lives in a small house in the suburbs of Bristol with his wife, Peggy. At the moment, Weston Aeronautics is expanding into Europe and they are building a new factory in Toulouse.

A few months ago, Jack went to Toulouse to look at the new factory. He was talking to Peter Chester, managing director of Weston about the new jobs there.

Jack likes the sound of the new jobs and thinks that he would like to work in France. When he got back to Bristol, he was discussing things with his wife. But they decided to wait for a time before making a decision to leave Bristol.

They have discussed/ have been discussing whether to go or not for two weeks now, but they haven’t made up their minds yet.

The cost of living is higher in France, But Weston says they will provide a house with the job- so in fact, the money Jack will earn in Toulouse will be better than in Bristol.

3.-One of Hollywood’s most famous dogs is Lassie- the star of nine feature films and a popular TV series. Lassie first appeared in the classic film “Lassie Come Home” in 1943. While they were making the film, a dog-trainer prepared Lassie for every scene so that there wouldn’t be any problems with other animals on the set. The Lassie story touched the hearts of children all over the world and became one the most popular animal films ever made.

Today, Hollywood film-makers are making a new Lassie film, which will entertain/ is going to entertain the whole family. The film tells the story of a man without a job in a large city, who moves his family to a farm in Virginia to build a new life. When the situation with their neighbours becomes difficult, Lassie comes to the rescue. They dog, they are using in this new film is , in fact, a descendent of the original dog used in the first Lassie film. With the beautiful scenery of Virginia, a good story and family values, this film will probably be a big success and who knows? Next year perhaps we will be watching Lassie on television too-

4.-Change the verbs in brackets into the correct tense .-

Dear Marjorie,

We arrived at 10 o’clock yesterday morning. We are staying in a nice little hotel not far from the city centre. We have already seen St Peter’s and tomorrow we are going on a trip to Pompeii. I have been there before- I went to Italy quite often when I was a child- but it will be interesting to see if it has changed in any way.

The weather is going to be nice for the whole fortnight, it says so in this morning’s newspaper, so we are going to try to do as much sunbathing and swimming as possible. According to he hotel manager, the weather has been terrible so far this summer, so we are going to be/ will be very fortunate.

The journey here was awful. First Bill forgot the passports, so we had to drive back home and fetch them. Then the customs people spent two hours looking through our luggage; they didn’t speak English, so we never discovered what they were looking for.

Bill has been studying a map of Rome for the last hour, so I think he intends to do some sightseeing. I hope you are enjoying the peace and quiet now that we are away. I’ll write again soon.

Lots of love, Debbie

5.- Use the present simple, present continuous, past simple, present perfect, past perfect or would to complete the blanks

  1. Haven’t heard
  2. Have you found
  3. Had
  4. Had already chosen
  5. Am going
  6. Are you still going
  7. Have been
  8. Would she say
  9. Split up
  10. See