This work-sheet is designed to familiarize students with the different meanings of six phrases that show the attitude of the speaker to the timing of an action. This can be illustrated by two speakers describing the same event but using different words. You might ask students the difference between these two at the beginning of the lesson and leave it displayed on the white-board / black-board until somebody figures it out.

"It's already stopped raining!"
 
"It's stopped raining at last!"

You may want to explain / elicit the various words at the beginning. If the students think that they know the words, you could just give the students the gap filling exercise to do in small (collaborative) groups and see how they get on. After checking their answers, and when everybody agrees on the same answers, you can move on to the grid where they have to match the words to the attitude that they convey. Correct answers are as follows: 5, 6, 1, 2, 3, 4.

You have a choice of two different methods of getting this handout to your printer. It all depends on whether your computer has "Adobe Acrobat Reader" installed. If it has, then this would be the recommended method for printing out the worksheet. Try selecting the "PDF (Adobe Acrobat)" link below. If all goes well, a new application window should appear including a print button, which when selected will print out one copy.

If, on the other hand you do not have "Adobe Acrobat" select the "HTML (web page)" link below. (Also, this method is recommended for users of Netscape Navigator, which seems to have trouble interacting with the Acrobat program like this.) If all goes well, a new browser window will open, from which you can either click the "print button" on the toolbar or open the "File" menu, select "Print" and then adjust the "Print Dialog Box" to your own preferences.

The final link below is to enable you to print this "instruction page" if you want to. Click on the link, and when the page appears on a new screen you will be able to print it using the browser's "print button" or "file menu". After printing, close the window again so that you can continue to navigate around the site.

For teacher training courses, English courses in Bristol UK and free interactive exercises, visit The Language Project Website.