Welcome to the Unit 14 review! Over the past few lessons, you have explored the world of driving and refreshed your knowledge of three important past tenses in English. This review will help you bring everything together and finish the unit with a short writing task.
The three past tenses you practised are past simple, past continuous and past perfect. Each one tells a different kind of story about the past. Past simple describes completed actions at a specific time: I drove to work at 7 a.m. Past continuous describes an action in progress in the past, often interrupted by something: I was driving when the phone rang. Past perfect describes an action that happened before another past action: I had already parked when you called. Mixing these tenses makes your storytelling clear and natural.
Here is a quick comparison of the three forms:
| Tense |
Form |
Example |
| Past simple |
V2 (or V-ed) |
She braked suddenly. |
| Past continuous |
was/were + V-ing |
They were overtaking on the motorway. |
| Past perfect |
had + V3 |
He had indicated before turning. |
Driving vocabulary covers many areas: the parts of a car (steering wheel, accelerator, brake, gear, rear-view mirror), the road itself (junction, lane, roundabout, motorway, pedestrian crossing), and the people involved (driver, passenger, pedestrian, cyclist). You also practised useful driving verbs: park, reverse, overtake, indicate, refuel and brake. Road signs are also important — a red triangle usually warns you, a red circle gives a prohibition, and a blue circle usually tells you what you must do.
For the writing task, you will write a short story about a memorable car journey. A good strategy is using time markers to sequence your events clearly. Time markers are words like first, then, after that, while, when, suddenly, by the time, finally — they guide the reader through your story. For example: First, I got into the car. While I was driving, it started to rain. By the time I arrived, I was completely soaked. Combining time markers with the right past tense will make your writing much stronger and more interesting to read.