Chapter 4: No Littering

Learning objectives

Upon completion of this chapter, you should be able to:

1. talk about past incidents or events;

2. make questions for a short interview about past incidents or events;

3. identify the main idea and detailed information on a series of past incidents or events;

4. write a series of past events.

Vocabularies

decay: membusuk

throw into: membuang

litter: mengotori/membuang sampah sembarangan

lood: banjir

problem: pemasalahan

river: sungai

trash: sampah

nearby town: kota terdekat

one of the causes: salah satu penyebab

back then: dahulu

drain: mengering

rain heavily: hujan deras

elderly people: orang tua

ireighters: petugas pemadam kebakaran

gutters: selokan/ parit

rainwater: air hujan

rubber boat: perahu karet

soldiers: tentara

clogged: tersumbat

under water: terendam air

according to: menurut

Asking for Details of a Past Incident with Interrogative Questions

Before we can talk about a past incident, we must know details of the incident. We can collect the details by asking questions.. We can ask Interrogative (Yes/No) or Wh- questions. In this unit, we will focus on the Interrogative (Yes/No) questions.

One way to ask the ‘Yes/No’ questions is to use the auxiliary verb ‘Did’. The auxiliary is followed by a subject and the base form of the main verb. The other way to ask the ‘Yes/No’ questions is by using past tense to be: ‘was’ and ‘were’, when there is no main verb in the questions. We use ‘was’ for ‘He, She, It and I’, while ‘were’ for ‘They, We and You’.

Look at the examples in the following table.

No	‘Yes/No’ Questions with ‘Did’	‘Yes/No’ Questions with ‘was/ were’
1	Did you swim in the river?	Was the river this dirty back then?
2	Did people throw their trash into this river?	Were there many children in the river?
In these examples, the auxiliary verb ‘did’ is used because there are the main verbs ‘swim’ and ‘throw’.		In these examples, the past tense ‘to be’ ‘was’ and ‘were’ function as the main verb. ‘The river’ represents ‘It’, and ‘many children’ represents ‘They’