Chapter 1: Celebrating Independence Day

 

Learning Objectives:

Upon completion of Chapter 1, you should be able to:

1. talk about personal experiences in the past;

2. identify specific information about personal experiences; and

3. write the main events of personal experiences.

Vocabularies:

celebrate (base form) - celebrated (past form): merayakan

hold (base form) - held (past form): mengadakan

win (base form) - won (past form): memenangkan / menjuarai

amazing: luar biasa

congratulation: (ucapan) selamat

during: selama (sesuatu sedang berlangsung)

grab (base form) - grabbed (past form): meraih, mengambil

committee: panitia

grease: minyak gemuk, oli

groceries: bahan makanan

ladder: tangga

teamwork: kerja sama tim

slippery: licin

Language Focus

Recounting means talking about past experiences. Most of the time we include details of what happened in the past when recounting. At school, teachers also ask students to recount their past experiences. For example, they ask the students to recount their last holiday experiences or their activities on the last Independence Day.

To recount these past experiences, we need to use Past Simple verbs. The Past Simple verbs are usually formed by adding ‘d’, ‘ed’, or ‘ied’ to the base verb. Look at the following examples:

celebrate + d → celebrated

participate + d → participated

try + [change the ‘y’ to ‘i’ ] + ed → tried

We call these regular verbs.

Many other verbs, however, are irregular. These irregular verbs do not really follow any rules. They need to be learned. See the following examples:

win → won

make → made

hold → held

Have a look at the following examples

Regular verbs:

- I participated in a tandem race, tug of war, Panjat Pinang, and sack race.

- I jumped up onto my friends’ shoulders

Irregular verbs:

- Today, our school held many games and competitions to celebrate Independence Day.

- I won the marble in spoon race competition today.