General English A2 : I Used to

  • September 28, 2023
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Introduction

Discuss the questions below.

1 Do you like history? Why or why not?
2 If you could go back in time, what decade would you go to? Why?

Reading


                                                                                                                                                                                 

Read the sentences below and select the years they are about.

1 Men used to wear hats when they went out.

2 People used to wear tie-dyed clothes.

3 The Beatles used to be very popular.

4 2MT made the first radio broadcast in the United Kingdom.

5 Young people used to dance the Twist.

6 People used to watch silent films.

7 Neil Armstrong landed on the moon.

8 People used to dance the Charleston.

Language Focus

1. We can use used to when we talk about repeated actions in the past that aren’t true now.


2. We can also use used to to talk about past states.


3. Questions and short answers


Rewrite the following sentences with used to / didn’t use to.

1. I was very healthy.
  
2. John smoked twenty cigarettes a day before he quit. 
 
3. Jane had a lovely necklace when she was in the UK.
  
4. I didn’t like spicy food.
  
6. Hanna was very outgoing when she was young.
  
7. My father hated using computers.
  
8. Everyone liked disco music in the seventies.
 

Sounding Natural

Listen to the sentences below.
How do we say the underlined parts of the sentences when we speak naturally?






Time to speak

Choose a decade in the past that you know about.
Write the decade at the top of the table below.
Write two examples of what used to be different for each section of the table.


Tell the class what used to be diff erent in the decade you chose, but don’t say when it was.
Can people guess which decade you’re talking about?

Example A: Michael Jackson used to be the most famous singer in the world.
                   B: It was the 1980s!