You could have .....

Judith Dubois — Sun, 11 Nov 2012 18:15:57 +0300

You could have is an expression that gives a lot of problems to native French speakers. They tend to want to translate it literally, Vous pouviez avoir, which means you had the possibility to have ??? And even when they learn to recognize and understand it, they hesitate to use it.

Here is a story I saw on the internet which gives all the repetition that we look for in a TPRS story, the repetition that students need to acquire a structure. And it's funny, which makes it compelling input. As soon as I saw it, I mailed it to all of my adult students.

A married couple was traveling by car from Victoria to Prince George .

Being seniors, after almost eleven hours on the road, they were too tired to continue and decided to take a room. But, they only planned to sleep for four hours and then get back on the road.

When they checked out four hours later, the desk clerk handed them a bill for $350.00.

The man exploded and demanded to know why the charge was so high. He told the clerk, "Although it's a nice hotel, the rooms certainly aren't worth $350.00 for four hours." Then the clerk told him that $350.00 was the 'standard rate'. The man insisted on speaking to the Manager.

The Manager appeared, listened to him, and then explained that the hotel had an Olympic-sized pool and a huge conference center that were available for them to use.

"But we didn't use them," the husband said.

"Well, they are here, and you could have," explained the Manager.

The Manager went on to explain that the couple could also have taken in one of the shows for which the hotel is famous. "We have the best entertainers from New York , Hollywood , and Las Vegas perform here," the Manager said.

"But we didn't go to any of those shows," the husband said.

"Well, we have them, and you could have," the Manager replied.

No matter what amenity the Manager mentioned, the husband replied, "But we didn't use it!"

The Manager was unmoved, and eventually the husband gave up and agreed to pay. As he didn't have his check book, he asked his wife to write the check.

She did and gave it to the Manager.

The Manager was surprised when he looked at the check. "But ma'am, this is made out for only $50.00."

"That's correct. I charged you $300.00 for sleeping with me," she replied.

"But I didn't!" exclaimed the Manager.

"Well, too bad, I was here, and you could have."

Lesson starters

Marie O'Sullivan — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 12:03:45 +0300

What are your favourite lesson starters? Let's pool our ideas here!

Dicole - New posts

You could have .....

Lesson starters