The First Verb Is a Contract
Grammar: Literary tenses + Historic present + Would for pas
A Level 6 English lesson exploring art.
What's in this lesson
A Level 6 (proficiency) ESL lesson on art, practising literary tenses + historic present + would for pas. The worksheet has a reading, target vocabulary, a grammar reference with practice and discussion questions.
From the reading: The First Verb Is a Contract
Roughly one in three debut novels published in the United Kingdom between 2015 and 2023 opened in the present tense — a figure that stood at fewer than one in ten in 1980. That statistical shift is not a grammatical accident. It is a record of changing assumptions about what fiction is for, what the reader is owed, and where the storyteller stands in relation to time. Every novelist who types the first verb of a first sentence is making a decision that will govern the emotional logic of everything that follows: a stylistic contract, signed before the reader turns a single page.
Vocabulary
- deeply contested
- politically charged
- precisely calibrated
- routinely described
Grammar
- Historic present
- Cromwell enters the room and surveys the court. — past event told as if now
- Literary past simple
- Stevens paused at the window and said nothing. — stable distance, classic narrative default
Discussion questions
- Have you ever noticed which verb tense a novel opens in?
- Does the way a story begins change whether you trust the narrator?
- Which matters more in fiction: what happens, or how it is told?
The First Verb Is a Contract
Grammar: Literary tenses + Historic present + Would for pas
What's in this lesson:
Full lesson plan with reading, grammar, vocabulary, and discussion.
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