English Practice exercises - narrative tenses (4) for proficiency: P6-06G

 

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In this exercise, you must rewrite the narrative, changing the point of view of the writer from the past to the present. As a result, those verbs in bold type, which are in the past perfect will be changed into the past simple, past continuous, or present perfect. Certain other time expressions will also change: previously becomes ago, etc. The first sentence is done for you as an example.

 

(At that time) I used to like travel, and I could truthfully say that I had been to more countries in my life than most people. I was particularly drawn to South Asia, and had visited India on numerous occasions. In fact, at the time I was writing, I had not yet finished unpacking from my latest trip, a walk through the Himalayan Mountains north of Srinagar. The subject of my article at that time, however, was a trip I had made to somewhere altogether more accessible and less exotic: the south of France. In fact, this trip had occurred many years previously, having been the first time in my adult life that I had left my native land. It had happened in this way:

            My father had had an old friend who had been living in a small village on a remote mountainside in the south of the Massif Central. One of his neighbours had needed help to bring in the sweet chestnut harvest, at that time an important source of income for the poor farmers of that region. So, I had found myself put on the boat train to Paris. There, yet another family friend had been on duty to escort me across Paris and deposit me in a second train, whose destination had been Toulouse.  From Toulouse, I had made my way by local train and bus to the small country town of Bedarieux, where my father’s friend from the chestnut village had been waiting with an ancient 2CV van. By that time, it had been a grey, late-September evening. We had soon left the lowlands. The rain had now been falling steadily, as we had begun to climb into the great chestnut forests.

 

 

            I like travel, and I can truthfully say that I have been to more countries in my life than most people…………………………….