A2 School Part 6: School

The harbour wakes before the town. At five o’clock, fishing boats return with boxes of silver fish. Workers carry ice, mend nets, and shout greetings across the water. Lina helps her father sort the catch: small fish for soup, big fish for the market. Gulls circle above, hoping for scraps. By seven, trucks carry the fish to shops, and the boats rest. Lina loves the smell of salt and the sound of ropes. She wants to be a boat captain one day and sail past the lighthouse to the open sea. In winter the harbour grows quiet. The wind is cold and the boats stay close to the wall. Lina’s father repairs nets and paints the hull blue. She writes the names of the boats in her notebook and learns new words: anchor, rope, engine, tide. Some mornings a big ship waits outside the harbour for the small boats to move, and the captain waves at Lina, so she waves back. In spring the fish return and the harbour wakes again. Lina saves the money she earns from selling small fish, and every evening she practises tying knots by the lamp. Her mother says a captain must be patient. Lina answers that patience is easy when the sea is waiting.

Past simple narrates completed school events; present perfect connects study to now: I have finished chapter four. Reported speech shifts tenses back: she said the test was easy. Obligation uses have to and must; permission uses can and may. Practice by labeling each sentence in the reading: underline the main verb, circle the time marker, and check that every they and it points to a named noun. Rewrite any three sentences in your own words while keeping tense and meaning intact. Theme: school. Reading: The Busy Harbour. As a final check, read the passage once more and label every verb for tense, every noun for countability, and every connector for function. Keep a short error log of your own recurring mistakes and review it before writing. This routine turns isolated rules into durable habits across all five hundred lessons.