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C1 · Première and Terminale générales

Session 9. Final task: Portrait of the Queen at a given moment

The Aura of a Woman Like No Other: write and perform her portrait.

Key question: Can you paint a portrait in words, using every tense of English?
55 minutes: Recap 5 min · Point du professeur 10 min · Preparation 15 min · Performances 20 min · Feedback 5 min

Recap · marked /4

What we already know

All the tenses of the sequence, from present simple to future perfect.
Passive, reported speech, conditionals 0 to 3 and mixed, wish / if only.
Adverbs, idioms, figures of speech.

Quick quiz (one point each)

Passive, past perfect: They had rehearsed the ceremony.
Reproach: She should ______ (go) earlier.
Future perfect: By then she ______ (reign) 70 years.
Colour idiom meaning "very special day".

Answers

The ceremony had been rehearsed.
should have gone
will have reigned
a red-letter day

1Le point du professeur10 min

Pour le professeur

La tâche finale demande de mobiliser l'ensemble des temps. Tracer au tableau une frise du temps et y placer chaque forme vue depuis la séance 1, en partant d'un moment choisi (par exemple 1969) : ce qui s'était passé avant, ce qui se passe, ce qui va arriver, ce qui serait arrivé si... Rappeler les critères de la grille (page Final task).

The tense map, seen from 1 July 1969

Before	At the moment	After
She had been Queen for seventeen years. She had been preparing Charles for this day. She used to wear pastel colours as a girl.	She is standing in primrose yellow. The coronet is being placed on his head. She looks calm.	He will be King one day. By 2022 she will have reigned 70 years. He was to wait more than fifty years.
Unreal: If she had abdicated, he would be* a different King. If only he had more time with her. People say the hat was inspired by the Tudors.*

Before

At the moment

After

She had been Queen for seventeen years. She had been preparing Charles for this day. She used to wear pastel colours as a girl.

She is standing in primrose yellow. The coronet is being placed on his head. She looks calm.

He will be King one day. By 2022 she will have reigned 70 years. He was to wait more than fifty years.

Unreal: If she had abdicated, he would be a different King. If only he had more time with her. People say the hat was inspired by the Tudors.

Help: before = past perfect; at the moment = present or past continuous; after = will, would, was to.

2The document8 min

Choose a moment and a voice.

1933: the seven-year-old princess sitting for de László.
1945: Second Subaltern Windsor at Aldershot.
2 June 1953: the coronation.
October 1966: Aberfan.
1 July 1969: Caernarfon, in primrose yellow.
1985: Andy Warhol, who once said "I want to be as famous as the Queen of England", turns a 1975 photograph into Pop Art for his Reigning Queens series (The Guardian, 2012).
24 November 1992: her "annus horribilis" speech at the Guildhall.
2001: sitting for Lucian Freud.
5 April 2020: "We will meet again."
8 September 2022: the end of a reign.

Voice: the Queen, the painter or photographer, a witness in the crowd, a journalist, a member of the family.

Full instructions and the marking grid: Final task. The summative assessment is on the Assessment page.

Pop art screenprint of Queen Elizabeth II wearing a diamond tiara, pearls and a sash, her face in pale lilac on a deep purple background with coral and cream blocks of colour. — Andy Warhol, *Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom*, from the *Reigning Queens* series, 1985, screenprint. Royal Collection (Royal Edition, with diamond dust). © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.. After a photograph by Peter Grugeon taken in April 1975 and released for official use during the Silver Jubilee in 1977. Image: Royal Collection Trust.

Understanding the document

Which moment gives you the most to say with the past perfect?
Which voice allows the most reported speech?

Answers

Any late moment (1992, 2001, 2022), because so much had happened before.
A journalist or a witness reporting what people said.

3Building your vocabulary

Revise the vocabulary tables of sessions 1 to 8 and pick ten words for your portrait. Add three colour words and two idioms.

Exercise 1. Collocations review

Complete.

to ______ for a portrait
to pay ______
to ______ the throne
to keep a stiff upper ______
a ______ day (special)
to ______ opinion

Answers

sit
homage
abdicate / accede to
lip
red-letter
divide

4Grammar in practice

From recognition to open production.

RecognitionExercise 2. Name the tense

Identify each verb form.

She had been waiting for hours.
The coronet is being placed on his head.
By then she will have outlived Philip.
If she had cried, people would have understood.
She used to ride every day.
He claimed the portrait was cruel.

Answers

past perfect continuous
present continuous passive
future perfect
third conditional
used to (past habit)
reported speech (past simple + backshift)

TransformationExercise 3. One sentence, many tenses

Rewrite "She wears a yellow coat" in the tense given.

past continuous
present perfect
past perfect passive
future perfect
third conditional
I wish + past perfect

Answers

She was wearing a yellow coat.
She has worn a yellow coat.
A yellow coat had been worn.
She will have worn a yellow coat.
If she had worn a yellow coat, she would have stood out.
I wish she had worn a yellow coat.

AccuracyAccuracy check. Find the mistake

Each sentence contains one mistake. Find it and correct it.

In 2000: "She is Queen since 1952."
If she wouldn't have gone, nobody would have known.
When the Queen arrived, the crowd waited for two hours.
The portrait was painting in 2001.
By the end of the week, I will finish my portrait.
She asked what did the painter want.

Answers

"She has been Queen since 1952."
If she hadn't gone, nobody would have known.
When the Queen arrived, the crowd had been waiting for two hours.
The portrait was painted in 2001.
By the end of the week, I will have finished my portrait.
She asked what the painter wanted.

Open productionExercise 4. Your portrait

Write your text (300 to 350 words, or 3 minutes spoken), following the requirements on the Final task page.

5Figures of speech

Use at least one figure from the sequence: understatement, antithesis, chiasmus, metonymy, anaphora, personification, synecdoche, oxymoron.

Exercise 5. Choose your figure

Write one sentence for your portrait with each figure.

antithesis
understatement
synecdoche

Answers

She was a girl in a garden and a Queen in an abbey.
It was not the most comfortable of carriages.
The crowd waited for a glimpse of a hat.

6Idioms

to steal the show
to attract the most attention.
From the theatre.
In lime green, she stole the show.

in the limelight
at the centre of public attention.
Limelight lit theatre stages in the 19th century.
She spent seventy years in the limelight.

Exercise 6. Final idioms

Complete.

A public life is a life ______.
The youngest bridesmaid ______.

Answers

in the limelight
stole the show

7Expression task20 min

Performances. Each student or pair performs (3 minutes). The class takes notes on the tenses heard, using a tense map grid, and gives one compliment and one suggestion.

Exit ticket · formative check

Which tense was the hardest for you, and why?
Write one sentence with a mixed conditional about your moment.

Answers

Personal answer.
Example: If she hadn't become Queen, she would be remembered as a horsewoman.

C1+Going further (towards C2)

C1+ version: a crossed portrait of two moments (for example 1953 and 2022), alternating flashback and anticipation, with inversion (Little did she know that...) and the future in the past.

HWHomework

Finalise and hand in the written version of your portrait. Revise for the summative assessment.