Level 4 writing exercise: 3rd person singular

This is the key to the writing exercise on page 24 of the Level 4 textbook New Beginnings: A Complete English Course. In this exercise, students first read a journal entry about someone's observations regarding people in the United States. Students then have to copy the journal entry and change "people in the United States" to "Dolores." In doing so, they also need to make necessary changes to the pronouns and verbs in the article.

Dolores has a lot of different customs. For example, her eating habits are very different from ours. She usually takes only a half hour or an hour for lunch, and she almost never goes home at lunchtime. She eats her big meal in the evening. She usually has dinner around six or seven o'clock, but she sometimes eats as early as 5:30 p.m.

Dolores has different ways of greeting people. For example, she always shakes hands when she meets a person for the first time, but she seldom shakes hands with good friends or people at work. Women sometimes don't shake hands at all in social situations, but Dolores' female friends usually do.


-- Joe Yu, ESL instructor