1.9 Narratives and narrative tenses

What is a  narrative?

A narrative is some kind of retelling, often in words (though it is possible to mime a story), of something that happened (a story). The narrative is not the story itself but rather the telling of the story — which is why it is so often used in phrases such as “written narrative,” “oral narrative,” etc. While a story just is a sequence of events, a narrative recounts those events, perhaps leaving some occurrences out because they are from some perspective insignificant, and perhaps emphasizing others. In a series of events, a car crash takes a split second. A narrative account, however, might be almost entirely about the crash itself and the few seconds leading up to it. Narratives thus shape history (the series of events, the story of what happened).

Look at the presentation to learn about the most frequently used verb tenses in narratives:

You can also read the following explanation:

The Narrative Tenses

And put your knowledge into practice:
http://web2.uvcs.uvic.ca/elc/studyzone/410/grammar/pastpf.htm
A short explanation of the use of Past Perfect and two practice parts about it.

http://web2.uvcs.uvic.ca/elc/studyzone/410/grammar/pastpf.htm
A short explanation and 10 sentences with time expressions in which past perfect is used.

http://www.usingenglish.com/quizzes/140.html
A 10-questions quiz: Simple Past or Past Perfect.

http://english-zone.com/verbs/pstperf1.html
another one.

http://www.englishpage.com/verbpage/pastperfect.html
A collection of exercises on past perfect, smple past and past perfect continuous

http://www.englishtenses.com/tenses/past_perfect
At the end of the page, there are exercises that you might like.

http://www.autoenglish.org/gr.pastperfcon.p.htm
some fill-in-the blanks activities

http://web2.uvcs.uvic.ca/elc/studyzone/410/grammar/ppvpast1.htm

http://www.usingenglish.com/quizzes/228.html
52 questions to do. Past simple versus Present Perfect.

http://perso.wanadoo.es/autoenglish/gr.pastperf.i.htm

a 15-question exercise

Discourse markers add cohesion to narratives. They are also used to sequence events

In this excellent site Learning American English on line you can find a section devoted to writing that guides you from paragraph level to writing narrativesyou will find a

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Further information on individual TENSES:

Simple Past

Simple past 1          Simple past 2          Simple past 3

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Past Continuous

Past continuous 1          Past continuous 2          Past continuous 3

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Past Perfect

Past perfect 1          Past perfect 2          Past perfect 3

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Past Perfect Continuous

Past perfect continuous 1          Past perfect continuous 2          Past perfect continuous 3

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Used to

Used to