English Together · B2 First · Chapter 1
Maya, a post office queue that refuses to move, and the woman who walks straight past all eleven of them. You know the inverted ladder from B1 — ears first, text later — but the argument is longer and faster now, and nobody slows down for you.
0 of 20 modules complete
At A1 you understood first and heard last. From B1 it is the other way round: the story reaches your ears before your eyes. The text stays closed until your listening has earned it.
Ears first. The ear is slower than the eye — that is normal, and it is exactly why it goes first now. Two listens before any text is not a punishment; it is how the language gets in.
You will meet the same story four times — and the text only appears on the third pass. Then come the modules: nineteen tasks across the six skills, on this story and on the unit's Culture File, and the game closes the chapter.
Each check needs 70–80% to open the next step. And a difference from A1: there is no help on a first miss. Get it wrong, you simply try again. Only a second miss opens support — and only on the hardest questions. At this level, the struggle is part of the method.
You have finished the book. From here the chapter works in modules: each one a double page with the full text on one side and ten exercises on the other. Modules 6–12 work on the argument; modules 13–19 work on the unit's Culture File — A Nation of Queues, the half Josh calls The Evidence. The game closes the chapter.
The rules have not changed since B1: the text does not underline where answers live, and there is no help on a first miss — you look again yourself. Miss the same check twice and support opens, on the hardest questions only. What has changed is the speed — 150 words a minute, two speakers who interrupt each other, and an argument instead of a story.
This chapter runs on the perfect family — three ways of looking back. One counts what is done, one measures what is still running, and one steps back from a moment in the past. Not to memorise — to consult until you stop needing it.
| form | what it aims at | from the story | signals |
|---|---|---|---|
| present perfect simple have stood | counting finished experiences and results, up to now | I've stood in some queues in my life. · Even the internet has worked out that people will wait. | ever · never · in my life · twice · already |
| present perfect continuous have been standing | one activity still running — how long, not how many | You've been telling this story ever since. · It has been running for eighty years. · I've been reading the history. | for two days · since Tuesday · ever since · all week |
| past perfect (simple & continuous) had moved · had been standing | the step back — what led up to a past moment | By the time I reached the counter, I had been standing for twenty minutes. · It hadn't moved. · The story had become true. | by the time · by lunchtime · already, in a past story |
“How long are you waiting?” is wrong — English measures waiting-up-to-now with the perfect: “How long have you been waiting?”
And the count refuses the continuous: three finished queues today is a total, so “I've stood in three queues today” — not “I've been standing in three queues”, because the continuous measures one unfinished stretch, never a score.
Josh's evidence file: a French word for a tail, the wartime birth of the orderly queue in January 1940, Wimbledon's tented Queue with its own code of conduct, the ten-mile line of September 2022 — and why even the internet gives you a number. The full text sits beside every module.
🎧 Listen to the Culture File
Three stars closes the chapter properly. The game opens in a new page and keeps its own best score.