English Together · B2 First · Britain, Arguably · Unit Guide

Unit 1: A Nation of Queues

A one-page companion to the unit — read it after your first listen, keep it for revision week.

What this unit teaches

The grammar of the unit: the perfect aspect, across all its forms. Present perfect simple for experience and results (“I have stood in some queues in my life”); present perfect continuous for activities still running (“I've been holding a grudge since Tuesday”); past perfect, simple and continuous, to step further back inside a story (“By the time I reached the counter, I had been standing there for twenty minutes”). Two questions choose the form: is the time frame open or closed — and is the sentence about the activity or its result?

The 20 words and idioms of the unit (queueing and its politics):

queue · queue-jumping · orderly etiquette · unwritten rule resentment · glare · tut barge in · hold your tongue fair play · first come, first served checkout · stand in line seethe · courtesy · huff flout · take turns · give way

Three questions worth arguing about

This world runs on disagreement. Take a side, defend it for a minute, then swap sides — that double turn is exactly what B2 Speaking Part 4 rewards.

1Is queueing really about fairness — or about avoiding conversation?

Maya's answer and Josh's answer are both in the episode. Steal their best lines, then add your own.

2What have you been putting up with lately without saying a word?

Built to force present perfect continuous — and a small confession. “I've been putting up with … for …”

3Has waiting changed since everything went online — or has it just moved?

The unit's second Talking Point. There is no correct answer; there is only a well-defended one.

How to use the episode (10 minutes)

Ears first — listen to the whole episode before opening the task page. At B2, listen once for the argument, once for the language.
Two halves: The Argument (Maya's post-office grudge, and what it does and doesn't prove) and The Evidence (Josh's history: the wartime queue, Wimbledon, the great queue of 2022).
Both Talking Points, out loud. The second one — the follow-up — is where B2 candidates separate themselves. Record both versions and listen back.
Hunt the aspect. On your second pass with the transcript, every perfect form is highlighted. For each one, ask: why not past simple here? If you can answer, the grammar is yours.

The game and the argument

In “The Queue” you navigate nine British lines — the post office, the checkout snake, Wimbledon's tents, the ten-mile queue of 2022 — and every wrong option is an error B2 candidates really make (“I am been waiting”, “since an hour”). One scene is a raw key word transformation: the exact reflex Use of English Part 4 tests six times.

Language point of the week

“For” vs “since” — the two-second check. For + a length (“for twenty minutes”, “for two days”); since + a starting point (“since Tuesday”, “since 1940”). The episode uses both a dozen times, always with a perfect form. In transformations, swapping one for the other with the right aspect is a whole mark: “I started waiting an hour ago” → “I have been waiting for an hour.”

What NOT to do: don't learn the idioms as translations — learn them as scenes. A tut is not a word, it's the post office at minute fifteen. When the exam asks about tone and attitude, scenes are what you'll remember.