În cursul de engleză pe care-l predau am dat peste un text-exercițiu care mi s-a părut demn de a rămâne pentru poterioritate. Care variante sunt corecte? Merită să vă riscați. E mai ușor după o primă lectură de conturare a ansamblului.
„Apparently, there was this guy working for a financial services company in the City. Anyway, it (a) was being / had been a really tough year, so he (b) decided / was deciding to take a nice long holiday. He (c) just cleared / was just clearing his desk, when he (d) suddenly remembered / had suddenly remembered what (e) was happening / had happened the last time he (f) was / was being off work. He (g) was coming / had come back to an inbox containing hundreds of e-mails. So this time he (h) came up / had come up with a bright idea to prevent it happening again.
What he (i) did / was doing was this: he (j) set / had set his computer to automatically send a message to anyone e-mailing him, telling them that he (k) was / had been in the Caribbean for two weeks and not to e-mail him again till he (l) got / was getting back. Then, just as he (m) was leaving / had left the office, he (n) thought / was thinking he would e-mail his best friend and tell him all about his plans.
Unfortunately, his best friend, who (o) was going / had gone on holiday the day before, (p) was setting up / had set up his computer in exactly the same way. So the two PCs (q) proceeded / were proceeding to e-mail each other every few seconds for the whole fortnight, while these two guys (r) were enjoying / had enjoyed themselves on holiday, totally unaware. I (s) heard / had heard that so many messages (t) were finally building up / had finally built up on the company’s server, that it (u) crashed / was crashing, costing the firm millions! True story. Austin in accounts told me.”
