W riting 6 Lo scrittore di fantascienza Isaac Asimov, in una sua storia The Fun They Had ambientata nel 2155, racconta del ritrovamento di un vero libro che parla di una scuola molto differente da quella del futuro. Coniuga i verbi della trama al Past Simple (active and passive) e al Past Continuous. found On May 17, 2155 a boy, Tom, (0) (find) an old real book in the attic of his (tell) his sister home. He (1) Maggie about it and they were amazed to read words that (2) (stand) still on pages instead of moving like on their television screens. Besides, if they (3) (turn) back to the page before, they found the same words they (4) (read) for the first time! Tom said that books (5) (be) a waste, because on his television screen he had millions of books; when you (6) (finished) an old type of book, you just threw it away. Maggie (7) (ask) Tom what the book was about and she felt disappointed when Tom (8) (tell) her that it was about school. Maggie didn t like school at all! She (9) (give) lots of geography tests by the mechanical teacher, but she always (10) (fail) them, until her mother (11) (call) an inspector to come and repair it. Maggie hoped he (12) (not / be able) to, but in less than an hour the large and (mend) again. black screen (13) Tom told Maggie that centuries before, students (14) (have) a man or a woman as a teacher. This was strange for Maggie, because a person couldn t know as much as a mechanical teacher. However, Maggie (15) (become) more curious when Tom told her that students (16) (go) to school all together in a special building, so she (17) (start) to read the book. Anyway, her mother (18) (call) her for the lesson: with a sigh, Maggie went into a room where the screen (19) (lit) up and it told her to put her homework in the proper slot. The lesson was about Arithmetic, but Maggie wasn t paying (think) about all attention: she (20) the children going to school together, laughing and shouting, sitting in the same classrooms and helping each other with their homework; she was thinking of the kids in the past who (21) (love) their school and had a lot of fun, which she (22) (have) instead! USEFUL WORDS disappointed = deluso; to mend = riparare; sigh = sospiro; screen = schermo; slot = alloggiamento; still = immobile; waste = spreco. 79