TOBAY Beach
Since I was a little girl, I have been going to TOBAY Beach in the summer. My father took us there every weekend and during his summer vacations. He always said that our beach was one of the best beaches in the world with beautiful white sand and clean water, so he did not want to go on a beach vacation anywhere else. He was a distance swimmer, so he was able to teach us to swim and protect us. When my son was younger, I also took him to TOBAY Beach with his friends, but their mother was afraid of the water and could not swim, so every joint trip was fraught with her anxiety. For a while, I seldom went, but somehow I have found my interest in my favorite beach again and have received a lifetime pass, and even when I do not go, I can watch it on the new beach cam.
Vocabulary
TOBAY Beach (noun) -- the Town of Oyster Bay Beach, a private beach for residents of the town
distance swimmer (noun) -- a person who swims for miles in the sea
fraught (with) (adjective + preposition) -- filled with something negative
anxiety (noun) -- a feeling of worry
seldom (adverb) -- not often
cam (noun) -- short for camcorder (a video camera, in this case, one that livestreams or shows live pictures of the beach)
Vocabulary Cloze Exercise: Fill in the blanks with the correct vocabulary word.
Yesterday the children wanted to play in the sand and swim in the waves, so we drove down to ____________________. I ____________ swim now, but I love to watch my grandchildren play in the water. My son can swim for miles because he is a _____________________. When I could not see the children from my chair, I was __________ with ______________, but then I saw them on the beach ________ and stopped worrying. We had a good day at the beach.
Grammar Point:
The paragraph has several verb tenses: present, past, present perfect, and present perfect continuous. These tenses are used to show the different times involved in the paragraph. You can review the tenses with Jennifer's ESL videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWIEjx8bz5Y
The past tense verbs are underlined in the paragraph above. Regular verbs end in -ed in the past tense, but irregular verbs may have a vowel or other change. For example, take becomes took in the past tense.
For practice, write a 5-sentence paragraph about someplace you visited using the past tense.
