| File | Language point | Example from story | |------|----------------|---------------------| | 1A | Greetings & introductions | “Hello, what’s your name?” | | 2B | Present simple (he/she/it) | “She lives downstairs.” | | 5C | Can/can’t for ability | “I can’t do my grammar exercises.” | | 7C | Weather vocabulary | “Rainy, cloudy, windy, humid.” | | 8A | I’d like to… / Can I…? | “I’d like to speak to the manager.” | | 9A | Prepositions of time (at/in/on) | “At 10:47 PM, the Wi-Fi came back.” | | 10C | Past simple (regular/irregular) | “A truck hit a pole.” / “They sat in a circle.” |

“What?” Rob asked.

“That’s not true,” Jenny said. But she smiled a little.

Jake reached behind the TV and unplugged the router.

Rob stood up. “I know what we do. We go back to File 1 .”

For a moment, nobody moved.

“No,” Rob said. “I mean we go back to the old way . Page 4. ‘Getting to know you.’ We talk. Face to face. No screens.”

The truth was worse. A truck had hit a telephone pole at the end of Lake Street. The super said it would be eight hours before the internet came back.

Jenny sat at the small kitchen table. Her laptop was open to File 8A (“I’d like to speak to the manager”). She had a test tomorrow. But she wasn’t studying. She was staring at her phone.

Would you like a worksheet, comprehension questions, or a role-play activity based on this story?

Then Carol knocked on the door. She lived in the apartment downstairs. She was holding a bag of pretzels and a worn copy of American English File 1 . “I saw the truck hit the pole. I figured you guys were dying of boredom.”

Rob laughed. “You’re not going to fail. You know more English than most people born here.”