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Tom's Diner, a Listening Exercise

Materials

• Teacher's Sheet
• Worksheet for Students

A listening exercise where students listen to the song Tom's Diner by Suzanne Vega and fill in missing verbs in the Present Continuous. Then students discuss the song and why the Present Continuous tense is used instead of the traditional past simple. You can find it on iTunes or almost any music download site.

Warm Up

Go through some vocabulary: diner, umbrella, horoscope, funnies, reflection, hitching, stockings, cathedral, picnic

The Song

Now hand out the Worksheet for Students and have students listen to fill in the missing words. All the missing words are verbs in the Present Continuous (You might chose to tell them this or not). Play the song 1 or 2 times until students feel confident. Now go over the missing verbs. The Teacher's Sheet has the complete lyrics. Ask students which verb tense the missing verbs are in (the main verb tense of the song). Point out that the song is a story and usually we tell stories in past simple. Ask them what the effect of the Present Continuous is.
Possible answers: it feels like the song is happening right now as we listen, it makes it more immediate, more real, it's a description of one particular day and not a usual routine, it makes actions seem like they take a long time, a lazy morning coffee before the train comes.

Now ask students to find the verbs in the Present Simple and explain why they think those verbs are not in Present Continuous.
Answers

1. he fills it only halfway: focus on the completed action, the fact that it is half full
2. before I even argue: she doesn't even start to argue, focus on concept of arguing
3. is always nice to see you: Key word: always, also statement of opinion
4. look the other way: Completed action
5. pour the milk: completed action
6. open up the paper: focus on completed action of opening paper
7. There is a story of an actor: statement of fact
8. raise: completed action
9. see me/does not see me: see almost never takes continuous form, especially when it means looking at something.
10. finish up my coffee; completed action (also as the song ends, maybe we are moving to a different sense of actions)
11. is time to catch the train: completed action (also as the song ends, maybe we are moving to a different sense of actions)

Quickly go over the vocabulary words you did in the warm-up in context and make sure students understand. Go over any other vocab words.

Now look at the second set of questions on the worksheet. Go over the comprehension questions and get student opinions and ideas. Some of these answers are open to interpretation.

Finally note the fun fact. Students might be interested that the engineer who was developing the MP3 format--designed to use less memory than CD format--was trying to figure out how to keep good quality in a smaller file. She heard this song playing on the radio in a colleague's office and decided that because Suzanne Vega's voice was so warm and you could hear details like her breathing, it would be the perfect test song to make sure the quality of MP3s was good. So Suzanne Vega helped invent MP3s!

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