Lesson 1 · Time

A letter from a watch, and a crack in light itself

An original short story about a granddaughter and a logbook that knows too much; a 90-second listening on what real physics actually says about time bending; and one olympiad-style question that pulls both together. We finish with a short piece of writing — done here, on the lesson, not at home.

Level
B1+
Duration
60 min
Formats
Olympiad · IELTS · Exam Practice
Writing
5–7 sentences
Voyager · a 4-episode quest

One man's life, told through the four instruments that finally let him speak — a watch, a signal, a blink, a letter.

  1. L1 · Watchmaker (you're here). Winter 1995. An old clockmaker, his granddaughter Mia, and a stranger of thirty who came in to fix a watch. That night the clockmaker writes one line about the visitor in the family logbook: "Mind is still wound." The visitor's name is Theo Marshall.
  2. L2 · Are we alone? Twenty years on. Mia — grown up — sits at a SETI console in the Atacama. Her senior on the shift, Dr Naomi Reyes, reads the final broadcast. What Proxima returns is not a message but a rhythm: three short, two long, every nineteen seconds — the same rhythm the clockmaker once drew.
  3. L3 · Whose mind? Naomi has crossed the corridor from SETI to neurology. Her newest patient has been locked-in for three years — and is blinking on the same nineteen-second rhythm. Eleven weeks of blinks spell the watchmaker's line, letter by letter.
  4. L4 · The night the letter arrived. Day 42 after Naomi goes public with the case. An envelope is placed by the patient's bed. At 3:17 a.m. he blinks one word — FATHER. Naomi had known who he was all along.
01

Warm-up — speaking

two minutes · then borrow one phrase from the model below

Imagine a letter arrives, addressed to you, from yourself ten years older. ♪ tap to hear

Talk for about two minutes. Don't plan — just start. Then read the sample model below and steal one or two phrases for next time.

Model · steal a phrase

"If I received that letter — say, from myself at twenty-seven — the first thing I would want to know is what kind of person wrote it. Was the older me proud of how I lived, or simply tired? I think I would trust advice less than I would trust a warning, because advice can be wrong, but a warning is usually written by someone who has already lost. The most powerful thing about the letter would not be its content, but the fact that, somewhere, a version of me had the patience to sit down and address me as a stranger."

Why these phrases: they show three olympiad moves — (1) reframe the question, (2) prefer a sharper word (advice vs warning), (3) lift the focus from what to that. Borrow one for Section 7.
02

Words for today

tap any card to flip · tap the word to hear it · these ten will come back in every section
timeline
n
хронология, ход событий
the order in which events happen over time
twist
n
неожиданный поворот
a sudden surprise in a story
consequence
n
последствие
a result of an earlier action
deserve
v
заслуживать
to earn something through your actions
eventually
adv
в конце концов
after a long time, in the end
contradict
v
противоречить
to say or be the opposite of
prediction
n
предсказание
a guess about what will happen
fade
v
постепенно исчезать
to slowly disappear
regret
n/v
сожаление; сожалеть
feeling sorry about a past choice
interfere
v
вмешиваться
to get involved in something that is not your business
Heads up: the harder physics words — paradox, relativity, neutrino, nanosecond — show up inside the story and listening as tap-to-hear highlights. You meet them in context, not as a list.
03

Reading — short story

about 320 words · written for this lesson
An old wooden desk by a window — a logbook open under a brass lamp, an antique clock, full moon outside

The Watchmaker's Apology

Mia's grandfather had been a watchmaker for fifty-three years before the accident. He could disassemble a pocket watch in the dark and rebuild it by morning. After the stroke, he could no longer hold a screwdriver, and he stopped speaking almost entirely. Mia visited him every Sunday and read aloud from his old logbooks — careful, dated entries about which gears he had cleaned and which springs he had replaced.

One Sunday in November, while reading the entry for 14 March 1987, Mia noticed something she had read past for months. The customer for that day was a young woman named — Mia Andreevna Markova. Mia's own name. Her own patronymic. Her own surname.

Below the customer's name, in her grandfather's careful handwriting, was a short note:

"She does not know yet. Tell her, gently, that she will. The watch she will bring me has no fault — only that it has been wound the wrong way for a very long time."

Mia set the logbook down. She was eighteen years old. The date 14 March 1987 was nineteen years before her own birth.

Her grandfather, who had not spoken for four months, opened his eyes and looked at her.

"Mia," he said, very slowly. "Do not be afraid of the date. You will go. You will not change anything that matters. You will only — adjust."

She asked him what he meant. He smiled the way a watchmaker smiles when the spring finally clicks into place — and closed his eyes again.

By the next Sunday, the logbook entry was still there. The handwriting was still his. But the name on the line for 14 March had changed. It now read, in slightly fresher ink: delivered, returned safely, never asked again.

Quick check

1
Mia's grandfather had stopped speaking before the Sunday she found her own name in the logbook.
2
The grandfather's note suggests Mia will travel back to him because she chooses to.
3
According to the grandfather, what is Mia allowed to do when she goes?
4
Why does the logbook entry change between Sundays?
For me — answer keys (Quick check) open if needed
  1. True — grandfather had stopped speaking before that Sunday («for four months»).
  2. False — the grandfather frames it as inevitability («You will go»), not a free choice.
  3. b — «adjust but not change anything important».
  4. c — Mia has gone and come back; the trip is now part of the recorded past.
Original story written for this lesson · NG English · L1 · Time
04

Listening — what physics actually says about time

about 90 seconds · listen twice · the script is hidden until after the questions
Underground tunnel with a glowing cyan particle beam — OPERA-style detector

A short factual piece. Take notes on three points: (1) what the 2011 CERN experiment claimed, (2) the GPS correction figure, (3) Hawking's position on direction of time travel.

Script (open after the questions):
In 2011, a team at CERN — the European centre for particle physics in Geneva — fired a beam of tiny particles called neutrinos toward a detector 730 kilometres away in Italy. The result, when it came in, was so strange that the scientists rechecked it 15,000 times. The neutrinos seemed to arrive sixty nanoseconds — that is, sixty billionths of a second — earlier than light would have. If the result was real, one of physics's most cherished rules — that nothing travels faster than light — had to be rethought. The result was later traced to a faulty cable in the experiment. But the question it asked is still alive. Einstein's relativity tells us that clocks closer to a large mass — like a planet — tick more slowly than clocks far above. This is not just a theory; it is the reason your phone needs to add about thirty-eight microseconds to its GPS signal every day. Without that correction, your map would drift by ten kilometres in twenty-four hours. So time, in physics, is not the steady backdrop most of us imagine. It bends near gravity. It runs at different rates for travellers at different speeds. The physicist Stephen Hawking once said that travel into the future — even by millions of years — would, in principle, be allowed by these laws. Travel into the past, he believed, was off limits: it would break the rule that a cause must come before its effect.

Check your notes

1
The neutrinos appeared to arrive at the detector how much earlier than light?
2
The CERN result was later found to be caused by:
3
Without the daily GPS correction, your map would drift by:
4
Why does Hawking believe travel into the past is impossible?
For me — answer keys (Listening) open if needed
  1. b — 60 nanoseconds (sixty billionths of a second).
  2. c — a faulty cable in the experiment.
  3. d — ten kilometres a day (without the GPS correction).
  4. a — it would break the rule that a cause must come before its effect.
Original listening script · NG English · L1 · Time
05

Lex-gram mixed cloze — olympiad practice

school / municipal stage standard · 10 gaps · 6 lexical (choose A / B / C / D) + 4 grammatical (write one word)
Two faces in profile mirrored under a night sky with clocks and a full moon

Read the text. For gaps 1–6 choose A, B, C or D. For gaps 7–10 write ONE word. Theme follows today's lesson — time, physics, memory.

Time, in everyday life, (1) more like a habit than a science. We wake up, we eat, we go to bed, and we are quietly (2) that the day moves at the same speed for everyone. (3) Einstein, the same speed cannot be guaranteed: a clock on a fast train ticks more slowly than a clock on the platform. The difference is tiny, but it is (4) real that GPS engineers must build it (5) their math every day. Hawking later (6) something almost poetic — that travel into the future is, in principle, possible, (7) travel into the past would break the rule (8) which cause comes before effect. Whether or not he was right, the question itself has changed (9) way we talk about memory: we remember the past, (10) the future, because the past is the direction of greater disorder.

Lexical gaps · 1–6

1
2
3
4
5
6

Grammatical gaps · 7–10 · write ONE word

7
8
9
10
For me — keys + what this trains open if needed

Lexical keys (1–6):

  1. B — feels (collocation: «time feels»)
  2. A — sure («quietly sure that…»)
  3. B — Since (causal: «since Einstein, the same speed cannot…»)
  4. A — so («so X that Y» construction)
  5. A — into («build it into their math»)
  6. A — said (neutral reporting verb)

Grammatical keys (7–10):

  1. while (или whereas, but) — contrast
  2. by (или under) — preposition with «which» relative clause
  3. the — definite article with «way + relative clause»
  4. not — negation in parallel structure

Что тренирует: collocation, дискурсивные коннекторы (since vs before), constructions so…that, артикли с уникальной референцией, предлоги с relative clauses. Все 4 «открытых» пропуска — типичная грамматика школьного/муниципального этапа.

06

Speaking — pick the format

two parallel tracks · IELTS cue-card or olympiad monologue + dialogue

Classic IELTS Part 2 cue-card. 1 min prep · 1.5–2 min monologue.

Describe a moment when you were proven wrong about something.

You should say:

  • what you used to believe
  • how you found out you were wrong
  • whether you accepted it immediately
  • and explain what changed in your thinking afterwards.
0:00

Follow-up (after the monologue)

  • Are some people better than others at admitting they were wrong? What makes the difference?
  • Should schools teach students how to lose an argument well?
Cue-card format follows British Council IELTS · takeielts.britishcouncil.org

Real all-Russian olympiad oral format (regional / final stage). 3 min prep · 2 min monologue · 2 min dialogue with the teacher.

Topic — defend your position

Schools should teach physics through stories like the watchmaker's, not only through formulas.

Your monologue must contain:

  • a clear position (agree / disagree / partly)
  • two reasons with one concrete example each
  • one objection you anticipate, and your response to it
  • a closing sentence connecting back to today's reading or listening
0:00

Dialogue questions (teacher asks one)

  • How would your position change if the audience were primary-school children, not university students?
  • Pick one concept from today's listening (relativity, GPS clocks, faster-than-light) and explain it for a ten-year-old in 30 seconds.
  • If you had to choose one formula-only and one story-only lesson, in what order would you give them — and why?
For me — how to run this open if needed
  • Этот format — регион/финал ВсОШ. Не путать с IELTS — here нет шаблона «what you should say», нужно защитить позицию.
  • Подготовка 3 мин — он пишет план в блокноте, не печатает в окно. Заметки на русском OK, монолог на английском.
  • Монолог 2 мин — слушай не перебивая. Засеки time. После — задай 1 из dialogue-вопросов.
  • Диалог 2 мин — это обсуждение, не допрос. Жюри ищет умение поддержать, развить, согласиться/возразить.
  • 4 категории оценки: communicative task fulfillment, organization, lexical/grammatical accuracy, phonetics.
06+

Speech tracker · check your pace

Right after your monologue (IELTS or olympiad), press the mic and re-deliver it. The tracker counts your words and gives WPM with a verdict against B2+ targets.

07

Use of English — olympiad practice

two standard task types from the school / municipal stage · cloze + sentence transformation
Glowing handwritten cards arranged in a flow-chart on a vintage night desk

A · Multiple-choice cloze (6 gaps)

Read the short text. For each gap, choose A, B, C or D. Same passage you already met in lesson — the practice is about precise word choice.

Time travel has always (1) writers, but for most of human history it was kept at the safe distance of fiction. The 2011 CERN result, brief as it was, briefly (2) that distance — for a few months, the idea felt like proper science again. The experiment itself was eventually (3) to a faulty cable, yet (4) effect on public thinking was very real. Once you have asked the question seriously, it is much (5) to put back into the box, and a careful answer matters (6) than ever.

1
2
3
4
5
6
For me — cloze answer key (A)open if needed
  1. B — fascinated (collocation: «time travel has always fascinated writers»)
  2. A — closed (closed the distance)
  3. A — traced (traced to a faulty cable)
  4. C — the (the effect — definite article with a specific consequence)
  5. B — harder (much harder to put back)
  6. C — more (more than ever)

B · Sentence transformation (4 items)

Rewrite the second sentence so it means the same as the first, using the word in CAPITALS. Write between 2 and 4 words. The capitalised word must stay unchanged.

1. Hawking said that travel into the past would never be allowed.
According to Hawking, travel into the past WOULD ____________ be allowed.
Model: would never
2. Nobody had ever measured a particle faster than light before this experiment.
This experiment was the FIRST ____________ a particle had been measured faster than light.
Model: first time
3. The grandfather did not explain his reasons in any detail.
The grandfather AVOIDED ____________ his reasons in any detail.
Model: avoided explaining (or just explaining)
4. If the cable had not been faulty, the result would have been different.
Had the cable NOT ____________, the result would have been different.
Model: not been faulty
For me — what this trains open if needed
  • Cloze trains collocation + register: fascinated by, traced to, closed the distance, definite article with abstract effects. Real ВсОШ school-stage format.
  • Transformation trains: modal+adverb order (would never), the first time + present perfect, avoid + gerund, inversion in mixed conditionals.
  • If Vanya угадывает не вспоминая правило — спроси «почему именно это, а не C?» — он сам перейдёт от чутья к объяснению. Это то что меряют олимпиадные жюри.
08

Mini-writing · finish here

5–7 sentences · no homework · we read it together at the end
An open journal under starlight — compass and antique clock on the desk, constellations above

The grandfather's rule was «adjust, do not change». Do you keep that rule in your own life, or do you sometimes try to change things that aren't yours to change?

5–7 sentences. Take a position. Use two ideas from today (the watchmaker's note, Hawking's «cause before effect», anything else that stuck) and at least three vocab words.

Mini-writing · in-class only0 words

What's next

You just finished L1 of Voyager — the time block.

In L2 · Are we alone? we keep the same routine — short reading, short listening, speaking, mini-write — but the question turns outward. Drake equation, Fermi paradox, the idea that the chemistry of life may have arrived from space. Same words come back: consequence, prediction, eventually, contradict — just on a wider stage.

Your vocab box carries with you. See you next Sunday.

📚 Homework · olympiad practice tap to open

Three short olympiad-style tasks on related themes — memory, cause, prediction. Do at home in any order. Not required, but the lesson sticks better when you try at least one.

A · Word formation (5 items)

Read the sentence. Use the word in CAPITALS to form a word that fits the gap.

1. The result was so strange that the team's first reaction was complete ______ (BELIEVE).
2. Time, in physics, does not flow at a ______ rate for every observer (STEAD).
3. A single ______ measurement can shake decades of theory (FAULT).
4. Mia did not change the past — her grandfather had already ______ what she would do (PREDICT).
5. Hawking's view was ______ optimistic: the future open, the past closed (CAUTION).

B · Mini cloze · memory (5 gaps, 4 options each)

Choose A, B, C or D for each gap.

We rarely remember a year as a whole. Instead, the mind (1) a few sharp moments and lets the rest (2). The ones that stay tend (3) the rule of context: a strong emotion, an unusual place, an unexpected face. Years later we are surprised at (4) we kept and what we lost. Memory, in this sense, is closer to editing than (5) recording.

1
2
3
4
5

C · Reading T / F / NG · «The Watchmaker's Apology»

Re-read the story carefully (Section 03). For each statement, choose True, False, or Not Given. Trains close reading — the same skill judges look at on the regional Reading round.

1
Mia's grandfather had worked as a watchmaker for over fifty years before the accident.
2
Mia found her own full name in the logbook the first time she opened it.
3
According to the note, the watch Mia will bring is broken and beyond repair.
4
The grandfather spoke to Mia in Russian.
5
By the next Sunday, the entry for 14 March had a different name written on the customer line.
6
The grandfather opened his eyes after months of silence.
For me — model answers open if needed

Word formation answers:

  1. disbelief
  2. steady
  3. faulty
  4. predicted
  5. cautiously

Mini-cloze answers: 1-B (keeps), 2-C (fade), 3-A (to share), 4-B (what), 5-D (to).

Reading T/F/NG answers: 1-T (53 years), 2-F (had read past for months), 3-F (no fault — only wound the wrong way), 4-NG (язык не указан), 5-T (name had changed), 6-T (had not spoken for four months + opened his eyes).