Late in the afternoon, the boys put up their tent in the middle of a field.

[diamondcutter]

Lesson 27 A wet night
Late in the afternoon, the boys put up their tent in the middle of a field. As soon as this was done, they cooked a meal over an open fire. They were all hungry and the food smelled good. After a wonderful meal, they told stories and sang songs by the campfire. But some time later it began to rain. The boys felt tired so they pet out the fire and crept into their tent. Their sleeping bags were warm and comfortable, so they all slept soundly. In the middle of the night, two boys woke up and began shouting. The tent was full of water! They all leapt out of their sleeping bags and hurried outside. It was raining heavily and they found that a stream had formed in the field. The stream wound its way across the field and then flowed right under their tent!
(New Concept English 2, Longman)

For this text, I wonder whether you think the text will be more complete if we add these sentences at the beginning of it.

Last Sunday, a group o boys went for a picnic. They had a great time during the day. Late in the afternoon, ...

Many thanks in advance.

 

[emsr2d2]

I don't know what you mean by "the text will be more complete". We don't know that they spent Sunday afternoon having a picnic before doing the rest of the activities. For all we know, they might all have spent the day at their respective homes before meeting up late in the afternoon to go camping.

 

[jutfrank]

Yes, sure it will be more 'complete' because you have added background context.

 

[emsr2d2]

What aspect of English was Lesson 27 trying to cover?

 

[diamondcutter]

What aspect of English was Lesson 27 trying to cover?

The grammar in Lesson 27 is about the simple past.

I think this text is designed to teach language not writing because it is not an article which is complete enough. For example, the first sentence says 'the boys'. But the readers don't know what boys. So, I think this text should be an excerpt from a longer passage. Do you agree?

 

[jutfrank]

I see what you mean, yes. The text seems to be just an excerpt from a story, rather than a full story.

 

[emsr2d2]

Yes, I immediately assumed that it was an excerpt from a longer text (or at least it was written to sound like one).