Everyone makes mistakes. You may step on someone's foot in a crowd, speak loudly where sick people are resting, or break a rule without meaning to. What matters is what you do next. A person who says sorry quickly and honestly keeps their friends and earns respect. A person who stays silent turns a small mistake into a big one. This unit is about the many ways English speakers say sorry, and about the kindness of forgiving someone who apologises.

This short song asks forgiveness from friends, parents, teachers and even the earth itself. Sing it slowly and notice who the singer says sorry to in each line.

The song teaches two things at once. First, an apology can be for things we did knowingly and for things we did without knowing. Second, a true apology carries a promise: I promise not to hurt you any more.

Once upon a time there was a king. One day he set out on a tour with his ministers, taking his royal security and his courtiers along with him.

On the way, the king took a rest under the shade of a mango tree in a mango garden. Suddenly a stone hit him on his forehead, and it started bleeding immediately. The pain was intolerable, and the king had no idea who had thrown the stone. His security left at once to find the person. After a long search they found only an old lady there. When they asked her if she had thrown any stone recently, she replied, "Yes, I threw a stone at the mango tree." But when they asked, "Did you throw any stone at the king?" the woman did not answer. She only turned pale. She was arrested and presented before the king.

The old woman trembled with immense fear and prayed that they would not kill her. When she saw the blood flowing down the king's face she became even more upset and felt hopeless. "What will happen to me?" she thought. The king, very calmly, asked her, "Did you throw the stone at me?" She replied, "Your Majesty, I threw the stone at the mango tree." "Why?" the king asked. In fear she explained that her child had been starving for two days. She had been collecting food for him but could not find any. She hoped that if she threw a stone at the mango tree, a mango would fall and she could feed her son. The stone had hit the king by mistake. Then she bowed down before the king, begging an excuse for her mistake.

The king was kind hearted, so he understood the situation very well. He forgave her mistake and ordered his security personnel not to punish her. Instead, he ordered them to give her some money and food.

These are the words from the story that you should be able to use in your own sentences.

• royal: belonging to a king or queen. The royal security guards the king.
• courtier: a person who attends the king at his court.
• shade: the cool, darker area under a tree where sunlight does not reach.
• intolerable: so bad that it cannot be borne. The pain was intolerable.
• threw: past tense of throw. She threw a stone at the mango tree.
• trembled: shook with fear or cold.
• immense: extremely great. She trembled with immense fear.
• personnel: the people who work for an organisation, such as the security personnel.

Read these two short conversations aloud with a partner. In both of them, one person politely points out a mistake and the other apologises at once.

English has different sorry phrases for different sizes of mistake. A tiny slip that hurts only yourself needs just a word, like Whoops. A mistake that troubles another person needs a fuller apology, and a serious one needs an offer to put things right. Match each situation below with its apology.

Now practise with a partner. Look at each of these five situations, decide who speaks first, and act out the conversation. One of you points out the problem politely, and the other apologises and offers to put it right.

When you listen to English speakers apologising, your job is to catch the sorry words and the reason behind them. Speakers rarely say only sorry. They say what the mistake was, why it happened, and what they will do about it. Listen for phrases such as I'm sorry, I'm really sorry, I'm terribly sorry, please forgive me, I apologise, sorry to bother you and sorry to keep you waiting. Then listen for the reason that follows, because the reason answers most of the questions you will be asked.

Study these pairs. Each positive sentence has a matching negative one, and every negative can be written two ways: a short form for speaking and a full form for careful writing.

To change a positive sentence into a negative one, follow this method.

• Find the helping verb in the sentence: is, am, are, was, were, have, has, can, will.
• If there is a helping verb, put not straight after it. They are playing cricket becomes They are not playing cricket.
• If there is no helping verb, borrow do, does or did. Use does for he, she and it in the present, do for the others, and did for the past.
• Put not after do, does or did, and change the main verb back to its base form. She spends becomes She does not spend.

Here is a real example of a reply letter. Ms. Shaw is renting a flat and wrote to the owner, Mrs. Janet MacDonald, complaining about problems in it. On March 18th, from 19 Burns Avenue, Peebles, Scotland, Janet MacDonald wrote back. She begins, "Thank you for your letter," says she is sorry to hear about the problems with the flat, admits she cannot solve them all, but promises to try to be helpful. Then she answers the three complaints one by one.

Janet ends by apologising once more: she is sorry she cannot come to inspect the flat personally, because she lives rather a long way off. She signs off with Yours sincerely, Janet MacDonald. Notice how often a polite letter uses I'm sorry: to show sympathy, to refuse gently, and to explain why she cannot visit. Learn these words from the letter: a flat is a set of rooms to live in on one floor of a building; to solve a problem is to find the answer to it; suitable means right for the purpose; to inspect something is to look at it carefully; moved in means started living in a new home.

Now you can write an apology of your own. Imagine you were rude to your friend at school and you want to say sorry and promise it will not happen again. A short apology letter has these parts, in this order.

• The date, and your address below it.
• A greeting: Dear and your friend's name, followed by a comma.
• The apology itself, naming the mistake clearly. Do not hide it.
• The honest reason, without turning the reason into a false excuse.
• A promise not to repeat the mistake, and an offer to put things right.
• A closing: Yours sincerely, and your name.

Here is a model you can learn the shape from.

June 14th. Bagbazar, Kathmandu.

Dear Sunita, I am really sorry for shouting at you during the games period yesterday. I was upset about losing the match, but that was no reason to be rude to you. You have always been kind to me, and I felt ashamed the whole evening. I promise I will never speak to you like that again. Please forgive me, and let us play together tomorrow as usual. Yours sincerely, Anisha.

An apology email follows the same idea with a slightly different shape. Instead of the date and address at the top, an email has a subject line, such as Apology for missing your class. To apologise to your teacher for not attending class, begin with Dear Sir or Dear Madam, say sorry for being absent, give the true reason, promise to catch up on the missed work, and end with your name and class. Type it in the computer lab and read it once before you press send.

Every word in an English sentence belongs to a word class, which tells you the job that word does. These four classes do most of the work in the sentences you read and write.

Try it on one sentence from the story: The old woman trembled with immense fear. Woman and fear are nouns, trembled is a verb, old and immense are adjectives. Now find the adverb in the sentence The king very calmly asked her. Calmly describes how he asked, so calmly is the adverb, and very is an adverb describing calmly.

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