Places do not stay the same. A hill that was thick with trees twenty years ago may be bare today. A quiet corner where people rested may now be a busy road. When we put a picture of the past beside a picture of the present, the changes jump out at us. Look at these two pictures of the same hill.

The first hill used to be covered with trees, so the soil held firm. In the second picture many trees have been cut, and a landslide has swept down the slope. Now compare a second pair of pictures. They show the same spot in a village at two different times.

People often remember their childhood with a smile. This song is sung by someone who dreams about the days when she played with her friends for hours, forgetting food, rain and tiredness. Sing it aloud and notice how many lines talk about things that happened again and again in the past.

The song says: I used to get an amazing dream, and We used to ignore rain and cloud. Both sentences describe habits from the past that do not happen any more. That is exactly the meaning you will study in the grammar of this topic. The last verse is sad, because the singer knows those days will not come back.

Mukesh is an eleven year old boy who lives in Gairigaun and studies in class six. One day his English teacher said that the village was very different in the past. Mukesh could not believe it, so he decided to ask his grandfather, who knew many things about the old days. As soon as he reached home, he went to him. His grandfather's story attracted him very much.

This is what the grandfather said. In the middle of the village there used to be a peaceful travellers' rest. People called it the Bar Pipal Chautaro, because a Bar tree and a Pipal tree grew on it, and the Pipal was the bigger of the two. Many travellers used to stop there. The grandfather himself used to spend a lot of time at the Chautaro, meeting people who came for rest and recreation. Sitting there, they could hear the melodious songs of birds. There were large, plain, smooth stones where people sat and talked about village matters, and a water tap stood nearby.

Children loved the place most of all. They used to play different games there, and sometimes they spent the whole day playing without even eating a snack in the afternoon. School children became very happy when they got time to rest at the Chautaro, and while returning home late they used to stay there a long time. The Chautaro belonged to nobody in particular. It was a public property of all the villagers.

But now Mukesh finds the Chautaro is gone. Both the Bar and the Pipal have been cut down, and the beauty of the old place has gone away. A road has been constructed by the Chautaro. The people of Gairigaun have lost their place to rest.

Learn these words. They carry the story, and they are useful far beyond it.

The story keeps repeating one small phrase: people used to come, children used to play, travellers used to take rest. This phrase is the heart of the unit's grammar.

Try turning present facts into sentences about the past. John doesn't like apples now becomes John used to like apples. You don't wear shorts now becomes You used to wear shorts. My brother doesn't throw things away becomes My brother used to throw things away. Going the other way, 200 years ago people used to make their own clothes, they used to walk everywhere, but they didn't use to have mobile phones, didn't use to watch TV and didn't use to drive cars.

A conversation about childhood is the most natural place to practise used to. Read this one aloud with a partner, then replace the games with your own.

Notice what the conversation tells us without saying it. Rina used to play hide and seek, so she does not play it now. Ronish used to play Dandibiyo, so that too has stopped. The phrase used to always whispers 'not any more'. When you make your own version, ask with Did you use to, and answer with I used to or I didn't use to.

Before listening to any talk about a place, look at pictures of it and predict what you will hear. Here are two very different places. One is a village with small houses, trees and open space. The other is a town street full of vehicles, smoke and noise, where school children cover their faces with masks.

A typical listening text on this topic describes a village such as Dadagaun then and now. Ten years ago it was not a developed village. There was no road, houses were small with thatched roofs, and sick people used to be carried to hospital on a stretcher. Now things have changed. There is electricity, children no longer walk to school because they use a school bus and a van, and new services have arrived. While you listen, catch exactly these small facts: what kind of roof, what carried the patients, how children travel today. Then think about your own answers. Do you live in a village or a town? Which do you like, and why? And what can we do to minimise pollution? We can plant trees, walk or cycle for short trips, manage rubbish properly and keep vehicles well serviced.

The second reading also compares then and now, but it tells a true and serious story from history. Anne Frank was a Jewish girl whose short life is known all over the world because of the diary she kept. Her story is told as a timeline, year by year.

After 1940 the rules against Jewish people grew crueller each year. They had to wear a yellow star that said 'Jew'. They could not own a business, take a tram, bus or car, buy sugar, or even walk on the same street as other people. In 1942 Anne wrote the first words in her new diary: 'I hope I shall be able to confide in you completely and I hope that you will be a great support and comfort to me.' The Van Pels family joined the Franks in hiding on 13 July, and an eighth person came in November. People who worked for Anne's father secretly brought them food and visited them, until the police found the Annex in 1944, after more than two years of hiding.

To write about how a place has changed, compare a 'then' picture with a 'now' picture, one idea at a time. Four clue ideas guide the comparison: greenery, less population, pollution, big buildings. Look at these two scenes.

Take one clue at a time and write a full sentence for each side of it.

• Greenery: The place used to be full of greenery, with forests, terraced fields and a clean river. Now most of the greenery has been replaced by concrete.
• Population: There used to be less population, with only a few houses on the hillside. Now thousands of people live crowded together.
• Pollution: The air used to be clean and fresh. Now smoke from factories and vehicles pollutes the air.
• Buildings: People used to live in small houses. Now big buildings stand everywhere, wall to wall.

You can also write about your own habits changing. Ask your parents what you used to do when you were small. Then write two lists: what you used to do, and what you did not use to do. For example: I used to cry when my mother went to work. I used to sleep in the afternoon. I didn't use to eat green vegetables. I didn't use to go to school alone. Join the best sentences into a paragraph, and you have a true story of your own then and now.

Collect pictures of your own locality, both present and past, with the help of your parents and teachers. Old family photographs work well. Put a past picture beside a present one and find out the changes that have occurred: roads, buildings, trees, shops, the number of people. Then write a couple of paragraphs about the changes, using used to for the past, and present your work to the class.

In the English alphabet, A is the first letter and Z is the last. A dictionary arranges its words in the same order as the letters of the alphabet, so words starting with a sit at the beginning and words starting with z sit at the end.

Study these three lists. Each one is already in correct alphabetical order.

• ash, credit, cricket, epic, episode, manual, publish, pure, sickle, water, wealth
• deaf, dear, debate, decide, decorate, demand, develop, device, dig, dry
• key, keyword, kill, king, knife, knit, know, knowledge

Look closely at the second list. Every word begins with d, so the first letters cannot decide the order. Move to the second letter: deaf, dear, debate and the others with e come before dig with i, and dig comes before dry with r. Inside the e group, the third letter decides: a in deaf and dear comes before b in debate, which comes before c in decide and decorate. A shorter word comes before a longer word that starts with the same letters, which is why key comes before keyword and know comes before knowledge.