He opened the browser, the bright screen illuminating his tired eyes. He found the page—Worksheet 3b. There it was. The answers were laid out in a neat grid. He began to copy the first sentence: “I am playing football in the park.”
Maxim stared at Module 3, Exercise 4. The instructions asked him to describe a typical day using the present continuous, but his mind was a blank page. Outside, the sounds of Moscow’s evening traffic drifted through the window, but inside, the only sound was the ticking of the clock. He opened the browser, the bright screen illuminating
Maxim closed the tab. He looked at the prompt again. He thought about his actual afternoon—drinking tea, watching the rain, and struggling with English. He erased the stolen sentence and wrote: “I am sitting at my desk and thinking about my homework.” The answers were laid out in a neat grid