The Handover Note the Client Will Read
You work on the mechanical maintenance team at a bottling plant in Limassol. At the end of the night shift you must send a handover note to the day-shift supervisor and to the client's engineer. A colleague drafted the note; your supervisor says the facts are right but the grammar will make the client doubt the team's competence. The draft reads:
'At 02:15 the filler head 4 has stopped. We have been checking the gearbox when we found metal particles in the oil. The machine is being run since 03:00 at half speed because the spare gearbox hasn't arrived yet. If we would have the part, we would fit it tonight. The operator which reported the noise is on leave tomorrow. Please to inform the day shift.'
Your supervisor wants three things: a corrected version that keeps every fact, a note saying which sentence must be left exactly as it is, and a short explanation of the conditional sentence so the client's engineer understands precisely what is and is not being promised.
1. Rewrite the draft in correct English, keeping all the facts. Identify each error and give the reason for the correction.
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Corrected version:
At 02:15 filler head 4 stopped. We were checking the gearbox when we found metal particles in the oil. The machine has been running at half speed since 03:00 because the spare gearbox has not arrived yet. If we had the part, we would fit it tonight. The operator who reported the noise is on leave tomorrow. Please inform the day shift.
| Draft | Correction | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| has stopped (with 02:15) | stopped | A finished action at a stated past time takes the past simple. |
| We have been checking … when we found | We were checking … when we found | Past continuous for the action in progress, interrupted by a past-simple event. The present perfect continuous cannot be interrupted by a past-simple 'when' clause. |
| is being run since 03:00 | has been running since 03:00 | 'Since' + a point in time requires the present perfect (continuous); the situation is still true now. |
| If we would have the part | If we had the part | Second conditional: past simple in the if-clause, 'would' + infinitive in the main clause. |
| the operator which | the operator who | People take 'who', not 'which'. |
| Please to inform | Please inform | 'Please' + bare infinitive. |
Leave unchanged: '…because the spare gearbox hasn't arrived yet.' This sentence is already correct: present perfect with 'yet' for something expected but not done.
2. Explain the difference in meaning between 'We checked the gearbox when we found metal particles' and 'We were checking the gearbox when we found metal particles'. Which one belongs in the log, and why?
Read the worked answer
The two sentences report a different relationship between the two events.
- 'We checked the gearbox when we found metal particles' presents the checking as a completed event that followed the discovery, or as the routine response to it. The order is: find particles → check gearbox. It suggests a deliberate action taken because of the finding.
- 'We were checking the gearbox when we found metal particles' presents the checking as already in progress and the discovery as something that happened during it. The order is: check in progress → discovery interrupts it.
For a maintenance log, the second is right if the facts are as the draft describes, because the note is reporting what the team was doing at 02:15 when the particles were seen - the discovery came out of the inspection, it was not a response to it. If the particles had been found first and the gearbox opened afterwards, the first sentence would be the honest one.
The lesson for the exam: the tense is not decoration. Here it records which action was already under way, which is exactly what a client's engineer will read it for.
3. Convert 'If we would have the part, we would fit it tonight' into a correct second conditional and a correct third conditional, and explain how the meaning changes.
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Second conditional (present/future, part not available now): 'If we had the part, we would fit it tonight.' - This says: we do not have the part; if we did, the fitting would happen tonight. It leaves the possibility open in principle.
Third conditional (past, and impossible to change): 'If we had had the part, we would have fitted it last night.' - This says: we did not have the part, and because of that the fitting did not happen. It is a statement about a past that cannot now be altered.
Why the distinction matters in this note. The client reads the second conditional as a promise conditional on delivery: fit tonight if the part arrives. If the team has already missed the window (the night shift is ending and the part is not on site), the second conditional is misleading - the client may expect a repair that cannot happen today. In that case the honest sentence is the third conditional plus a forward plan: 'If we had had the part last night we would have fitted it; we now expect delivery at 11:00 and will fit it on the day shift.'
Note also that 'If we would have' is never correct in a standard if-clause: 'would' does not appear in the conditional clause, only in the main clause.