Carmen likes travel
Carmen likes travelling. It's her major hobby. Once she went to Portugal. She lives in Madrid, so Carmen could go to Portugal on the car. She had to bring money, passport, driver's license. She went in the evening and hoped she will be in Portugal at night about 1 a.m. But it's not really! She could'n go so fast. She went to Portual in the morning.
grammar: past ability
thank a lot
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Carmen likes travelling
Carmen likes travelling. It's her main hobby. Once she went to Portugal. She lives in Madrid, so Carmen was able to go to Portugal by car. She had to take money, passport, driving license. She went in the evening and hoped she would be in Portugal at about 1 a.m. at night. But in reality it wasn't so! She wasn't able to go so fast. She arrived in Portugal in the morning.grammar: past ability
thank a lot
[In general, 'could' is the past of 'can' when we're talking about ability in the past. For example: "Karen could play the piano when she was only 5". However, we don't use 'could' when it means that someone managed to do something on one occasion. For example:
"The door was difficult to open, but finally I managed to open it (or 'I was able to open it')" Not: "**finally I could open it**".
In your text, Carmen was able to go to Portugal by car on this one occasion, so we would say "was able to", not "could". Similarly, "She wasn't able to go so fast", not "couldn't".
"Hoped" in this text is an example of reported speech. At the time she made this journey, Carmen said to herself, "I hope I will be in Portugal at 1 a.m." (Maybe she didn't actually say this, but we still use the mechanism of reported speech.) In reported speech, we generally move all the tenses one step back into the past; and 'will' becomes 'would'. So we say, "She hoped she would be in Portugal at 1 a.m." You could also say, "She hoped to be in Portugal at 1 a.m."]
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