Читать книгу English for Life Grade 12 Learner’s Book Home Language - Lynne Southey - Страница 5

by George Orwell

Snowball had made a close study of some back numbers of the Farmer and Stockbreeder which he had found in the farmhouse, and was full of plans for innovations and improvements. He talked learnedly about field-drains, silage, and basic slag, and had worked out a complicated scheme for all the animals to drop their dung directly in the fields, at a different stop every day to save the labour of cartage. Napoleon produced no schemes of his own, but said quietly that Snowball’s would come to nothing, and seemed to be biding his time. But of all their controversies, none was so bitter as the one that took place over the windmill.

In the long pasture, not far from the farm buildings, there was a small knoll which was the highest point on the farm. After surveying the ground, Snowball declared that this was just the place for a windmill, which could be made to operate a dynamo and supply the farm with electrical power. This would light the stalls and warm them in winter, and would also run a circular saw, a chaff-cutter, a mangel-slicer, and an electric milking machine. The animals had never heard of anything of this kind before (for the farm was an old-fashioned one and had only the most primitive machinery) and they listened in astonishment while Snowball conjured up pictures of fantastic machines which would do their work for them while they grazed at their

ease in the fields or improved their minds with reading and conversation.

[Snowball designs a windmill and eventually the animals begin to build it. Napoleon chases Snowball off the farm and assumes total power.]

All that year the animals worked like slaves. But they were happy in their work; they grudged no effort or sacrifice, well aware that everything that they did was for the benefit of themselves and those of their kind who would come after them, and not for a pack of idle, thieving human beings.

Throughout the spring and summer they worked a sixty-hour week, and in August Napoleon announced that there would be work on Sunday afternoons as well. This work was strictly voluntary, but any animal who absented himself from it would have his rations reduced by half. Even so, it was found necessary to leave certain tasks undone. The harvest was a little less successful than in the previous year, and two fields which should have been sown with roots in the early summer were not sown because the ploughing had not been completed early enough. It was possible to foresee that the coming winter would be a hard one.

The windmill presented unexpected difficulties. There was a good quarry of limestone on the farm, and plenty of sand and cement had been found in one of the outhouses, so that all of the materials for building were at hand. But the problem the animals could not solve was how to break up the stones into pieces of suitable size.

…

Huge boulders, far too big to be used as they were, were lying all over the bed of the quarry. The animals lashed ropes round these, and then all together, cows, horses, sheep, any animal that could lay hold of the rope – even the pigs sometimes joined in at critical moments – dragged them with desperate slowness up the slope to the top of the quarry, where they were toppled over the edge, to shatter to pieces below. Transporting the stone once it was broken was comparatively simple. The horses carried it off in cartloads, the sheep dragged single blocks, even Muriel and Benjamin yoked themselves into an old governess-cart and did their share. By late summer a sufficient store of stone had accumulated, and then the building began, under the superintendence of the pigs.

Suddenly, early in the spring, an alarming thing was discovered. Snowball was secretly frequenting the farm by night! The animals were so disturbed that they could hardly sleep in their stalls. Every night, it was said, he came creeping in under cover of darkness and performed all kinds of mischief. He stole the corn, he upset the milk-pails, he broke the eggs, he trampled the seedbeds, he gnawed the bark off the fruit trees. Whenever anything went wrong it became usual to attribute it to Snowball. If a window was broken or a drain blocked up, someone was certain to say that Snowball had come in the night and done it, and when the key of the store-shed was lost, the whole farm was convinced that Snowball had thrown it down the well. Curiously enough, they went on believing this even after the mislaid key was found under a sack of meal.

[From: Animal Farm by George Orwell. 1976. London: Searcher and Warburg/Octopus]

Post-reading:

1.Discuss these questions with a partner:

a. Look at the references to Snowball and Napoleon. What do you learn about each character from this extract?

b. How does what happens to Snowball already deviate from what Major preached? Quote from the first chapter to substantiate your answer.

2. You know about the causes of climate change from what you read earlier in the cycle. Are the animals on the farm contributing to it in any way by what they are planning? Support your answers.

3. Can you relate what is going on in the extracts to any real life situation you know about?

Poem

Here is information that can help you understand a poem. You can apply it to all poetry reading, including the unseen poem you will be given in your literature exams.Ask these two questions of any poem that you read:What is being said? This means you look for the main ideas, the themeHow do I know? This means you look at the ways in which the poet puts across the ideas.Writers write because they have something to say. We study the text to support, confirm, clarify and reveal what it is that they have to say. To do this, we look at figurative language, the way sentences, verse lines and the poem as a whole is presented, the choice of images, rhythm, pace and sound, and at the feelings that such images cause. Through this activity we try to see what the poet is saying. It is not often that we can come to any final conclusions. Reading poetry involves interpretation, and different readers will have different conclusions.

To understand the poet’s message, then, we look at:literal meaningfigurative meaningmood and emotionstheme and messageimagery, figures of speech, word choice, tone, rhetorical devices, emotional responses, lines, words, verses, links, punctuation, refrain, repetition, sound devices (alliteration, consonance and assonance, rhyme, rhythm, onomatopoeia and enjambment)

Vocabulary help:assonance: repetition of inner vowel sounds of nearby words that do not rhyme, e.g. yellow wedding dressconsonance: repetition of inner vowels in nearby words that don’t rhyme, e.g. dove/waveenjambment: run-on linesimagery: the word pictures createdonomatopoeia: where the sound of a word illustrates its meaning, e.g. hiss, buzzrhetorical devices: all devices used to persuade or have an effect on the readertheme: the main idea, general idea or concept of a piece of writingtone: this indicates the emotions, e.g. anger, sadness, delight

We know that one of the consequences of global warming and climate change is that people are forced to leave their country which is no longer able to provide them with food because of drought or flooding or because of civil war over land and power. They become refugees in another country. The poem in the activity below gives a poignant example of suffering caused by famine.

Activity 1.7 - Reading a poem (individual)

Pre-reading:

 Skim the poem to get an idea of what it is about and then read it softly to yourself, confirming your ideas (during reading).

Refugee mother and child

by Chinua Achebe

1 No Madonna and Child could touch

2 That picture of a mother’s tenderness

3 For a son she soon would have to forget.

4 The air was heavy with odours

5 of diarrhoea of unwashed children

6 with washed-out ribs and dried-up

7 bottoms struggling in laboured

8 steps behind blown empty bellies. Most

9 mothers there had long ceased

10 to care but not this one; she held 10

11 a ghost smile between her teeth

12 and in her eyes the ghost of a mother’s

13 pride as she combed the rust-coloured

14 hair left on his skull and then –

15 singing in her eyes – began carefully

16 to part it … In another life this

17 would have been a little daily

18 act of no consequence before his

19 breakfast and school; now she

20 did it like putting flowers

21 on a tiny grave.

[From Beware Soul Brother by Chinua Achebe. Heinemann]

Post-reading:

1. Answer the following questions in writing:

a. Briefly describe the situation the mother and child are in.

b. Make a list of all the evidence that points to the state the child is in and what this suggests. You can use a table like the one below.

Evidence	Possible causes
odours of diarrhoea
unwashed children, dried-up bottoms
washed-out ribs
blown empty bellies
rust-coloured hair left on his skull
tiny grave

c. What are the associations the poet intends us to make in the first verse? Give reasons for your answer.

d. What is meant by ‘touch’ in the first line?

e. The word ‘ghost’ is used twice in the poem. What connotations does it bring to mind?

2. Achebe is not simply describing something that he sees. What is the purpose of the poem and who does he hope will read it; in other words who does he intend as his audience?

3. ‘Most mothers … not this one.’ What does this tell us about the situation of the mothers? What makes this mother different from others? Do not simply refer to her actions.

4. The poet describes the act of the mother as something of ‘no consequence’. What is meant here? Why does the poet include this?

5. Look at the simile in the following lines: ‘now she/did it like putting flowers/on a tiny grave.’

a. What does ‘it’ refer to?

b. Discuss the effect of the simile. How does it add to the image the poet is creating?

6. Discuss the various emotions aroused by the poem in a paragraph. Use the writing process. Here is a reminder of what this process is:

 Your teacher will go through the rubric for assessing a paragraph with you.

 Your teacher may ask several of you to read out your paragraphs for general discussion and feedback, or take them in for evaluation.

Sentence construction

You will revise sentence structure throughout this book. Here we will remind you of the terms ‘subject’, ‘verb’, ‘predicate’ and ‘simple sentence’. Here is an example:

The child in the poem dies of starvation.

The child: subject (article and noun)

dies: verb ( finite form, present tense)

in the poem: (prepositional phrase)

of starvation: (prepositional phrase)

‘dies of starvation’ is the predicate.

The simplest form of this sentence would be: ‘The child dies.’ The two phrases added tell us which child dies and what causes his death.

You will practise writing different kinds of sentences in the activity below in preparation for writing the two letters which follow.

Activity 1.8 - Writing proper sentences (individual)

1. Correct the following sentences by changing or adding to them.

a. Because refugees can be a drain on the host state.

b. to understand that in a situation of hunger people look for solutions.

c. That global warming can cause Europe to freeze to be contradictory.

2. These words are jumbled. Sort them out to make proper sentences.

a. ages before history. There have ice in the earth’s been

b. most is created directly by but methane gas humans not by the breed they to eat cattle

c. of phenomena climate self-explanatory to change is the name given a group

3. Add predicates to the following subjects so that they form proper sentences.

a. Melting ice …

b. Desertification of huge tracts of land …

c. Today’s humans …

 Your teacher will mark your work with you.

Letters: formal and informal

You might think that nobody writes letters anymore because we have e-mail, but there are still occasions when a letter is preferable. In the next two activities you will write an informal and a formal letter. Here is a template to remind you of their format:

Informal letter format		Formal letter format
Your address		Your address
Date		Date
Salutation (e.g. Dear ___)		Addressee (name or position)
Body of letter including introduction and conclusion		Organisation
		Address
		Salutation (e.g. Dear name or Sir/Madam)
		Subject of letter
		Body of letter including introduction and conclusion
Your friend (or other suitable phrase)		Yours sincerely (if you used name)
Your name		Yours faithfully (if you used Sir/Madam)
		Your signature
		Your full name in print

Activity 1.9 - Writing an informal letter (individual)

1. You have recently seen a television programme on the plight of refugees on South Africa’s northern border. Write to a friend about what you saw and how it made you feel. Use the writing process (180-200 words, content only; 25 marks).

 Think about the register you will use. This will depend on who you are writing to: a friend, an uncle, brother or sister? All these options will be informal but you will not use the same kind of language for all of them. You are going to be describing feelings, but your style should not be too sentimental. Your style is determined by the words you use to convey your message.

 Your teacher will discuss the rubric for writing an informal letter with you.

 Your teacher will either ask you to give your letter to a friend to check and then ask several of you to read your letters to the class for discussion and general feedback, or will take them in for evaluation.

Activity 1.10 - Writing a formal letter (individual)

1. After the recent television programme on the plight of refugees on South Africa’s northern border you decide to write a letter to the newspaper about what you saw, so as to make suggestions about how to improve their plight (180-200 words, content only; 25 marks).

 Think about the register you will use. Your language must be formal. Think of who your audience is and what the purpose of your letter is. You can write in a personal style, expressing your own ideas and feelings, but your word choice will be formal.

 Your teacher will discuss the rubric for writing a formal letter with you.

 Your teacher will either ask you to give your letter to a friend to check and then ask several of you to read your letters to the class for discussion and general feedback, or will take them in for evaluation.

Voice

You know the active voice: ‘Global warming is melting the glaciers.’ In this sentence ‘global warming’ is the subject and ‘is melting’ the verb.

If the sentence is written in the passive voice, it becomes: ‘The glaciers are being melted by global warming.’ Now ‘the glaciers’ is the subject and ‘are being melted’ is the verb.

The use of either active or passive voice will depend on your purpose. In the active voice used in the sentence above, ‘global warming’ is emphasised; in the passive voice ‘the glaciers’ is emphasised. If you don’t wish to specify who the agent of an action is, you will also use the passive voice. For example: ‘It is said that global warming is causing the glaciers to melt.’ In this sentence, we don’t know who said this.

You will practise using these two voices in the activity below.

Activity 1.11 - Practising voice (individual)

1.Write out your answers to the questions below in both the active and passive form.

a. You want to say something about malnutrition and rust-coloured hair after your partner asks you why the poet includes this detail of hair colour in the poem ‘Refugee mother and child’. Write out the sentence.

b. Decide which version answers the question more directly.

2. Look at this sentence: ‘If things carry on the way they are, Europe will be frozen over and another ice age will descend.’ Is this in the active or passive voice? Explain your answer.

3. Add agents (the ‘doers’ or ‘actors’) of your own to the following sentences:

a. A 100 years ago the acceleration of climate change could not be anticipated.

b. Before rushing off to visit Antarctica in case it disappears, you should question the truth of what we are told about global warming.

c. Closing our borders to foreigners without documentation would be considered an inhumane thing to do, given the circumstances in Africa today.

4. Remove the agents from the following sentences:

a. Scientists have been proved wrong in some cases.

b. Activists say that conditions on earth are much worse than what we think.

c. Many earnest new leaders have risen to power in Africa, but power soon corrupts them.

Punctuation and spelling

Part of the editing process is to check your spelling and punctuation. If these are poor or incorrect, you can never make a good impression with your written work. Everybody makes mistakes when they write or type, which is why even professional writers and all publishers have their work checked by editors and proofreaders. You need to be your own editor and proofreader of everything you write.

You will practise finding mistakes in the article below.

Activity 1.12 - Proofreading an article (individual)

1. Rewrite the following passage in your workbook, correcting all the mistakes you find. These will be punctuation or spelling mistakes. If you are not sure of the spelling of a word, look it up in a dictionary.

How air pressure causes the temperature to rise

Air is warmer at the eqautorial region that at the polss because it recieves more insolation from the sun Insolation (incident solar radiation( is a measure of solar radiation energy )such as light) received on a given area in a given time. In other words the equatorial region is warmer becuase it receives more radation from the sun. This heeting of the air causes it to rise at the equator. The rising air leafs behind a lower pressure because air is moving away from the region as it rises the air cools and diverts in the upper atemosphere. The upper atmosphere air travells about 30° north and south of the equatorial region before it cools enough to sink back down again. this sinking process (subsidence) causes a high pressure in the area

The equatorial region is a converjence zone because sirface air from the sub-tropical regions meats here This area is oficially known as the Intertropical Convergence Zone. It cannot be reffered to as the equator because, unlike the equator this zone shifts north and south of the equator depending on the season. Thirty degrees north and south of the equator are areas of predominently high pressure because here the air is subsiding the subsiding air is asocciated with deverging air on the surfase. Therefor this is a zone of divergence. The earths rottation causes these air movements to swing to the right in the Northern Hemisphere and to the left in the Southern Hemisphere

 Your teacher will go through the corrected version with you.

Review of Cycle 1

You can use this self-assessment checklist to review what you have learnt.

When listening and speaking I can
Take part in pair discussions
Understand a listening text
When reading and viewing I can understand
An informative article
Genre
The sections of a book
A cartoon
Extracts from a novel
A poem
I can write
Answers to questions
Sentences
A formal and an informal letter
A paragraph using the writing process
Using different voices
Using editing and proofreading skills
Using correct spelling and punctuation