English for Life
An Integrated Language Text
Home Language
Lynne Southey • Megan Howard • Karen Naude
Ian Butler • Sonica Bruwer
Learner’s Book
Grade 4
www.bestbooks.co.za
Pretoria . Cape Town
Notes for the learners
English for Life Grade 4
Welcome! We hope that you will find the activities in English for Life (Grade 4) exciting and informative.
English for Life
The book has been designed for use by learners doing English as a Home Language. In Grades 4 to 6 you will use English for different purposes and also think about how English works as a language. We have tried to make your task as easy as possible by including notes and checklists that will guide you.
You will be expected to take responsibility for your own learning as well as to work with and assist others to master the following language skills:
Listening and speaking
You will talk individually, in pairs and in groups. Consider your friends as speech partners who can make an important contribution to your success.
Reading and viewing
Interesting and varied reading texts have been chosen to help you perfect your reading and comprehension skills. You will have fun with cartoons, advertisements and other visual texts. A number of literary texts such as tales, myths, stories and poems have been included. You will also be expected to read from the English for Life Core Reader (Grade 4).
Writing and presenting
The secret of good writing is practice! Most of the writing activities that you do will not be formally assessed which means that you can experiment and develop your own style with useful input from your peers and your teacher.
Language and sentence structure
It is important to know how language is used and the activities and notes provided will give you valuable background and information. Take time to study the notes and use them to improve your language skills, especially when writing.
Assessment
A variety of self-assessment tasks has been given in each module. These will help you assess your progress and cope well in tests and exams.
Enrichment activities
Some enrichment activities have been added to extend you and to give those of you who want to do extra work an opportunity to prove yourselves.
Enjoy your English classes!
The authors
English for Life Grade 4
Module 1: Cycle 1 and 2: short story, poem, summary
Module 2: Cycle 3 and 4: fable, paragraph, interview
Module 3: Cycle 5 and 6: paragraph, instructional and informational text, poem, story
Module 4: Cycle 7 and 8: paragraph, informational text, dialogue, paragraph, instructions
Module 5: Cycle 9 and 10: informational text, short story
Module 6: Cycle 11 and 12: descriptive paragraph, letter, poem, story
Module 7: Cycle 13 and 14: informational text, short story, paragraph, text with visuals
Module 8: Cycle 15 and 16: paragraph, short story, poem
Module 9: Cycle 17 and 18: summary, character sketch, poem, dialogue, paragraph, folktale, role-play
Remember your June and November exams!
Introduction
Do you remember this story? Tell a friend. You can also read it in the English for Life Core Reader.
Every culture tells stories: fairy stories, animal stories, fables, myths and historical tales. Children of all ages love stories that are read or told to them.
In this module you will read different kinds of stories and poems about animals, and write some yourself. You will talk to your classmates about what you see and read and make a speech. You will also do some language work and revise nouns, verbs, adjectives, pronouns and prepositions. You will also revise direct and indirect speech and read about similes and idioms.
To do all this, you need to develop your thinking and reasoning skills and to expand your vocabulary.
Let’s talk, read, write, draw and think!
In the first activity below you are going to do many different things. First you will talk about different animals. We give you pictures to get you started. You will also answer questions in writing and practise your writing and language skills. You will read information to understand why animals look different from each other. And you will draw an imaginary animal. You will also make a vocabulary list of all the new words you have found.
1. Look at the photos and read the names of different animals below:
2. Talk about the animals. Ask each other questions such as:
• Which animal do you like the most?
• Which animal have you seen in real life?
• Which is the best looking animal? Which is the ugliest animal? Why?
• Which are tame and which wild?
How to hold a discussion with a partner:
• You must take turns talking
• You must only talk about the animals, not change the topic
• Answer questions in a way that adds to the discussion
• Be polite and listen to your partner
3. Read the following passage about animals and then talk to your partner:
Animals have the body shape and design that they do because of where they live and what they eat. An anteater, for example, has a long narrow snout that makes it possible for it to suck up ants from a small hole. If a hippo was an anteater it would have great difficulty finding ants in their nests and sucking them up into its great wide mouth. Is it then fair to describe some animals as ugly or funny-looking? Or to compare them? Even dog types are very different from each other because of their purpose.
(a) Does this information change the way you see the animals on the previous page?
(b) Can you give reasons why the animals are built the way they are?
(c) Imagine an animal that would suit the following lifestyle. You can make it up: it lives in snow, eats roots, and is eaten by larger animals. Now draw it and give it a name.
4. Your