Speaking to an audience
What makes us want to listen to someone speaking in public?
• We must want to hear what the person has to say, so it must be interesting or funny or important.
• We must also be able to hear and understand the person speaking.
• We need to feel that the person is speaking to us.
When you speak in public you need to remember these three rules. In the next activity you are going to practise giving a speech.
1. In your group, discuss the pets you have or have had in the past. Talk about what is good or bad about keeping a pet. Have any of you had a good or bad experience with an animal?
2. Look at the drawings on the opposite page. What creatures are these? Do you know of anyone who has had any of them as pets? Discuss which one you would like and take turns saying why you have chosen it.
3. In your group each chooses any one creature. It does not have to be one of those in the picture on the next page, but no member of the group must have the same creature as another member.
4. Go and find information on the animal of your choice. Write the information out in the form of a speech. When you come back to class, you are each going to present your speech to your group. The group can decide who made the best speech.
5. Use the checklist below to help you prepare your speech. You can also use it to judge your group members’ speeches.
6. Present your speech to your group.
7. Decide for yourself whose speech you found the most interesting. Write two sentences saying why you chose this particular speech. Be sure to express yourself in a clear way, using correct language and vocabulary.
8. Now, just for fun, see how many different animals you see in this strange creature. Compare your list with your group’s. What can we call this creature?
Nouns and adjectives
How did you do in Activity 1.5? Did you remember all the parts of speech? We are going to remind you here about nouns and adjectives.
There are four kinds of nouns:
• proper nouns: names, e.g. Peter, Pretoria
• common nouns: name things, e.g. dog, snake, lion
• collective nouns: name a collection of things, e.g. flock, herd, litter
• abstract nouns: name things we cannot touch or see, e.g. joy, pain
Adjectives describe nouns, e.g a big dog, a poisonous snake, a fierce lion.
In the next activity you are going to play a game using nouns and adjectives.
Make sure you know what they are.
1. Your teacher will have two boxes. In the one box there are small slips of paper with an adjective written on each and in the other a noun. You must take one piece of paper out of each box.
2. Now draw a picture which suits your two pieces. Make it funny and interesting. Use colour. Here is an example for you:
3. Show your picture to your group. Let them guess what your noun and adjective were. Decide together whose drawing is the strangest.
Reading and writing
You learnt to read and write years ago. This is called being ‘literate’. However, literacy consists of skills that you will go on improving all your life.
Sometimes we need to ‘read’ drawings or diagrams: cartoons, signs, charts, tables, graphs, and maps, for example. This is called ‘visual literacy’. Sometimes we even need to change words into diagrams, or diagrams into words. To do this we have to understand what we read or see.
In the next activity we are going to practise reading and writing in several of these ways.
1. A cartoon consists of a drawing and is usually meant to be funny. Often there are words in a cartoon, either spoken by someone in the cartoon, given in a speech bubble pointing to the mouth of the speaker, or a caption or heading telling us what the cartoon is about. Here is a cartoon. Look at it and read what the dog is thinking.
(a) Fill in the missing words in this sentence: The … throws the stick, the … fetches it, and the … is the one whose thoughts we read.
(b) If dogs could think, what would the dog in the cartoon be thinking in the real world? Discuss this with your partner and then write out a sentence in direct speech, giving the dog’s words.
(c) Have you ever thrown a ball or a stick for a dog? Write one sentence describing the dog’s behaviour. Use at least one adjective.
(d) Who do you think will find this cartoon funny? Do you think the cartoonist aimed his cartoon at a particular kind of person?
(e) Are the words in the speech bubble in direct speech or reported speech? Explain why you say so.
2. Read the following short text about dolphins.
Did you know that dolphins have been known to rescue humans? For centuries sailors and fishermen have told tales of dolphins guiding them to shore when they were lost, herding them like a sheepdog herds a flock of sheep. Other stories are told about dolphins rescuing whales that get stranded in shallow water.
When the tide comes in, the dolphins swim with the exhausted whales, pushing them and guiding them into deeper water.
One young man, surfing out in the big waves, was attacked by a shark. The shark managed to rip the skin off his back and bite deeply into his leg. The surfer thought he was going to die. He was too far out to call for help or even to be seen from the shore. Three dolphins came to his rescue. They swam round him again and again, stopping the shark from attacking him, and they gently pushed him closer and closer to shore. When the surfer was close enough to human help, the dolphins turned and swam back out to sea.
Why do dolphins do this? What do they gain from it? Most animals, and humans too, only do something which brings them something else. Dolphins seem to help others without wanting something in return. They are the only animals who do this.
(a) Which drawing above is of the shark, which the whale and which the dolphin?
(b) Tell your partner what you feel about each of the three.
(c) Find synonyms (words that mean the same) in the text for the following words: save, hundreds of years, stories, tired, tear, beach.
(d) Write a sentence summarising the first paragraph and another summarising the second.
(e) Can you think of a time when something or someone rescued something else or someone else? Think about the plot of your story (what happens) and the setting (where it happens). You should write it out in an interesting way for your partner to read. Here is a way to do this: