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