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
