RSA English Homework

Transcription

1 RSA English Homework Name It s pretty thin, the wall separating healthy confidence and unhealthy pride. Haruki Murakami Want to improve your writing? Join in with our writing challenges. We post regular writing challenges on the RSA English website. Join in and make yourself a better writer. On target? After your homework booklet has been marked, use the key below, along with any comments made by your teacher, to record your targets in your exercise book. How your written work will be marked Sp Check spelling. // New paragraph needed. P Please use punctuation here (mostly a comma or a full stop). C You need a capital letter here. T Please check the tense of your verb. FS Please answer in a full sentence.? The meaning of this sentence is not clear. V Think of a better word (vocabulary) here. ^ There is a word missing in this sentence. EG Needs an example or quotation. Summer Term 2013 : Two

2 1 writing Due week beginning Persuasive writing Features of persuasive writing: 1. Rhetorical questions 2. Repetition 3. Power of three 4. Inclusion of facts and statistics 5. Personal to the reader 6. Deals with possible objections 7. Details of the benefits of agreeing 8. Emotive language Using the list above, write to persuade a friend to visit you. Aim to use each technique at least once and tick them off as you do. 2 Caricature Ambiguity Idiosyncrasy spelling Analytical Discernible Subtlety Grammatical Ideologies Equilibrium Exclamatory Declarative Ellipsis

3 3 reading The opening of the novel 1984 by George Orwell It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. Winston Smith, his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape the vile wind, slipped quickly through the glass doors of Victory Mansions, though not quickly enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from entering along with him. The hallway smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats. At one end of it a coloured poster, too large for indoor display, had been tacked to the wall. It depicted simply an enormous face, more than a metre wide: the face of a man of about forty-five, with a heavy black moustache and ruggedly handsome features. Winston made for the stairs. It was no use trying the lift. Even at the best of times it was seldom working, and at present the electric current was cut off during daylight hours. It was part of the economy drive in preparation for Hate Week. The flat was seven flights up, and Winston, who was thirtynine and had a varicose ulcer above his right ankle, went slowly, resting several times on the way. On each landing, opposite the lift-shaft, the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall. It was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran. Inside the flat a fruity voice was reading out a list of figures which had something to do with the production of pig-iron. The voice came from an oblong metal plaque like a dulled mirror which formed part of the surface of the right-hand wall. Winston turned a switch and the voice sank somewhat, though the words were still distinguishable. The instrument (the telescreen, it was called) could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely. He moved over to the window: a smallish, frail figure, the meagreness of his body merely emphasized by the blue overalls which were the uniform of the party. His hair was very fair, his face naturally sanguine, his skin roughened by coarse soap and blunt razor blades and the cold of the winter that had just ended. Outside, even through the shut window-pane, the world looked cold. Down in the street little eddies of wind were whirling dust and torn paper into spirals, and though the sun was shining and the sky a harsh blue, there seemed to be no colour in anything, except the posters that were plastered everywhere. The black-moustachio d face gazed down from every commanding corner. There was one on the house-front immediately opposite. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption said, while the dark eyes looked deep into Winston s own. Down at streetlevel another poster, torn at one corner, flapped fitfully in the wind, alternately covering and uncovering the single word INGSOC. In the far distance a helicopter skimmed down between the roofs, hovered for an instant like a bluebottle, and darted away again with a curving flight. It was the police patrol, snooping into people s windows. The patrols did not matter, however. Only the Thought Police mattered. Behind Winston s back the voice from the telescreen was still babbling away about pig-iron and the overfulfilment of the Ninth Three-Year Plan. The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment.

4 1 writing Due week beginning Descriptive writing When writing to describe you can make your writing better by: Using adjectives and adverbs to describe objects and actions. Carefully selecting your vocabulary. Organising your ideas for example, this could be by time, space or the five senses. Using metaphors and similes to help your reader to imagine exactly what you are describing. As well as describing what your subject looks like, offering ideas about the feelings it creates. Being original: always think of an interesting way to interpret a task. In the box below describe a place that is important to you. Use the ideas above to help you. Do this in exactly 100 words. 2 spelling Fulfil Tendency Surprise Preferred Definite Separate Ideological Persistent Conscious Sincerely Dilemma Beginning

5 3 reading Can a font help a city make a comeback? by Zak Stone Around the world, only a few hundred people make a living as fulltime typeface designers. Two of them happen to live in Chattanooga, Tennessee, [USA] population 167,000, where they've embarked on an ambitious project to distil the city's artistic and entrepreneurial spirit into a font called Chatype. The goal is to help the city and its businesses forge a distinct and cohesive identity through custom typeface, sending a visual message to the world that Chattanooga a rapidly growing city in the midst of a creative renaissance is more than just your average Southern town. Chatype came about when D.J. Trischler, a brand consultant, discovered he'd been sitting next to typeface designer Jeremy Dooley at their local coffee shop. The two became fixated on a question: What if Chattanooga had its own typeface? Joined by recent Chattanooga transplant and typeface designer Robbie de Villiers and Trischler's business partner Jonathan Mansfield, the collaborators met with a local historian to figure out what should inform the design of a Chattanooga-inspired font. They pulled from a diverse set of local visual references including the Cherokee writing system, Coca-Cola's first bottling plant, and, of course, that city's "choo choo," immortalized by the 1940s big band song. Dooley and de Villiers worked separately at first, but later came together to create a mashup of their work. Dooley calls the final style a "geometric slab serif." The "slabs" are inspired by the industrial past. The geometric aspect is to add a sense of futurism," playing to the city's aspirations of becoming the "Silicon Valley of the East Coast" with an economy fuelled by technology and startups. Chatype made its debut at an event hosted by the local creative community and quickly garnered public support. They've raised nearly $7,000 through Kickstarter [a website to help people raise money to fund creative projects] from more than 100 backers. De Villiers says they now have "hard, firm commitments" from Chattanooga's public sector to work the typeface into local projects (they have yet to reveal which ones). While the designers still have more work to do to finalize the typeface, if all goes according to plan Chattanoogans will soon begin to see Chatype popping up on signage, business cards, s, and websites published by the city government. We want to let businesses use the typeface too," says Trischler. "It'd be awesome for startups in town that can t afford a typeface, to give them a typeface to really set them apart. In the long term, the team would love to see their typeface across street signs, sewer grades, police cars, and fire trucks. Known in the 1960s as one of the country's filthiest cities, Chattanooga has managed to clean up its act and its image in recent years, with a redeveloped riverfront and an artist relocation project. But the city's "brand" is out of date and doesn't live up to the creative energy on the ground, according to the team members. "If you think of a brand as a story, [Chattanooga] has an amazing story," Trischler says. "If you look at the visual brand, it doesn t back up that story. Perhaps the sleek new font can help tell that story a little better.

6 1 writing Due week beginning Semantic field My son aged three fell in the nettle bed. 'Bed' seemed a curious name for those green spears, That regiment of spite behind the shed: It was no place for rest I took my billhook, honed the blade And went outside and slashed in fury with it Till not a nettle in that fierce parade Stood upright any more. An edited extract from the poem Nettles by Vernon Scannell The poem above, about a father s reaction to his son being hurt in the garden, uses a semantic field relating to war and violence (indicated in bold). Write a paragraph or two about a person getting up in the morning and going to work using a semantic field relating to either: war and violence or magic. 2 spelling Ellipsis Phonology Embarrass Irresistible Definitely Accommodate Millennium Ecstasy Accidentally Acceptable Amateur Apparent

7 3 The opening of the novel Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen reading It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters. My dear Mr. Bennet, said his lady to him one day, have you heard that Netherfield Park is let at last? Mr. Bennet replied that he had not. But it is, returned she; for Mrs. Long has just been here, and she told me all about it. Mr. Bennet made no answer. Do not you want to know who has taken it? cried his wife impatiently. You want to tell me, and I have no objection to hearing it. This was invitation enough. Why, my dear, you must know, Mrs. Long says that Netherfield is taken by a young man of large fortune from the north of England; that he came down on Monday in a chaise and four to see the place, and was so much delighted with it that he agreed with Mr. Morris immediately; that he is to take possession before Michaelmas, and some of his servants are to be in the house by the end of next week. What is his name? Bingley. Is he married or single? Oh! single, my dear, to be sure! A single man of large fortune; four or five thousand a year. What a fine thing for our girls! How so? how can it affect them? My dear Mr. Bennet, replied his wife, how can you be so tiresome! You must know that I am thinking of his marrying one of them. Is that his design in settling here? Design! nonsense, how can you talk so! But it is very likely that he may fall in love with one of them, and therefore you must visit him as soon as he comes. I see no occasion for that. You and the girls may go, or you may send them by themselves, which perhaps will be still better; for, as you are as handsome as any of them, Mr. Bingley might like you the best of the party. My dear, you flatter me. I certainly have had my share of beauty, but I do not pretend to be any thing extraordinary now. When a woman has five grown up daughters, she ought to give over thinking of her own beauty. In such cases, a woman has not often much beauty to think of. But, my dear, you must indeed go and see Mr. Bingley when he comes into the neighbourhood. It is more than I engage for, I assure you. But consider your daughters. Only think what an establishment it would be for one of them. Indeed you must go, for it will be impossible for us to visit him, if you do not.

8 Recommended reading list David ALMOND Fire-eaters A novel dappled with light and dark, filled with wonder and mystery. Malorie BLACKMAN Noughts and Crosses Deeply disturbing and totally absorbing inter-racial fiction. John BOYNE Boy in the Striped Pyjamas Tragic World War 2 drama about the friendship of two boys. Anne CASSIDY Looking for JJ Explores motives behind the murder of a child - by her friend. Sarah DESSEN Just Listen An emotional teen romance novel about the power of friendship and music. Cornelia FUNKE Inkheart Magically reading characters out of books is a wonderfully inventive idea. Alan GARNER The Owl Service An all-time classic, combining mystery, adventure and history. Mark HADDON Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time Funny and tragic, an autistic boy s investigation of why next door s dog has been stabbed by a garden fork. Susan HILL The Woman in Black An excellent ghost story... magnificently eerie... compulsive reading. Catherine MacPHAIS Roxy s Baby A teen-mum runs away and stays with a couple who have dark plans for her baby... Patrick NESS The Knife of Never Letting Go Furiously paced fantasy with terrifying, exhilarating and heartbreaking moments. Linda NEWBERY Nevermore A good, old fashioned eerie mystery that keeps you guessing until the end... Mal PEET Keeper The story of a world cup hero. The book tingles with mystery and suspense. Philip PULLMAN Northern Lights A phenomenally popular fantasy novel about a young girls perilous quest. Bali RAI Angel Collector A dark, edge-of-your-seat thriller that will keep you guessing until the last page! Celia REES Witch Child Her grandmother is executed for witchcraft, and Mary must escape the same fate. Meg ROSOFF How I Live Now Set in a modern day England that has been occupied by an invading army. Dodie SMITH I Capture the Castle A poignant novel about an impoverished 1930's family living in a crumbling castle. Robert WESTALL The Watch House A great ghost story. One of the best ever. Gabrielle ZEVIN Elsewhere This book creates an exquisite, clever and inspiring picture of the afterlife.