Contents
- Reading and Writing
- Literature
A. Reading
Composition
About Me and My Family
My name is Adejoke Omotuyi and I am twelve years old. I go to Supreme Height Secondary School, Ifako. I live in Sango, a suburb of Ogun state.
I live with my father, my mother, my brother Bobola and my baby sister Fola. Bobola is eight and Fola is two. She is quite small but she talks a lot already. My aunt Adeola and her six year old son Adam live with us. Bobola and Adam go to Cosmos Primary School.
My father is a pilot. He works for First nation Airline. He is away from home quite often and he has to fly to different countries. My mother is a nurse. She works at a hospital not far from home. Sometimes she has to work at night but Aunty Adeola is always around to look after us. Her husband, Uncle Olu is a soldier and he is hardly around.
My favourite hobbies are reading and playing volley ball. I am also interested in Music. I like Tuface and Sunny Ade. The thing I enjoy most is talking with my friends.
Comprehension
Read the composition over and over till you understand what the story is all about.
Paragraphs
Look at Adejoke’s composition again. The composition has 4 groups of sentences called PARAGRAPHS. Look at each paragraph carefully before answering any question.
Reading For Main Ideas
A paragraph is a group of sentences on one subject or topic. The topic is the main idea the writer has in his or her mind when writing or the message he or she has to pass across to readers.
You can see that the main idea or topic of the first paragraph is ‘Myself‘- that is Adejoke Omotuyi. Let’s look at the other three paragraphs:
1. Paragraph two: What is the topic?
a) My brothers and sisters
b) My Parents
c) My Family
Answer: C – This paragraph gave us a clear picture of each member of the family.
2. Paragraph three: What is the topic?
a) My Family’s Profession
b) My father’s job
c) My aunt’s job
Answer: A – In this paragraph, you can see what kind of job each person in the family is engaged in.
3. Fourth Paragraph: What is the topic?
a) My favourite music
b) What I enjoy doing
c) My friends and I
Answer: B – This explains what Adejoke enjoys most and her hobbies
B. Writing
Good Handwriting: You will get better marks if your teachers can read what you have written. So if your handwriting is poor, improve on it.
Laying out your work neatly: This makes a big difference. Here are some tips:
– Always write a heading and underline it
– Always date your work
– Always check your work before handing it in and make necessary corrections
– Don’t muddle up your work, separate each idea in paragraphs so that your composition can be better understood.
Paragraphs: As we saw earlier, a paragraph is a group of sentences. Always leave a space at the beginning of a new paragraph or between new paragraphs.
Sentences: All sentences must begin with a capital letter and most sentences end in a full stop.
C. Literature
What is Literature?
Literature is a term used to describe written or spoken material. Broadly speaking, “literature” is used to describe anything from creative writing to more technical or scientific works, but the term is most commonly used to refer to works of the creative imagination, including works of poetry, drama, fiction, and nonfiction.
Literature represents a language or a people: culture and tradition. But, literature is more important than just a historical or cultural artifact. Literature introduces us to new worlds of experience.
The Goals of Literature
Build Reading Skills: To build reading skills, students must practice reading regularly. Reading literature provides another avenue for this simple practice.
Creating Connections: Reading literature isn’t just about learning about the works themselves, but also about learning how the world works. Through the exploration of literature, students have the opportunity to put themselves in others’ shoes, giving them the chance to see how people are connected and better understand the complex dynamic of the human relationship.
Promote Empathy: By seeing how actions of others can affect characters within literature, readers can develop their abilities to be empathetic. Teachers promote the development of empathy by engaging students in discussion of literary works, highlighting the emotional aspects of the pieces in question.
Foster Appreciation: Through regular reading and learning to understand literature, readers can develop an appreciation for the art form. Teachers often seek to foster this appreciation by providing students with works of literature that will appeal to them as well as ones that are relevant to their lives, showing them that literary works have merit and meaning.
Types of Literature
Oral Literature: Oral literature is a broad term which may include ritual texts, curative chants, epic poems, musical genres, folk tales, creation tales, songs, myths, spells, legends, proverbs, riddles, tongue-twisters, word games, recitations, life histories or historical narratives. It thus forms a generally more fundamental component of culture, but operates in many ways as one might expect literature to do.
Historic Literature: Historical literature is a literary genre in which the plot takes place in a setting located in the past. Historical fiction can be an ambiguous term: frequently it is used as a synonym for describing the historical novel; however, the term can be applied to works in other narrative formats, such as those in the performing and visual arts like theatre, opera, cinema, television, comics and graphic novels.
Drama: Any text meant to be performed rather than read can be considered drama (unless it’s a poem meant to be performed, of course). In layman’s terms, dramas are usually called plays. When written down the bulk of a drama is dialogue, with periodic stage directions such as “he looks away angrily.” Of all the genres of literature discussed in this article, drama is the one given the least time in most classrooms. And often when drama is taught, it’s only read the same way you might read a novel. Since dramas are meant to be acted out in front of an audience, it’s hard to fully appreciate them when looking only at pages of text.
Other types of literature are:
Poetry, Non-fiction, Prose, Miming and Dance.
Exercise:
Write a composition about your FIRST DAY AT SCHOOL.