Contents:
- Speech Work
- Reading / Comprehension: Reading for the Main Idea
- Introduction to the Element of Prose
- Grammar: Definition and Types of Verbs
- Types of Oral Literature
Speech Work: Vowel /i:/
When you say this sound, your mouth is slightly opened, and the lips are spread. Pronounce the word ‘key’, leaf, tree, chief etc.
Spelling
You can spell the /i:/ sound I different ways in English. Listen and repeat:
| E | ee | Ea | i | ie | ei |
| Be | tree | Sea | police | Chief | ceiling |
| He | bee | Bean | machine | niece | receive |
| These | need | Meat | margarine | believe | Seize |
| Peter | see | Seat | kerosine | piece | deceive |
Dialogue Practice
Practice these dialogues in pairs:
- Peter seems to be pleased!
- Oh! He is easy to please!
- Did the police arrest the thief?
- No, they freed him I can’t believe it!
Reading / Comprehension: Reading for the Main Idea
Reading and Comprehension: The Family (Junior English Project for Secondary Schools) you can use any recommended text.
A paragraph is a group of sentences on the subject or topic. The topic is the main idea the writer has in his or her mind when writing. You can see that the main idea or topic on the first paragraph is ‘myself’- that is Bunmi Akinluyi. Now look at the second, third and fourth paragraph, what is the topic?
About Me and My Family
My name is Bunmi Akinluyi, and I am twelve years old. I go C.M.S. Grammar school, Bariga. I live in Igbobi, a suburb of Lagos. I live with my father, my mother, my Younger brother Dele and my baby sister, Ayo. Dele is nine and Ayo is two and half. She is quite small, but she talks a lot already. My aunt Bola and her eight year old son Ojo also live with us. Dele and Ojo go to Igbobi primary school.
My father is train driver. Hr works for the Railway cooperation. He is away from home quite often because he has to drive trains to Kaduna. My mother is nurse, she works at a hospital not far from home.
My favourite hobbies are reading and playing volleyball. I am also very interested in music. The thing I enjoy most of all is talking with my friends.
Composition
Outlining the difference between Narrative and Descriptive Essays
A narrative often reflects your personal experience, explaining what happened during some sort of experience. Stories are narrative, and narrative essays have a similar purpose of telling the events to the reader. Narrative essay topics include recounting an experience when you learnt something significant, your first data at school.
Narrative and Descriptive essay are two different types of essay writing, where a clear difference between them can be highlighted in terms of the writer’s objective in compiling the essay. A narrative is usually where a person tells his or her experiences to the reader. This highlights that a narrative allows the reader to immerse in a story that is composed of a sequence of events. But a descriptive essay is quite different from a narrative essay, mainly because it does not engage in relating a story but merely on providing a descriptive account of something or someone to the reader. This is the main difference between a narrative and a descriptive essay. Through this article let us examine the differences between these two types of writing.
What is a Narrative?
A narrative or a narrative essay can be defined as an account of an individual experience. This explains a personal experience that had a significant impact on the individual’s life. It can be of a journey, a special day such as the first day in school, one’s marriage, an unforgettable day, etc. This highlights that through a narrative the individual can express and share something special with the reader. A narrative entails a sequence of events that are often related in chronological order. A narrative can be presented in the first person narration that uses words such as I, myself, me, etc. However, a narrative can be in the third person as well when relating stories. This will have various characters and a specific plot surrounding that story will be built.
A narrative allows the reader to comprehend the point of view, attitudes, perspectives and construction of reality of the narrator. It allows the reader not only to be a part of the experience but also understand the personality of the narrator. In Social Sciences, narratives are usually used as empirical evidence for research purposes as they allow the researcher to understand the subjective experiences of people and also their interpretations of events.
A narrative allows the reader to comprehend the point of view, attitudes, perspectives and construction of reality of the narrator. It allows the reader not only to be a part of the experience but also understand the personality of the narrator. In Social Sciences, narratives are usually used as empirical evidence for research purposes as they allow the researcher to understand the subjective experiences of people and also their interpretations of events.
Narrative is an account of individual experience
What is a Descriptive Essay?
Unlike a narrative essay, a descriptive essay is used for explaining or describing a place, a person, or even an emotion. A writer can use sensory information such as the sight, the sound, touch, smell, and taste of a particular object in order to fully describe something. The diction used for these essays is very extensive and highly descriptive. In some cases, descriptive essays fail to present this totality of sensory information and only confine the description to one or two dimensions. A well-written descriptive essay usually has the potential for building a connection with the reader as it allows the reader to immerse in the described ambiance.
Descriptive essay describes or explains a place, a person or even an emotion
What is the difference between Narrative and Descriptive Essay?
Definition:
- A narrative can be defined as an account of an individual personal experience.
- A descriptive essay can be defined as an account that provides a detailed description of a place, a person, or even an emotion.
Content:
- A Narrative usually relates a story.
- A descriptive essay merely describes something or someone. It does not have a story, but only a highly descriptive account.
Point of View:
- A narrative mostly uses the first person narration.
- A descriptive essay does not mostly use the first person narration. It functions with the objective of presenting an image of something.
Action:
- A narrative is full of action as it relates a story. It consists of a sequence of event.
- However, this quality cannot be seen in a descriptive essay.
Order:
- A narrative follows a logical order since it relates an event or story it goes in a chronological order.
- However, in the case of a descriptive essay, the writer can deviate from this pattern.
- Plot and Characters:
- A narrative has a plot, a number of characters who revolve around this plot and take part in the events of the story.
- In a descriptive essay, there is no plot or characters as in a narrative.
Literature –in- English
Introduction to the Element of Prose
Prose is made up of different elements, the basic elements of prose are:
- Character
- Setting
- Plot
- Point of view
- And mood
Character
Interactions between characters are typically the forces that drive the story forward. There can be many types of characters in prose, including complex characters who change throughout the course of the story and simpler characters who serve a specific purpose. Character refers to biological information; personality traits, social roles, and psychological factor such as fear, aspiration and personal values
Setting
Setting is where the story takes place. Setting typically functions in two distinct senses: physical and chronological. Physical refers to where the events actually take place and chronological refers to when they take place.
Plot
Plot is the sequence of events that drives the story forward. Plot almost always involves some sort of conflict, whether between different characters, characters and events, or characters and themselves.
Point of View
Point of view indicates the perspective from which the story is told. Typically, prose is written in either first person, in which a character narrates events firsthand using “I,” or third person, in which the protagonist’s actions are narrated using “he” or “she.”
Mood
Mood is the feeling the story creates using the preceding elements. A mood may be uneasy, optimistic, uncertain or anywhere in between.
Theme is the overall message expressed in the writing. The writer uses all of the other elements to convey the theme to readers.
Grammar: Definition and Types of Verbs
A verb is said to be action word or a doing word, a word that characteristically is the grammatical center of a predicate and expresses an act, occurrence, or mode of being, that in various languages is inflected for agreement with the subject, for tense, for voice, for mood, or for aspect, and that typically has rather full descriptive meaning and characterizing quality but is sometimes nearly devoid of these especially when used as an auxiliary or linking verb.
Types of Verbs
Intransitive Verbs – An intransitive verb has two characteristics. First, it is an action verb, expressing a doable activity like arrive, go, lie, sneeze, sit, die, etc. Second, unlike a transitive verb, it will not have a direct object receiving the action.
Here are some examples of intransitive verbs:
Huffing and puffing, we arrived at the classroom door with only seven seconds to spare.
Arrived = intransitive verb.
James went to the campus cafe for a steaming bowl of squid eyeball stew.
Went = intransitive verb.
Around fresh ground pepper, Sheryl sneezes with violence.
Sneezes = intransitive verb.
In the evenings, Glenda sits on the front porch to admire her immaculate lawn.
Sits = intransitive verb.
Transitive Verbs
Transitive verbs are verbs that require one or more objects.
Examples:
- She cut the cake.
- They climbed the mountain.
- He gave her a flower.
The verbs cut, climbed, and gave have objects.
Transitive verbs Objects
Cut the cake
Climbed the mountain
Gave her and a flower
Transitive verbs can be categorized into two types: monotransitive and ditransitive:
- Monotransitive verbs are verbs that require exactly one object.
Example: He wrote a poem
- Ditransitive verbs are verbs that may require two objects, a direct object and an indirect object.
Example: She offered him (first object) her car (second object).
Intransitive verbs
By contrast, intransitive verbs do not require an object.
Examples:
- They run.
- He died.
- She slept.
- It snows.
The verbs run, died, slept and snows have no objects. They are intransitive.
Regular and Irregular Verbs
An English verb can be regular or irregular. Regular verbs form their past and past participle forms by adding –ed.
Examples are given below.
Walk – walked – walked
Dance – danced – danced
Paint – painted – painted
Work – worked – worked
Irregular verbs form their past and past participle forms in different ways.
There are mainly three types of irregular verbs.
Verbs in which all the three forms are the same (e.g. put – put – put)
Verbs in which two of the three forms are the same (e.g. sit – sat – sat)
Verbs in which all three forms are different (e.g. drink – drank – drunk)
Some verbs can be both regular and irregular. Examples are:
Burn – burnt – burnt (irregular)
Burn – burned – burned (regular)
Dream – dreamt – dreamt (irregular)
Dream – dreamed – dreamed (regular)
Lean – lent – lent (irregular)
Lean – leaned – leaned (regular)
Learn – learnt – learnt (irregular)
Learn – learned – learned (regular)
Smell – smelt – smelt (irregular)
Smell – smelled – smelled (regular)
Spoil – spoilt – spoilt (irregular)
Spoil – spoiled – spoiled (regular)
Literature-in-English: Types of Oral Literature
Myths – Myths are stories that explain objects or events in the natural world as resulting from some supernatural force or entity, most often a god.
Legends – Legends are stories coming down from the past, often based on real events. These are also often regarded as historical. Sometimes they may have certain parts that are fantastic or unverifiable.
Folk Tales – Folk Tales are brief stories passed by word of mouth from generation to generation.
Tall Tales – Tall Tales are also Folk Tales. They are often lighthearted or humorous and contain highly exaggerated unrealistic elements.
Fairy Tales – Fairy Tales are stories that deal with mischievous spirits and other supernatural occurrences, often in a medieval setting.
Parables – Parables are very brief stories told to teach a moral lesson.
Fables – Fables are brief stories, often with an animal character, told to express a moral.
Spirituals – Spirituals are religious songs from African-American traditions.
Epic – An epic is a long story often told in verse involving heroes and gods. Epics have often been passed on orally and may have anonymous authors. Grand in length and scope, an epic provides a portrait of legends, beliefs, valves, laws, arts, and ways of life of a people.
Proverb – A proverb or adage is a traditional saying.
Assessment
- ………… verbs are verbs that require one or more objects
a. Intransitive
b. Regular
c. Irregular
d. Transitive - Identify the intransitive verb – To escape the midday sun, the cats lie in the shade under our cars.
- …… verbs form their past and past participle forms by adding –ed.
a. Intransitive
b. Regular
c. Irregular
d. Transitive - …… are very brief stories told to teach a moral lesson.
a. Fairy tales
b. Parables
c. Myths
d. Legends - ……… is a long story often told in verse involving heroes and gods
a. Epic
b. Parable
c. Myth
d. Legend