· web viewwith all this to contend with, it’s no surprise young men now struggle with body...

Campaigning for a Cause:Exploration of Non-Fiction Texts

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1 "Our House is on Fire" (2019) by Greta Thunberg Non-Fiction SkillsLanguage Skills

Our house is on fire. I am here to say our house is on fire. According to the IPCC we are less than 12 years away from not being able to undo our mistakes.

In that time unprecedented changes in all aspects of society need to have taken place including a reduction of our co2 emissions by at least 50% and please note that those numbers do not include the aspect of equity which is absolutely necessary to make the Paris agreement work on a global scale. Nor does it include tipping points or feedback loops like the extreme powerful methane gas being released from the thawing Arctic permafrost.

At places like Davos people like to tell success stories but their financial success has come with an unthinkable price tag. […]

We are facing a disaster of unspoken sufferings for enormous amounts of people and now is not the time for speaking politely, we're focusing on what we can or cannot say. Now it's the time to speak clearly. Solving the climate crisis is the greatest and most complex challenge that Homo sapiens has have ever faced.

The main solution however is so simple that even a small child can understand it. We have to stop the emissions of greenhouse gases. And either we do that or we don't. You say nothing in life is black or white but that is a lie, a very dangerous lie. Either we prevent a 1.5 degree of warming or we don't. Either we avoid setting off that irreversible chain reaction beyond the human control, or we don't. Either we choose to go on as a civilization or we don't. That is as black or white as it gets.

There are no grey areas when it comes to survival. Now we all have a choice. We can create transformational action that will safeguard the future living conditions for humankind, or we can continue with our business as usual and fail. That is up to you and me.

Some say that we should not engage in activism, instead we should leave everything to our politicians and just vote for change instead. But what do we do when there is no political will? What do we do when the politics needed are nowhere in sight?

[…]

We are now at a time in history where everyone with any insight of the climate crisis that threatens our civilization and the entire biosphere must speak out in clear language, no matter how uncomfortable and unprofitable that may be. We must change almost everything in our current societies. The bigger your carbon footprint is, the bigger your moral duty. The bigger your platform the bigger your responsibility.

Adults keep saying we owe it to the young people to give them hope. But I don't want your hope, I don't want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic, I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act, I want you to act as if you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if the house was on fire, because it is.

1. Read the statements below and decide if they are true or false:

Statement: True or False?

A. Thunberg lost her family home to a fire caused by global warming.

B. Society needs to make major changes if we want the opportunity to reverse the damage we have done to our planet.

C. Thunberg believes that it is vital to discuss the environment, even if others do not like the way she chooses to speak about it.

D. Thunberg believes that the main solution to solving climate change is too complex for most typical children to understand.

E. Thunberg urges her audience to vote for changes to environmental policy; she believes this is the most effective way to solve the climate crisis.

F. Thunberg argues that saving the environment is more important than the pursuit of profit.

G. Thunberg mentions many adults whom she admires for their dedication to solving the climate crisis.

H. Thunberg is scared for the future.

2. Select an example of each of the following persuasive devices from the text:

Persuasive Device: Quotation:

Metaphor

Direct address

Collective pronoun

Rhetorical question

Declarative

Simple sentence

Statistic

Emotive language

Anaphora*the repetition of a word/phrase at the beginning of successive clauses

CHALLENGE: Which persuasive device used in this speech is the most effective? Why?

2 Speech on the NHS to the Labour Party (2014) by Harry Leslie Smith

Non-Fiction SkillsLanguage Skills

The following extract is a transcript of a speech given by Harry Leslie Smith (an English writer and political commentator from Yorkshire) at the Labour Party Conference in 2014. What makes this an

effective and persuasive speech?

I came into this world in the rough and ready year of 1923. I’m from Barnsley and I can tell you that my childhood – like so many others from that era – was not like an episode from Downton Abbey. Instead it was a barbarous time. It was a bleak time and it was an uncivilised time. Because public healthcare didn’t exist… No one in our community was safe from poor health, sickness and disease. In our home, TB came for my eldest sister, Marion. Tuberculosis tortured my sister and left her an invalid that had to be restrained with ropes tied around her bed. My parents did everything in their power to keep Marion alive and comfortable. But they just didn’t have the dosh to get her the best clinics, find her the best doctors or the right medicines. Instead, she wasted away before our eyes until my mother could no longer handle her care and she was dispatched to the workhouse infirmary where she died at the age of 10, 87 years ago.

Mum and dad couldn’t afford to bury their darling daughter, so like the rest of our country’s indigent, she was dumped, nameless into a pauper’s pit. My family’s story isn’t unique. Sadly, rampant poverty and no healthcare were the norm for the Britain of my youth. That injustice galvanised my generation to become, after the Second World War, the tide that raised all boats.

Election Day 1945 was one of the proudest days in my life. I felt that I was finally getting a chance to grab destiny by the shirt collar and that is why I voted Labour and for the creation of the NHS.

We must never, ever let the NHS free from our grasp, because if we do, your future will be my past. I am not a politician, a member of the elite, or a financial guru, but my life is your history. And we should keep it that way.

GLOSSARY: Barnsley = a former industrial town is South Yorkshire, England Barbarous = extremely brutal, primitive and uncivilized TB = Tuberculosis, a disease that attacks the lung and can be fatal if untreated Invalid = a person made weak or disabled by illness or injury Dosh = money (informal) Indigent = poor, needy, impoverished people Galvanise = to shock or excite (someone) into taking action.

1. Using your own words, explain what the text means by:

i. “rampant poverty” (paragraph 2):

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ii. “she was dumped, nameless” (paragraph 2):

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Dysphemism: using an unpleasant or shocking term instead of a neutral or inoffensive one (the opposite of a euphemism)

2. Re-read the second paragraph. Where has Smith used a dysphemism?

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3. Why has Smith used dysphemisms in his speech? What is the purpose/effect?

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Emotive language: words and phrases that have been chosen by a writer to evoke a specific feeling or emotional reaction in their reader.

4. Note down at least 3 examples of emotive language used in the speech above. Briefly explain why they have been chosen: what are the connotations of the word/phrase?

“tortured” Makes TB sound painful and cruel. Suggests that the disease intentionally caused trauma for an extended period of time, and that Marion had to fight against it.

3I worry for my teenage boys – the beauty standards for young men are out of control (2020) by Emma

BeddingtonNon-Fiction SkillsLanguage Skills

From men’s magazines to the chiselled gods of Love Island, boys are inundated with messages to both bulk up and moisturise. It all reminds me of my own youth, much of it wasted on bulimia.

It’s that time of the month when an ominous thud through the letterbox heralds the arrival of my 17-year-old son’s Men’s Health magazine. As I pick it up, my eyes narrow in suspicious disapproval. What glistening slab of mesomorph flesh will be on the cover this time? What should my boy build, crush, smash or ignite this month? What body part needs to be dominated? It’s almost certainly something to do with abs: a cursory review of back issues lying around the house reveals only one cover star allowed to wear a top. Men’s Health is no country for the dad bod or for the scrawny goths I idolised during my adolescence: the sheer acreage of veiny thoroughbred muscle on show is enough to give anyone a complex. Honestly, it’s so depressing. Isn’t adolescence hard enough without discovering that even your calves need to be bulked up? What even is a deltoid and can’t we just leave it alone?

Yet it’s unfair to single out Men’s Health, which has plenty of good, thoughtful coverage of male mental health and stress issues amid all the hard, lean, fat-burning content. It’s also pretty quaint to think any part of the struggling magazine industry could be having a serious impact on boys’ body image with a whole digital world of #fitspo and #workout posts to obsess over, and the chiselled gods of Love Island everywhere in their tiny trunks. The lack of variety among this years’ candidates is as predictable as it is disappointing: hairless and six-packed, with arms like giant hams and thighs like tree trunks, they all have precisely the unattainable look my boys’ generation seems to aspire to.

With all this to contend with, it’s no surprise young men now struggle with body image almost as much as young women. We’re equal-opportunities body dysmorphic in 2020: the number of men getting treatment for eating disorders increased by 70% between 2010 and 2016, according to NHS statistics, and last year the Children’s Society Good Childhood report revealed that one in 12 boys are unhappy with their appearance.

With two teenage sons, the whole uneasy business of young men’s body image is very immediate for me. Protein is a household deity and our cupboards are full of pre- and post-workout powders and potions with violently overwrought names (Beast, Curse, X-Plode, Venom). The parents of other teenage boys I know report the same; one of my friends even wrote a poem about her son’s protein powders sharing a shelf with her dad’s ashes.

[…]

Of course it’s not bad to care about your health and your appearance at their or at any age. There’s certainly nothing admirable about my own lapse into neglected cronedom, exfoliating with a crusty flannel once a week. On one level, you could argue that they are an informed generation, practising self-care, exercising regularly and eating well. It’s the kind of stuff the runaway popularity of Queer Eye has reminded us many older men neglect.

But at an age when body image is fragile and your sense of self is in flux, it’s so easy for looking after yourself to shade into obsession. I should know: part of my visceral reaction to this stuff is a product of my own history. I used to read women’s health and fitness magazines religiously on the way to the clinic where I was treated as an outpatient for bulimia in my 20s, internalising the diet tips and eating plans that seemed to validate my rules, restrictions and rituals. I wasted years of my life on this stuff; no wonder a cover line such as: “Return to slender for good today!” makes me bristle.

My boys are probably fine: they like a biscuit as much as a facial serum. But I can’t help worrying for the vulnerable ones, the ones like me, who will take this stuff and turn it into a joyless obsession. I managed it back when I needed to go to WHSmith to fuel my disorder; now there’s a whole digital industry to feed the beast.

Mesomorph = a body type with greater than average muscular development

1. Identify a word or phrase from the text which suggests the same idea as the words underlined:

(i) A brief look through previous editions of the magazine.

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(ii) The writer doesn’t see any of the types of men she admired during her teenage years.

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(iii) It’s old-fashioned and naïve to put all the blame on the magazine industry.

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(iv) The body types of the Love Island men are not realistic or achievable.

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2. Using your own words, explain what the writer means by each of the words underlined:

“With two teenage sons, the whole uneasy business of young men’s body image is very immediate for me. Protein is a household deity and our cupboards are full of pre- and post-workout powders and potions with violently overwrought names (Beast, Curse, X-Plode, Venom).”

(i) uneasy:

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(ii) deity:

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(iii) overwrought:

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3. What is your personal opinion on the article? Do you agree with the writer? Disagree? Why?

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4 Homelessness is a national disgrace. Let’s make Britain humane again (2019) by Philip Pullman


The death of an old student of mine, who was homeless, brought home how toxic and unkind this country has become.

The plight of homeless people, and our reaction to it, are part of the hideous tangle this country has got into. There are so many strands leading into this appalling knot, that if we pull any one of them, the tangle gets worse.

[…]

We’ve become complacent about moral progress. We look at the great advances in science and medicine and sanitation in the past

couple of centuries, and we congratulate ourselves that improvements in those fields have been accompanied by advances in moral understanding. These days we don’t gather to watch bears being tormented to death by dogs, or heretics having their intestines pulled out while they are still alive. We believe that Britain is a kindlier, more decent place than it used to be.

[…]

In the doorways of great, stony-hearted buildings, in urine-stinking underpasses, under crumbling bridges, people who have nowhere else to go lie down to sleep. And we go past – I go past – and perhaps drop a few coins on a blanket or in a cardboard box, and then go home to our comfortable houses and watch the TV news, where we learn with a sinking heart about the latest opinion polls.

What can we do? Where do we start? Which thread in this abominable tangle of misery and stupidity and greed and wickedness should we try to pull first? And what hope could we have that it would start to untangle the rest?

[…]

So what do we do? Sink into a torpid and surly despair? Rise above it in a mindful bubble of self-enclosed bliss? What on earth can we do?

This question came home to me powerfully when I read the Guardian’s series about the deaths of homeless people, because I realised that I had taught one of them. Sharron Maasz was 44 when she died, having suffered domestic abuse and mental health problems as well as drug and alcohol addiction. I taught for a while at the school she attended in Oxford, but to be honest I can’t really remember her, no doubt because she was friendly and well behaved. And the city where I live, the society I’m part of, could do nothing to keep her alive.

We need individual acts of charity – of course. But they’re just drops of water when what we need is a flood. We need political change – by all means. Let’s have a system that liberates us instead of choking the possibility of a decent life for everyone. But I’m coming more and more to believe there’s something in us that relishes wickedness and nourishes stupidity, something much deeper than political systems or economic theory.

For much of my lifetime, that something was kept in check by other equally ancient human impulses: kindness, empathy, cooperation.

But the balance has swung the other way – perhaps not by much; perhaps by 52% to 48%, for example. It’s time to help it swing back again. We have to develop, or perhaps evolve, a moral understanding that is wider and more clear-sighted than the one displayed by our current leaders.



A. Pullman believes that the issues of homelessness can be easily resolved.

B. He believes we care about moral progress more than scientific advances.

C. He argues that Britain believes itself to be more civilised than before.

D. Although we typically pity homeless people, we don’t spend a lot of time thinking about them.

E. Pullman cares so much about this cause because he used to be homeless.

F. Pullman tried to help his former student but sadly she died on the streets.

G. He argues that it will take considerable changes in political policy to make any significant improvements to the problem of homelessness.

H. Society needs to be kinder, but this is not being modelled by those in power.

2. Use one example from the text below to explain how the writer feels about the issue of

homelessness. Use your own words in your explanation.

“The plight of homeless people, and our reaction to it, are part of the hideous tangle this country has got into. There are so many strands leading into this appalling knot, that if we pull any one of them, the tangle gets worse.”

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5 Loneliness is a national crisis. But there is a way to tackle it (2020) by Owen Jones


From pubs to factories, the spaces where we socially connect are in decline. Thankfully there’s a group bringing local people together.

Imagine there was a virus you’d never heard of which increased the likelihood of mortality by 26%, or a condition which had a death rate comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. A national health crisis would be declared, and judging by the reaction to the coronavirus, panic would ensue. This public health crisis, which leaves its victims more than twice as likely to develop Alzheimer’s and other dementias, has a name: loneliness.

More than 2 million adults suffer from chronic loneliness; and although its most severe form is more prevalent among Britain’s oldest citizens, younger adults report loneliness more than any other age group.

A desire for social connection is fundamentally hardwired into our psychology, and so being deprived of it has devastating mental and physical consequences. Yet we live in a society which has become ever more fragmented and atomised.

[…]

Alongside this, the mass sell-off of council housing and the collapse of homeownership among younger people has forced many of them towards the insecure private-rented sector, leaving them unable to set down lasting roots in communities. While more than three-quarters of us think it would be better if we knew our neighbours, 73% of us don’t even know their names. More and more of us live alone, and while some may consider the 28% rise in the numbers working from home as liberating, it is undoubtedly isolating too.

[…]

Is this unravelling of social connections inevitable and irreversible? On Tuesday night at the Old Red Lion pub in Kennington, south London, there were people in their 80s chatting to women six decades younger. This was the local group of The Cares Family: an initiative bringing together older locals and young professionals in urban areas. The pub gives everyone a free drink, and they mingle: I found myself chatting to a woman born in 1939 who fought for equal pay in the 60s, and another who became isolated after spending years caring for her ill mother, and now fears there will be no one to care for her at the end of life.

Here is an imaginative attempt to overcome loneliness and bridge Britain’s generational divide. […] Here are clubs that build connections, and self-confidence too. Activities range from singing in choirs to script reading. Some attract 150 people, young and old in equal numbers, ranging from working-class white residents from “old London” to first-generation migrants.

[…]

Here’s a community network that makes clear that the long drift towards isolation is not inevitable. All of us need to connect with others, even as society has robbed us of opportunities to do so. An atomised, fragmented society is not simply sad – something to passively mourn – but contributes to a major public health crisis. Loneliness is devastating our mental and physical health and, at its worst, is killing us. Yet thankfully, unlike some conditions, we can easily cure it. We just need the will.

1. Give two examples of side effects of loneliness, according to the text.

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i. “fundamentally hardwired” (paragraph 3):

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ii. “fragmented and atomised” (paragraph 3):

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3. Re-read paragraph 4, (“Alongside this, …”).

Give two reasons for the increase in loneliness in modern society.

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4. The text gives the example of The Cares Family and their initiative for combatting loneliness in their local area. What other approaches or strategies can you think of that could help tackle loneliness in your community? Think big and small.

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6 The shooting at my school will be yesterday’s news. And nothing will come of it. (2019) by Gina Painter


Gina Painter is a teacher at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, Calif.

We will be yesterday’s news.

Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, Calif., has joined the list of all-too-familiar tragedies — Columbine, Parkland, Sandy Hook. But in a week, the news cycle will have moved on. The interviews will cease. The sound bites will be replaced. We will be yesterday’s news.

Yet for those of us who lived through the horrific day — for the children who lost their friends and the parents who lost their children — Thursday’s violence will linger over our community forever.

We see images of our school in the national news. Backpacks strewn over the campus where children dropped their belongings and ran for safety. A war zone of lunch boxes and music stands where kids were practicing. Notebooks. Sweatshirts.

We remember barricading the doors and huddling the kids in the corners of our classrooms. We remember running with kids to safety and holding them while they cried. We remember dressing wounds and telling 14-year-old kids that they would be all right while being so very unsure of our abilities to save them.

For us, this will never be over.

Politicians will speak about Saugus as they have done about the many other school shootings in this country. We will become a sound bite. A stat. Or, maybe they will avoid it entirely.

And nothing will be done.

School shootings have become so commonplace that our nation has started measuring these tragedies against one another. “It could have been worse. It’s not like Saugus is Sandy Hook.”

Someone actually said these words to me. Beyond the obvious lack of empathy, it speaks to how desensitized we, as a nation, have become.

Two children were killed after a gunman, who died the next day from self-inflicted wounds, shot them at our school. Our pain is no less searing.

[…]

The only thing that makes sense is to not allow people access to weapons of war that kill children. The only thing that makes sense is not to sacrifice kids. I wonder if these same advocates who speak so staunchly about their right to own a gun would be willing to sacrifice their own children and grandchildren.

Even today I see insensitive and ill-timed comments about how “it’s not the guns. It’s mental illness.”

It’s the guns.

It’s the guns that are killing our children.

It is a gun that killed two of our students, injured four more and indelibly damaged our community in the span of 16 short seconds.

But we will be yesterday’s news. And nothing will be done.



A. The shooting at Saugus High School was entirely ignored by the national news.

B. Staff members at the school had to administer first aid to students.

C. School shootings in the United States are incredibly rare.

D. The writer believes that, in recent years, the public is becoming more and more shocked by school shootings.

E. The writer argues that the life of children is more important than the right to own a gun.

F. The writer feels disillusioned by the public’s attitude towards the shooting at her school.


(i) The children’s bags were scattered messily all over the school.

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(ii) Reports about the school will become short clips from an interview, played repeatedly.

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(iii) There are people who argue strongly in favour of owning a weapon or gun.

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(iv) The hurt that has been caused can never be removed or forgotten.

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3. The writer uses lots of short declaratives (statements). Why?

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7 I went from foster care to the Olympics (2018) by Simone Biles


People love to ask: "What's your secret?" Sometimes they want to know how I defy gravity on the mat. Other times they want to know how I went from foster care to the Olympics.

My answer to both is the same: a mix of talent, hard work and grabbing the right opportunity when given the chance. When I was far too young to know it, others around me saw that I had a gift for gymnastics. Without their encouragement and support, I would have never been a gymnast.I was blessed to have both a gift and the chance to develop it. But many people aren't so lucky.

Did you know that in the United States there are nearly 400,000 children and youth in foster care? In my mind, those are 400,000 talents waiting to be discovered. But as few as 3% of foster kids go on to earn a bachelor's degree, compared to about 30% of the general population.

Is it possible that all of these young people have no desire to go on to higher education? Clearly not. They simply lack the support, and often the financial resources and opportunity to realize their potential.

So, I'm speaking up on their behalf to say it's time for an education revolution. It's time for a new model, where everyone has an opportunity to learn no matter their background.

And I want to advocate for these kids because I was a foster care kid myself. My road to success began the day my grandfather and his wife officially adopted my sister and me. My birth mother suffered from drug addiction, and when I was just three years old, my siblings and I were removed from her custody. From there, we bounced around until I was six and my grandparents made the brave move to adopt us.

Although I was young when my foster care ordeal began, I remember how it felt to be passed off and over-looked. Like nobody knew me or wanted to know me. Like my talents didn't count, and my voice didn't matter.

Finding a family made me feel like I mattered. Finding a passion, something I loved and was really good at, made me feel like I mattered. Representing my country and being part of such an amazing Olympic team matters, as does being a role model for those looking to fulfil their own dreams.

Which brings me to the issue of education. There is overwhelming evidence to suggest that children and youth in foster care are a vulnerable population in the education system. Across the United States, 52% of foster youth attend schools that rank in the lowest 30%. Worse yet, nearly a quarter of foster youth struggle with learning disabilities in the school system.

And that's saying nothing of the academic and emotional challenges that accompany multiple family and school placements over the course of childhood.

But if we invest in foster care children, they, too, can have the opportunity to succeed -- which in turn strengthens our communities, economy and society.

[…]

Knowing what it means to have the odds stacked against you, I believe it is my duty to provide assistance to those most in need. For this reason, I am launching a scholarship fund at UoPeople for foster kids and others. This fund will assist with covering the costs associated with earning their degrees -- including application fees and assessments fees at the end of each course.

Our circumstances shouldn't define us or keep us from our goals, especially if that goal is higher education. My hope is that I can help other foster care children realize that goal in the months and years ahead.

1. List 3 statistics from the text:

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2. Which statistic do you find the most shocking or surprising? Why?

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i. “education revolution” (paragraph 5):

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ii. “vulnerable population” (paragraph 9):

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4. Re-read paragraphs 9 and 10, (from “Which brings me to the issue of education.”)

Give three reasons for why children in foster care can have trouble achieving academic success.

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8 We need to learn how to relax, without guilt (2016) by Claudia Hammond


I’m not very good at resting. When I told friends that after writing books covering emotions, time perception and the psychology of money I had started writing one on rest, their first reaction was usually, “But you’re always working. You never rest!”

More generally, if someone asks me how things are going, my stock answer is, “Fine, busy, too busy really.” But while this claim feels true of my life, how much is it also a claim to status? If you say you are busy, then it implies you’re important, you’re in demand. As the time-use researcher Jonathan Gershuny puts it, busyness has become “a badge of honour”.

In contrast to the 19th century, when the upper classes were happy to flaunt their idleness, in the 21st century it is work and not leisure that gives us social status. Think of celebrities constantly taking on new projects and posting everything they do on Instagram.

At the heart of our attitude to rest is this ambivalence: we yearn for rest, but then feel anxious that we’re being lazy. We feel we’re not making the most of our lives and really should be doing something. And these days, for most of us, “doing something” is defined very narrowly. It means, being busy. And not just some of the time, but all of the time.

Yet as far back as Socrates we have been warned of the barrenness of a busy life. If we’re busy all the time, life lacks essential rhythm. We miss out on the contrasts between doing and not doing. Of course, the art of rest does not lie in replacing constant busyness with total inactivity. If you are unemployed or have depression, enforced rest is far from relaxing.

The state we want to reach is where we’re active and engaged a lot of the time, but we have proper breaks away from it all. Rest without guilt, rest without stress.

If a lack of rest is a shared problem, is there a common solution? Can we learn from each other how to rest more and rest better?

To make one thing clear, the rest I’m referring to is not sleep. I’m talking about any time while you are awake that feels restful. This could mean lying on the sofa staring into space, but it could mean something more active. The most popular restful activity in our survey was reading. Other people chose activities that might not be seen by some as restful at all. In the Rest Test survey, 38% of the respondents said they found walking restful, another 8% listed running. Sometimes it’s only by exerting your body that you can rest your mind. People who do more exercise believe they get more rest, and in fact they do – they reported more hours of rest in the past 24 hours than people who exercised less. The point is that a restful activity doesn’t have to involve lazing around; it can involve intense exercise, but crucially it must help to relax, refresh and restore you.

So now I prescribe myself at least 15 minutes of gardening every day, even on one of my working-from-home days. In the past I would have felt guilty about being away from my desk, but now I’ve reframed the time out as a way of protecting my mental health and enhancing my wellbeing. Although I have slightly less time to work, I return to my desk feeling calmer and I end up being more productive.

In fact, I probably should make myself take longer breaks, though it’s hard to prescribe the exact amount of rest each of us should have. In the Rest Test, wellbeing levels were highest in those who had rested for between five and six hours the previous day, with levels dipping again if people rested for more than that time. To me, five hours of rest seems like a lot.

I’m still busy, of course, and probably always will be, but I’ve learned to take rest more seriously, to view it not as a thing to do when everything else is done, but as an essential part of life.

1. In 25 words or fewer, summarise the core argument that the writer puts forward in the text:

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2. Re-read the text and list 5 different activities that the writer identifies as restful or relaxing:

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3. What does rest and relaxation mean to you? Use the boxes below to draw and label 4 different restful or relaxing activities that you enjoy:

1. 2.

3. 4.

9 All cyclists fear bad drivers (2016) by Peter Walker Non-Fiction SkillsLanguage Skills

Ask most people who ride a bike regularly in the UK and they’ll happily recount a list of terrifying or alarming incidents caused by the deliberate actions of another road user, usually someone in a motor vehicle.

My last such incident happened just under a week ago, when a driver decided to overtake my bike very closely and at speed on a narrow residential street near my home in south-east London. I was unharmed, but the driver was gambling on the assumption that I would not, for example, hit a sudden pothole and swerve or wobble.

Inevitably the congested traffic meant I caught up with the driver at the next junction. His relatively minor but nonetheless very real roll of the dice with my chances of making it home safely that evening had all been for nothing. That’s appallingly common.

[…]

The thing to grasp is that it’s about the person, not the mode of transport they happen to be using at that particular time. As well as cycling, I walk, use buses and trains, sometimes drive, occasionally get planes. My personality is not changed, or defined, by any of those. I get the sense that all these forms of transport are populated by roughly similar proportions of idiots. They might push on to a train, barge past you on an escalator at an Underground station, recline their plane seat just as the meals are being served.

Driving is, however, different in one way. It is the sole event in most people’s everyday lives where there is a plausible, if remote, chance they could kill another human being. It’s not about morals, it’s simple physics. If I hit someone at 12mph even on my solid, heavy everyday bike it would impart something like 1,200 joules of kinetic energy. If I were in the last car I owned, a relatively tiny Nissan Micra, doing 30mph, you’re suddenly at 100,000 joules. It’s a very different impact.

It’s why police should take incidents more seriously than they generally do. It’s why the driving tuition and testing system should be revamped to place far more stress on drivers’ vast, overriding responsibility to look out for and protect vulnerable road users, those not cocooned within a tonne of metal. It’s why the judicial system should take deaths and maiming caused by drivers a whole lot more seriously than it does.

Next time you’re in a car and you think a cyclist in front is holding you up, I’d urge you to hold two very clear thoughts in your mind.

The first is this: despite the apparent belief of many drivers, cyclists are not obliged or even advised to ride in the gutter. If a rider is in the middle of the lane it could be to stay clear of opened doors on parked cars; it could be because the edge of the road is rutted and potholed; it might even be, as with Vine, to stop drivers squeezing past when it would be clearly unsafe to do so.

Also bear this in mind: even if you’re absolutely convinced the cyclist is in the wrong, hold back and be cautious anyway. In the majority of urban traffic situations, your overtake will be a very brief victory – they’ll pedal past again in the queue for the next red light or junction.

But most of all, remember that these are human beings, unprotected flesh and bone seeking to get to work, to see their friends, return to their loved ones. However much of a rush you think you’re in, it never, ever justifies putting them at risk.



A. Most people in Britain ride a bike to work regularly.

B. Most UK cyclists feel incredibly safe on the roads.

C. The writer has never had a dangerous incident whilst cycling.

D. The writer lives in south-east London.

E. Driving a car gives you the power to take the life of another person.

F. The writer believes that the police don’t take incidents between cars and cyclists seriously.

G. Cyclists must ride in the middle lane of the road.

H. When driving in the city, over-taking a cyclist is likely to simply result in them riding past you again.

2. In the space below, design an informative poster (words and images) that educates readers about the key messages conveyed in the text:

10 Why on earth are the chore wars not done and dusted? (2019) by Gaby Hinsliff


Going on strike has always been a secret fantasy of mine. Not from the day job, obviously, so much as from its dreary invisible twin. How else do you make a family understand the point of the unpaid household drudgery that otherwise everyone breezily takes for granted: the daily slog of getting dinner cooked, sheets changed and school letters signed, and stopping trails of other people’s carelessly abandoned crud from clogging the arteries of a house?

There’s something unbelievably tempting about the idea of just leaving everyone to stew in their own mess, and seeing how long it takes for the penny to drop that dishwashers don’t automatically stack themselves. Yet for most women it remains just a fantasy, partly because it’s faintly embarrassing to admit to having fallen into domestic martyrdom and partly because if you didn’t feel irrationally guilty about what might befall a household left to fend for itself, then you’d never have become a slave to it in the first place.

Well, now fate has intervened. A sudden bout of sickness has led to a week of medically enforced bed rest during which I physically can’t do anything except lie down and watch the room spin, leaving the rest of the family to take up the slack. As I type, sounds of distant swearing drift up from the kitchen, where the dog has apparently thrown up two minutes before my husband needs to leave for the school run. But for once, nobody expects me to sort it all out while simultaneously finding their rugby socks, or to feel guilty about not doing so.

[…]

For anyone vaguely assuming that woke millennials had all this sorted out by now, a study published this summer by University College London found that fewer than 7% of couples split the domestic load equally. Women still do the lion’s share even when both partners work full time, and even when both claim to have lofty egalitarian beliefs. If anything, the harder a woman works outside the home, the more she cares about showing standards haven’t slipped inside it.

[…]

But after decades of inching painfully slowly in the right direction, direct action increasingly appeals. If you want kids to understand what it is you do all day – how the toothpaste magically never runs out, where clean shirts come from, how much effort goes into the mysterious migration of food from supermarket shelf to fridge to table – then the only real answer is not to do it. Stand back, and brace yourself for the fallout.

It’s hard if you have small children (Howard, who tried a domestic strike for the purposes of book research, admits rather shamefacedly to breaking her own picket line to collect her son from nursery).

But for parents of teens marinating in their own dirty laundry, there’s remarkably little to lose from withdrawing domestic labour for a couple of days. Things may not be done as you would have done them, to put it mildly. But with luck, something better may rise from the puddle of soggy towels on the floor.

1. In 25 words or fewer, summarise the core argument that the writer puts forward in the text:

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(i) Painful suffering as a result of endless chores and housework. [Paragraph 2]

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(ii) The majority of household work is still completed by women. [Paragraph 4]

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(iii) To do something whilst full of embarrassment. [Paragraph 6]

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3. Use one example from the text below to explain how the writer feels about housework and

chores. Use your own words in your explanation.

“How else do you make a family understand the point of the unpaid household drudgery that otherwise everyone breezily takes for granted: the daily slog of getting dinner cooked, sheets changed and school letters signed, and stopping trails of other people’s carelessly abandoned crud from clogging the arteries of a house?”

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11 Exercise is more precious than ever. So let’s stop scaring kids off PE by Anna Kessel


W hen I was growing up I routinely bunked PE lessons. I saw PE as optional – it was on the timetable, but no one seemed to care if you didn’t attend. PE was for sporty kids anyway, and I wasn’t one of them.

Times have changed. We now know so much more about the value of physical activity – for physical and mental wellbeing, to promote positive body image in women and girls, to help people with depression, to engender a healthy lifestyle from an early age, to sharpen concentration and academic performance, and even to tackle the gender pay gap (research shows that women who play sport are more likely to enjoy high-flying careers).

So why is PE still treated as if it were optional? And that’s not just by tearaway teens, but by schools themselves. New research from the Youth Sport Trust has revealed that 38% of teachers have seen a drop in secondary school PE over the last five years as a direct result of exam pressures on 14- to 16-year-olds.

The survey results didn’t surprise me. While schools are advised to provide two hours of PE a week (which includes time for students to get to the class and get changed either side), nothing is enforced. In recent years I’ve been told many woeful stories about PE in state schools. In one London borough, primary schools reeling from the effects of savage cuts and under pressure to achieve exam results cut PE lessons for two whole terms so that pupils could focus on preparing for their SATs.

Predictably, this is a story of economics and privilege – those schools were primarily made up of pupils for whom English was a second language. Another teacher told me of their school “regularly pulling kids from PE to do further English lessons when PE was the only lesson they could really take full part in with limited language skills”. On a BBC 5Live phone-in on this subject on Wednesday, a head of PE from a school in the West Midlands said that underachieving Year 11 students were being taken out of PE lessons for additional learning support ahead of their exams.

That’s the maddening thing. The schools with kids facing the biggest academic hurdles are often those facing the biggest cuts to their PE programme. And those are often the kids for whom extracurricular sports clubs are not an option, so when it comes to physical education school is their lifeline. Little wonder, then, that privately educated athletes are overrepresented in the Team GB medal tally, with one third of British medallists at Rio 2016 having attended fee-paying schools – five times the national average.

Even when children are getting access to PE, there are concerns about the quality of the lessons. Primary school teachers receive an average of just six hours’ training in delivering PE lessons – and many report feeling unassured and ill-prepared as a result, a situation exacerbated by the fact that many teachers themselves had negative experiences of PE at school.

We are at risk of depriving a generation of young people of physical activity, at a time when so many other factors are combining to put their physical and mental wellbeing at risk. PE is the free-to-access physical activity that should never be cut. And yet here we are, 25 years on from when I left school, still making the same errors. We really should know better.

1. Using your own words, explain what the writer means by each of the words underlined:

“While schools are advised to provide two hours of PE a week […] nothing is enforced. In recent years I’ve been told many woeful stories about PE in state schools. In one London borough, primary schools reeling from the effects of savage cuts and under pressure to achieve exam results cut PE lessons for two whole terms so that pupils could focus on preparing for their SATs.”

(i) Enforced:

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(ii) Woeful:

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(iii) Reeling:

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(iv) Savage:

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2. In your opinion, what does the ideal P.E. lesson involve/look like? Use the space in the box

below to write key words/draw images of the ideal P.E. lesson:

12 Barack Obama’s Victory Speech (2008) by Barack Obama


The following extract is a transcript of part of a speech given by former US president Barack Obama on the eve of his successful election, speaking from his home city of Chicago.

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

It's the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen, by people who waited three hours and four hours, many for the first time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different, that their voices could be that difference.

It's the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled, Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been just a collection of individuals or a collection of red states and blue states.

We are, and always will be, the United States of America.

It's the answer that led those who've been told for so long by so many to be cynical and fearful and doubtful about what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.

It's been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this date in this election at this defining moment, change has come to America.

1. List four words/phrases from the first paragraph that have positive connotations:

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2. What is the purpose/effect of Obama’s use of a list in paragraph 3?

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3. What metaphor has Obama used in paragraph 5?

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4. What is the purpose/effect of Obama’s use of a metaphor in paragraph 5?

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CHALLENGE: In his speech, Obama avoids using any complicated terms or technical language. Why?

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Writing to Analyse (PEE) Sentence Starters

Point:

This should be a clear and concise statement about the text.

The writer presents … … as … … . Through the use of [technique], the writer … … The writer uses [technique] to … … In the text, the writer aims to … …

Evidence:

This is where you use quotations from the text to support your point. You should aim to select fairly short pieces of evidence. Remember to use quotation marks.

This is shown when the writer writes “… …” For example, “… …” The writer states that “… …”

Challenge: Aim to embed your quotations. This means that they become part of your sentence. For example:

My quotation for this is “a stampede of children”. (Not embedded) The writer describes the children as a “stampede”. (Embedded)

Explanation:

This is the most important part of your PEE paragraph. Here you explain how your evidence supports your point, and provide as much detail as possible. Use at least two of the following sentence starters per paragraph:

This suggests that … … This gives the impression that … … This creates an image of … … The word “… … …” in particular has connotations of … … This creates a sense of … … The writer may have wanted to persuade/argue/show/present/convince … … This makes the reader think/feel/question/wonder/realise/support … … because … …

· web viewwith all this to contend with, it’s no surprise young men now struggle with body...

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