Chapter 9. English Language and Literature
Language skills: reading, writing, listening and speaking, developed through regular practice [19][20][21].
Grammar essentials
Parts of speech: nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions and interjections.
Tenses: present, past and future, each in simple, continuous, perfect and perfect continuous forms.
Sentence types: simple, compound, complex and compound-complex.
Voice and mood: active and passive; indicative, imperative and subjunctive [19][20].
Agreement: the verb must agree with its subject: each of the students has.
Punctuation: full stops, commas, semicolons, colons, apostrophes and quotation marks.
Vocabulary. Learn word families, prefixes, suffixes and roots; use context clues; keep a vocabulary notebook; learn collocations such as make a decision [21].
Writing
Process: plan, draft, revise, edit and proofread.
Paragraphs: topic sentence, support, and concluding sentence.
Essays: introduction with thesis, body paragraphs, conclusion.
Types: narrative, descriptive, expository, argumentative; reports, formal letters, speeches and articles.
Reading and comprehension. Skim, scan and read closely; identify main ideas, inference, tone and the writer’s purpose.
Literature. Study poetry, drama, prose fiction and non-fiction. Analyse theme, character, setting, plot, point of view, imagery, symbolism and figurative language such as simile, metaphor and personification. Use the pattern point, evidence, explanation in literary answers. Consider the historical and cultural context, including world Englishes and the literature of South Asia [19].
Speaking and listening. Prepare, organize ideas, speak clearly, and listen actively. Practise pronunciation, stress and intonation.
Common errors to avoid: comma splices, sentence fragments, dangling modifiers, faulty parallelism and confusing words such as its/it’s and their/there/they’re [20][21].
Review: Correct: “Each of the boys have finished.” (Answer: “Each of the boys has finished.”)