CXC ENGLISH

Hello there! Students in Form Five are now busy with exams, so your CXC English page will be turning attention to those of you who will be writing the exam in 2017 or 2018. Today we focus on vocabulary building and on the use of the pun. Read on, and enjoy!

PUN

A pun is usually defined as a play on words. Sometimes puns occur accidentally—and then they can be embarrassing. For instance, an optician placed a notice in the shop window saying, “Eye drops off shelf,” and a newspaper ran a headline announcing, “Hospital sued by seven foot doctors”.

Because the effect of a pun is usually humorous, many people use them deliberately to get a laugh. Those bears that advertise soft toilet tissue make jokes about “the bare facts”. And you will enjoy this one: “The politician is not one for Indian food. But he’s good at currying favours”.

Now that you are in the mood, enjoy these:

• Being struck by lightning is really a shocking experience! • Santa’s helpers are known as subordinate Clauses. • How do construction workers party? They raise the roof. • When a woman returns new clothing, that’s post traumatic dress syndrome. • Two peanuts walk into a bar, and one was a-salted. If you have access to the Internet, go to this website and you will find lots more fun puns: http://examples.yourdictionary.com/examples-of-puns.html

Puns in your CSEC poems You’ll find examples of the pun in the poem Test Match Sabina Park. Some years back there were two players in the England cricket team called Geoff Boycott and Dennis Amiss. Stewart Brown decided it would be fun to create puns on those two names: Boycott and Amiss, so to describe the boring game and the slow wicket he writes, “England boycotting excitement bravely,/ something badly amiss.” It’s a clever, playful slap in the face for the England stars.

Two puns occur in A Lesson for this Sunday. In addition to the usual meaning of a ‘lesson’, the poem hints at another meaning: the short message derived from Scripture and delivered in church. The pun draws attention to the fact that the speaker had not gone to church, but had nevertheless heard the sermon for the day. In the same poem, when the little girl is described as being “crouched on plump haunches, as a mantis prays”, we think of the word “preys” too, because the children have been hunting butterflies. This pun is very effective because it’s Sunday, yet instead of praying, the girl is preying. In these last two examples, the result of the pun is not humour; rather, the pun makes the reader think.

SYNONYMS

If you have a THESAURUS (and you should try to get one), you will find that for every word you look up, several synonyms will be given. Be careful how you choose a word, though, because NO TWO WORDS MEAN EXACTLY THE SAME THING.

Look at these words. They all mean “A person who works with another”, but if you think about each of them carefully, you will see that they cannot be used interchangeably: colleague workmate collaborator helper

Now use your dictionary (or thesaurus or the Internet) to find as many synonyms as possible for these words—noticing, as you do so, the shades of meaning among them:

Behaviour, anxiety, big, brave, busy, sincere, danger, catch, difficult, gain, dishonest, enemy, enlarge, hinder, frustrating, sly, ugly, politeness, surrender, suitable, quiet, unpleasant, tell, pity, disgusting, injury, abandon, necessary.

ANTONYMS

Antonyms are pairs of words that are OPPOSITE in meaning: young/old; right/left; light/heavy; clean/dirty

Use your thesaurus to find an antonym for each of the following words. You will sometimes find more than one possible antonym. Light, for instance, has “heavy” as its antonym, but it also has “dark”!

Fresh, straight, puny, morning, praise, profit, generosity, proud, disperse, ancestor, compulsory, emigrate, sophisticated, ignorance, amateur, confusion, antidote, abundance, stationary, successor, assent, ascent, unique, genuine, prologue, latitude, premature, natural.

TEST YOUR WORD POWER

conspirator ally accomplice assistant

Here is a list of 20 words followed by a list of 20 definitions. Link each word to its definition and then check your dictionary to see if you got all of them correct.

Spacious, parched, summarize, archaeologist, concur, covet, notorious, amphibious, illusory, infallible, equilibrium, recipient, subterranean, cordial, thrifty, saturate, imaginary, scorn, imaginative, anticipate never known to fail existing underground 1. 2. 3.

It’s easy to mix up pairs of words like these: absent/absence, present/presence, silent/silence Does that happen to you? Luckily there is an easy rule to help you! With the exception of the word “equivalent” (which can be either an adjective or a noun), all of the –ence words are NOUNS, and all of the –ent words are ADJECTIVES:

The silence (NOUN) in the church was very welcome after the noise of traffic outside.

The accused man remained court.

silent

(ADJECTIVE) when he was questioned in

TEST YOURSELF (2) Silent/silence a. Please be ——————-in the library. b. ————is necessary so that students can concentrate on their work. c. His ————————seemed to be an admission of guilt. d. When I asked for an explanation, he remained————————Absent/absence a. His teacher asked him to give a reason for his—————————b. His teacher asked him why he had been——————— c. In the register, she had been marked——————-several times during the term.

d. Her prolonged ————-from school affected her grades. 1. 2. able to move on land or water of pleasant, friendly personality having plenty of room one who receives to express the main ideas in concise form one who digs for ancient relics look forward to a state of physical balance feel or express contempt or disdain for existing only in the mind to wet something completely having a vivid imagination that which deceives the eye to desire that which belongs to another to support another’s opinion denied moisture having a bad reputation not given to needless spending

-ED or –ING? Choose the correct word from the brackets: (bored/boring) a. We agreed that politician’s speech was rather————so we felt———— most of the evening. b. The film was—————-so we turned the television off. c. In adult life, work is often——, but we have to do it—whether we are—— or not. Excited/exciting a. I was very————when I heard about the scholarship. b. The finals of the competition were very—————-. c. The winner was so—————that she began to cry. Frustrated/frustrating a. Tamika applied for several jobs but was ———————when she was not invited to an interview b. Tamika applied for several jobs but found it —————————to receive so many rejections.

ANSWERS

Test Yourself 1 a) boring…bored, b) boring, c) bored 2 a) excited, b) exciting, c) excited, 3 a) frustrated, b) frustrating.

Test Yourself (2) 1 a) silent, b) silence, c) silence, d) silent. 2 a) absence, b) absent, c) absent, d) absence

(The following texts were helpful in the preparation of today’s CXC English: Secondary Certificate English by P.S. Morrell and General Certificate English by Alan Etherton.)