Register and Audience, Monitoring Reading, Regular Plurals, Reference Words and Types of Characters

1. Thinking about Audience

Your audience is the person or group you are speaking or writing to. Before you speak, ask three questions. Who is listening? How well do I know them? What do I want them to do or understand? The answers decide your vocabulary, your tone and how much detail you give.

Formal register is suitable for people in authority, older people, strangers and official occasions. Informal register suits friends, siblings and relaxed occasions. Between these lies a neutral register, polite but not stiff, which suits most conversations with classmates and teachers during lessons.

2. One Message, Three Registers

All three sentences give the same information, but the words, length and tone change with the audience.

3. Features to Adjust

To raise the level of formality, use full forms instead of contractions ("I am" not "I'm"), use polite words such as "kindly" and "would", avoid slang and choose longer words where they are natural ("assist" instead of "help"). To become less formal, use first names, shorter sentences and everyday words. Do not overdo either: very long words used with friends sound strange, and slang in a formal letter sounds disrespectful.

1. Signs That Understanding Has Broken Down

You may have lost meaning if you cannot retell what you just read, if a word stops you, if you lose track of who is speaking or if your mind has drifted. Noticing the problem is the first step.

2. Reading Passage: The New Borehole

For as long as Mansa could remember, the women of Asuogya had walked two kilometres to the stream. In the dry season it shrank to a muddy trickle, and the children often fell ill. So when a lorry arrived carrying a drilling rig, the whole village came out to watch.

For three days the machine roared and shook the ground, but the hole stayed dry. On the fourth morning, the engineer shook his head. "There may be no water here," he said. Mansa's grandmother, who had been watching silently, pointed her walking stick at a clump of green reeds beyond the school. "Try there," she said. "Those reeds never die, even in harmattan."

The engineer smiled politely, but he moved the rig. By evening, cold clear water was gushing out of the pipe, and the village drummers were already at work.

3. Fix-Up Strategies in Action

4. Using Strategies Together

Other fix-ups include slowing down, reading aloud, breaking a long sentence into parts and asking someone. Use the simplest one first. If you are still confused, mark the place and ask your teacher.

1. Singular and Plural

Plural: The form of a noun that shows more than one.

A singular noun names one person or thing. A plural noun names more than one. Most English nouns form plurals by adding -s, but the spelling changes according to the ending of the word.

2. Spelling Rules

3. Sounds of the Plural Ending

The written -s has three sounds. It sounds like /s/ in "books" and "goats", like /z/ in "dogs" and "farmers", and like /ɪz/ in "buses" and "churches". Noticing these sounds improves your pronunciation.

4. Plurals in a Passage

Read: "The ladies carried boxes of mangoes and tomatoes to the buses, while the boys loaded knives and dishes onto the roofs." Each plural here follows one of the rules in the table. Try to name the rule for each word.

1. What Is Reference?

Reference: Using a word such as a pronoun or demonstrative to point to something already mentioned.

Reference words stop writing from repeating the same nouns, and they link one sentence to the next. The reader must look back to find what each word refers to, so the writing holds together.

2. Types of Reference Words

3. A Paragraph with Reference

Read: "Ghana's coastal forts were built by European traders. Many of them still stand today. These buildings remind visitors of the slave trade. Their dark dungeons tell a painful story, and that is why they are protected as World Heritage Sites."

In this paragraph, "them", "these buildings", "their", "they" all point to the forts, and "that" points to the whole idea before it.

4. Avoiding Unclear Reference

Every reference word must point clearly to one thing. "When the teacher spoke to Ama's mother, she was angry" is unclear, because "she" could be either person. Rewrite it: "The teacher was angry when she spoke to Ama's mother." Also avoid starting a sentence with "This" when the reader cannot tell what "this" means; add a noun: "This decision", "This problem".

1. What Is a Character?

Character: A person, animal or being who takes part in the events of a story, play or poem.

2. Types of Characters

3. Characters in a Folktale

Ananse the spider is one of the best-known characters in Ghanaian stories. He is clever, greedy and full of tricks. In many tales he is the protagonist, and his opponent may be the python, the leopard or even Nyame, the sky god. Ananse is often a flat character because he keeps his greed from story to story, but some tellers make him more complex, showing that he also loves his family.

4. Why Types Matter

Identifying character types helps you understand a story's conflict and message. When a character changes, ask why. The change often shows the theme. If the protagonist learns to be honest, the story may be teaching about honesty. In examinations, support what you say about a character with evidence from the text, such as what the character says and does.