2.1 UNIT 2. Making a difference.

UNIT 2

Making a difference

Grammar:
Past Simple (affirmative, negative and
interrogative)
Regular and Irregular verbs
Time words

Functions:
Describing people and their past actions

Vocabulary:
Highly frequent adjectives: generous, gentle,
wonderful, kind, marvellous, lonely, poor, busy,
desperate, brave

Learning strategies:
If I want to understand natural language, I…
• guess the meaning of adjectives I don't
know
• use phrases from a listening text to express my own opinion
• transfer information from my schoolbooks (e.g. history book) to use it in English
• associate adjectives with jobs.

Lesson 1

AIMS
• To identify and learn new verbs in the past simple form
• To raise awareness of text coherence and cohesion
• To guess the meaning of adjectives from the text
• To raise awareness of verb+ noun phrases

Lead-in

1. Write down the names of three famous people. Compare the names with your partner's list.
2. Choose one of the names and tell your partner what you know about this person.
3. Why is this person famous?
4. Compare the names you have on your list with the famous people below to see if any names are the same.

Task 1

Look at the cards A-G below and match them with the correct sentence 1-7 below to make accurate sentences for each famous person. Then write in how old each person was.

	1. ___ discovered radium and radioactivity in 1898 when she was _________ years old. 2. ___ wrote the play Romeo and Juliet in 1595 when he was _________ years old. 3. ___ became Prime Minister of Greece in 1910 when he was _________ years old. 4. ___ won a gold medal in the Olympic Games in 1996 when he was _________ years old. 5. ___ painted ‘The Mona Lisa' in 1503 when he was _________ years old. 6. ___ began composing music in 1761 when he was _________ years old. 7. ___ made her first record in 1982 when she was _________ years old.

Making a difference

Vocabulary

1. Match the people in Task 1 to the profession given in the box below.

scientist playwright politician singer

artist weightlifter composer

Compare your answers with your partner.

2. Word pairs: With your partner, join two words from the box on the right to make compound words.

charity	lonely
desperate	organisation
marvellous	people
brave	woman
idea	famous
life	world

3. In pairs, match the verbs on the left with nouns in the box on the right.

save	die
feed	look after
pay	collect
become

a citizen	respects
the sick	in peace
the hungry	lives
money

Εικόνα Reading

Pre-reading

1. What makes someone famous? Do you know of anyone who became famous because they helped people?

2. Look at the photograph of a famous person. What can you tell about her?

Task 1 - Read the text

3. Now, look at the pictures beside the text on page 16 and try to imagine the life of this person. What kind of things do you think she did in her life? In pairs, make a list.

4. Read the text on the following page to find out if you guessed right, and complete your list.

5. Does she deserve to be canonised (declared a saint)? Explain why.

Lesson 1

Her work

touched many…

1 She became an Indian citizen later that year. This allowed her to do more wonderful work. In 1950, she started a charity organization in Calcutta to feed the hungry and look after the sick. She never once refused anyone help, and her work made a difference to the lives of the desperate people she lived beside.
2 At the age of twelve, she made a decision to become a nun. Her ambition was to help all those in need. Her father agreed that it was a marvellous idea, but explained to her that her life as a nun might mean a lonely life in a monastery. She told him that she didn't mind this and so, some years later, when she was eighteen, she went to Ireland and became a nun.

	3 At the Nobel Prize winning ceremony in 1979, where she wore her famous blue sari, she asked the Nobel organization not to have a dinner for her and to use the money “to feed 400 poor children in India for a year”.
	4 During this time, she saw many cases of poverty and suffering and knew that she had to do something to help. So, she asked for permission to leave the school and spend her life working among the poorest of the poor in the streets of Calcutta. Her love of people made an impression on everyone who met her as she took care of them in their suffering and pain. Although she was always busy she still made time for everyone.

5
After a few months of training in Dublin, the Church sent her to Calcutta in 1931. When she first went to India, she wanted to work with poor people but the Church didn't let her. So, she taught in St. Mary's High School until 1946.

6
Though Calcutta was the centre of her charity, and the place she called home, her work reached the four corners of the earth. Throughout her life she has become world famous for the hundreds of centres she has helped to build in 120 countries all around the world. Wherever people needed help and comfort, she was there, among the hungry in Ethiopia, or in the ruins of Armenia's earthquake where she saved thousands of lives.

7
In the winter of 1948 she began her work by bringing hungry and dying people into a home where they could find love and care and finally die in peace.

	8 This act showed what kind of generous person she was. In 1997 she caught pneumonia and when she died some time later famous people from all over the world came to pay their respects to a brilliant and brave woman.
9 Born to Albanian parents in Skopje on August 27th 1910, Agnes Gonxha Bejaxhiu, spent her life with the poor in India. As a child, she was extremely kind and gentle and helped whoever she saw in need. At a very young age she made a promise to her father that she would always help others in need.

Making a difference

Task 2 - Who’s that person?

“kind words can be short and easy to speak,
but their echoes are endless”

Discuss with your partner what the saying in bold above means? What kind of person might say this? Why? The nun in the picture said these words. What is her original name? Read the text carefully to find what her family name was before she became a nun.
If you do not know, search on the internet by writing in her original name.

Task 3 - Find the verbs in the past

Underline all the verbs in the text which refer to the past. Compare your answers with your partner.
Check with your teacher to make sure you know the meanings of the verbs.
Write the new verbs with their Greek meaning in your notebook.

Task 4 - Answer the questions

Look at the following questions 1-8 and find out which question word is used in all of them. Does the word refer to the Present or Past?
Then, with your partner, find the answers to the following questions.

1. In what year did she become a nun?
2. What did she use to talk to her father about?
3. Did she work with the poor when she first went to India?
4. Where did she start the charity to help the poor?
5. When did she win the Nobel Peace Prize?
6. Did the Nobel Prize dinner in her honour cost a lot of money? Why do you think this?
7. How did she die?
8. What kind of things did she do to help people?

Now, use your answers to create a timeline of her life. Mark any great historical events on the timeline that happened during her lifetime.

Task 5 - Put the paragraphs in the correct order

Read the text again and find the correct order for paragraphs 1-9. Use the pictures to help you. Ask your partner to check if you were right in your choice.

Task 6 - Speaking: Charities

1. Look at the list of non-profit organisations which offer help around the world. Discuss with your partner what these organizations do.

Hellenic Red Cross
Greenpeace
Reto Hellas

Doctors Without Borders
SOS Children's Village
Volunteer work Athens

Discuss why it might be a good idea to become a member of a charity organization like these.

2. ROLE PLAY
Imagine you want to become a member of one of these organizations. Decide on an organization and ask your partner for information. Your partner can find information about the organisation on p.156 of this book to give you the information you need. Take it in turns to ask and give information about each charity.