HSC English First Paper - Unit Four - Human Relationships

Unit Four: Human Relationships

Lesson 1: Etiquette and Manners

1. Warm up activity:

□ What do you think are the rules that civilized societies follow to deal with elders in a family? Do different rules apply to women and children? Write down your answer.

□ In a group talk about the need for good manners.

2. Read the text below and answer the questions that follow:

As a child you must have been told to greet your elders and visitors to your home according to your culture and tradition. You must also have been taught to be polite in company and keep quiet while others, especially your elders, spoke. Possibly, you at times grudged such schooling. Possibly, at times you even protested such disciplining. Now, certainly you know that you can't always behave the way you want specially in the presence of others. There are rules of behavior you have to follow in a company. We are social beings and have to consider the effect of our behaviour on others, even if we are at home and dealing with our family members.

We have two terms to describe our social behaviour- 'etiquette' and 'manners/ 'Etiquette' is a French word and it means the rules of correct behaviour in society. The word 'manners* means the behaviour that is considered to be polite in a particular society or culture. Manners can be good or bad. For example, it is a bad manner to speak with food in one's mouth. No one likes a bad-mannered person. Remember that etiquette and manners vary from culture to culture and from society to society.

We learn etiquette and manners from our parents, families and various institutions, such as schools, colleges or professional bodies. There are rules of behaviour for all kinds of social occasions and it is important to learn them and practise them in everyday life. The maimers that are correct in a wedding reception will not do in a debating club. Therefore, we have to be careful about etiquette and manners. We know how important it is to say please' and 'thank you' in everyday life. A few more polite expressions such as 'pardon me/ 'excuse me', 'may 1/ are bound to make your day smooth and pleasant.

Here are some basic rules of etiquette:

Respect others' personal space.

Don't interrupt when someone else is talking.

Be a helper.

Be on time.

Don't yell in public places. 

Eat politely.

Chew with your mouth closed. 

Stand in queue.

There are many more. How many more can you add to the above list?

Here are some thoughtful observations on manners and etiquette from some famous people.

"Respect for ourselves guides our morals, respect for others guides our manners." Laurence Sterne

"Life is short, but there is always time enough for courtesy." Ralph Waldo Emerson "The real test of good manners is to he able to put up with bad manners." Kahlil Gibran

"Handsome is what handsome does." JRR Tolkein

"Politeness is a sign of dignity, not subservience." Theodore Roosevelt

"A man's manners are a mirror in which he shows his portrait." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Whoever interrupts the conversation of others to make a display of his fund of knowledge makes notorious his stock of ignorance." Shaikh Sadi "Etiquette is a fine tuning of education." Nadine Daher

3. Discuss the meaning and significance of each of the observations above in pairs and groups.

Different situations call for different etiquette and manners. These are divided into three groups: family etiquette, social etiquette and professional etiquette. A few more tips on etiquette are given below:

Family etiquette:

Respect each other's belongings.

Do not shout at children. Treat them kindly.

Listen to your parents.

Basic social etiquette:

Always be on time. Showing up late is rude and shows a lack of respect for other people's time.

Never interrupt the other person while he/she is talking.

Give and receive compliments graciously.

Refuse to gossip with and about friends.

Hold doors for people entering immediately after you.

Professional etiquette:

Dress properly.

Shake hands when appropriate.

Never take credit for other people's work.

Use indoor voice while talking to people.

(The tips for etiquette have been adapted from Debby Mayne's discussion on the Internet.)

4. Find out the meaning of the following words and make sentences with them:

a. grudge

b. club

c. smooth

d. yell

e. handsome

5. Find the antonyms of the following words:

a. polite

b. presence

c. particular

d. pleasant

e. ignorance

6. Write an essay describing how proper etiquettes can help our families and society function better.

Lesson 2: Love and Friendship

1. Warm up activity:

□ Imagine how human relationships have changed over time. Boys and girls reading in the same class may become good friends. This was not possible a hundred years ago. Write a page describing the benefits of better human relationship.

Love and friendship are the two important demands of human life. Human life becomes unlivable in their absence. Though human beings need them badly, true love and friendship are difficult to find. The short song from William Shakespeare's (1564 -1616) play As You Like It laments the absence of true love and friendship in human life.

2. Now read the lyric and answer the questions that follow:

Blow, blow, thou winter wind, 

Thou art not so unkind 

As man's ingratitude; 

Thy tooth is not so keen, 

Because thou art not seen, 

Although thy breath be rude.

Heigh-ho! sing heigh-ho! unto the green holly: 

Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly: 

Then heigh-ho, the holly! 

This life is most jolly.

Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky, 

That dost not bite so nigh 

As benefits forgot: 

Though thou the waters warp, 

Thy sting is not so sharp 

As friend remembered not. 

High-ho! sing heigh-ho! unto the green holly...

3. Answer the following questions:

a. Why does the poet call the winter wind "unkind"?

b. What is worse than the winter wind?

c. Why does the poet imagine that the wind has tooth?

d. What has got sharper tooth than the winter wind?

e. Can the wind breathe? Why does the poet say that the wind's breath is rude?

f. What is the poet's observation about friendship and love?

g. Why does the poet find the sky bitter?

h. What kind of people forget received benefits?

i. What makes the sting of the sky sharp?

4. Make a summary of the song.

5. When writers give human characteristics and attributes to objects, it is called personification. Find out instances of personification in the poem. What ideas does the poet convey by using the device?

6. One of the charms of poetry is the music it creates with words. Read the song aloud and feel how the last word in each line matches in sound with the last words in other lines. The poet has followed a pattern here in rhyming. Identify the pattern by showing which word matches with which word in sound. You can mark each word i.e., a,b,c,d letters from the alphabet.

7. What is the general theme of the song? Do you think it is still valid? Give reasons for your answer.

8. Narrate two short events describing true love and friendship.

9. Find 5 noun words and 5 adjectival words from the poem and make sentences with them.

Lesson 3: Photograph

1. Warm up activity:

□ In a group, initiate a discussion on photography in your time and in your parents' or grandparents' time.

□ Most mobile phones nowadays are fitted with a camera. How does a mobile phone take pictures? Discuss with friends.

2. Read the following story and answer the questions that follow:

I was ten years old. My grandmother sat on the string bed, under the mango tree. It was late summer and there were sunflowers in the garden and a warm wind in the trees. My grandmother was knitting a woollen scarf for the winter months. She was very old, dressed in a plain white sari; her eyes were not very strong now, but her fingers moved quickly with the needles, and the needles kept clicking all afternoon. Grandmother had white hair, but there were very few wrinkles on her skin.

I had come home after playing cricket on the maidan. I had taken my meal, and now I was rummaging in a box of old books and family heirlooms that had just that day been brought out of the attic by my mother. Nothing in the box interested me very much, except for a book with colourful pictures of birds and butterflies. I was going through the book, looking at the pictures, when I found a small photograph between the pages. It was a faded picture, a little yellow and foggy; it was a picture of a girl standing against a wall and behind the wall there was nothing but sky; but from the other side a pair of hands reached up, as though someone was going to climb the wall. There were flowers growing near the girl, but couldn't tell what they were; there was a creeper too, but it was just a creeper.

I ran out into the garden. "Granny!" I shouted. "Look at the picture! I found it in the box of old things. Whose picture is it"?

I jumped on the bed beside my grandmother and she walloped me on the bottom and said, "Now I've lost count of my stitches, and the next time you do that I'll make you finish the scarf yourself' She took the photograph from my hand, and we both stared at it for quite a long time. The girl had long, loose hair, and she wore a long dress that nearly covered her ankles, and sleeves that reached her wrists, and there were a lot of

bangles on her hands; but, despite all this drapery, the girl appeared to be full of freedom and movement; she stood with her legs apart and her hands on her hips, and she had a wide, almost devilish smile on her face.

"Whose picture is it?" I asked.

"A little girl's of course", said Grandmother. "Can't you tell"? "Yes, but did you know the girl?"

"Yes, I knew her", said Granny, "but she was a very wicked girl and I shouldn't tell you about her. But I'll tell you about the photograph. It was taken in your grandfather's house, about sixty years ago and that's the garden wall, and over the wall there was a road going to town".

"Whose hands are they", I asked, "coming up from the other side"?

Grandmother squinted and looked closely at the picture, and shook her head. "It's the first time I've noticed', she said. "That must have been the sweeper boy's. Or maybe they were your grandfather's."

"They don't look like grandfather's hand," I said. "His hands are all bony."

"Yes, but this was sixty years ago."

"Didn't he climb up the wall, after the photo?"

"No, nobody climbed up. At least, I don't remember."

"And you remember well, Granny."

"Yes, I remember... I remember what is not in the photograph. It was a spring day, and there was a cool breeze blowing, nothing like this. Those flowers at the girl's feet, they were marigolds, and the bougainvillaea creeper, it was a mass of purple. You cannot see these colours in the photo, and even if you could, as nowadays, you wouldn't be able to smell the flowers or feel the breeze."

"And what about the girl?" I said. "Tell me about the girl."

"Well, she was a wicked girl," said Granny. "You don't know the trouble they had getting her into those fine clothes she's wearing."

"Who was the girl?" I said. "You must tell me who she was."

"No, that wouldn't do," said Grandmother, but I pretended I didn't know. I knew, because Grandmother still smiled in the same way, even though she didn't have as many teeth.

Come on, Granny," I said, "tell me, tell me."

But Grandmother shook her head and carried on with the knitting; and I held the photograph in my hand looking from it to my grandmother and back again, trying to find points in common between the old lady and the little pig-tailed girl. A lemon-coloured butterfly settled on the end of Grandmother's knitting needle, and stayed there while the needles clicked away. I made a grab at the butterfly, and it flew off in a dipping flight and settled on a sunflower.

"I wonder whose hands they were," whispered Grandmother to herself, with her head bowed, and her needles clicking away in the soft warm silence of that summer afternoon.

3. Answer the following questions:

a. Why do you think the grandmother does not tell the boy that she was the little girl in the picture?

b. Whose hands do you think are those that are seen in the photograph? Why does the grandmother whisper the question to herself?

c. Describe the grandmother and the boy in your own words. Do you think she likes the boy because she wallops him for making her lose count of her stitches?

d. Have you ever seen your grandmother or mother knitting a woollen scarf or sweater? Can you describe how she did it?

e. What is the significance of a butterfly perching on the grandmother's knitting needle? Why does the boy try to grab it?

4. Make sentences with the following words to indicate that you understand their meaning:

a. rummage

b. heirloom

c. faded

d. wallop

e. breeze

5. Can you pick up the names of two flowers mentioned in the story? Then look at the picture of these flowers in a book or on the Internet and write a few lines describing them.

6. The girl in the photograph is described as 'full of freedom and movement.' What

particular aspect of her character or personality does the phrase highlight?

7. Among a group of friends, retell the story from the grandmother's point of view.

8. Write a paragraph from the boy's perspective on 'Grandma sixty years earlier.'