ASSIGNMENT

TEXT 1

Jefferson Davis disappears as New Orleans removes tribute to ‘lost cause of the Confederacy’.
By J. Freedom du Lac, Janell Ross and Avi Selk May 11 (The Washington Post)
1 Jefferson Davis served as the first and only president of the Confederate States of America,
2 although his legacy as rebel leader does not exactly shine in the historical record. The Civil War
3 Trust notes that “Davis’ popularity and effectiveness were not enhanced by the growing number
4 of Confederate defeats,” and that Davis was captured in the waning days of the war by Union
5 soldiers after he fled the Confederate capital in Richmond. "His cause went down in disastrous
6 defeat and left the South impoverished for generations," Smithsonian Magazine noted, adding:
7 "Many Americans in Davis’s own time and in later generations considered him an incompetent
8 leader, if not a traitor." Still, Davis is celebrated in pockets of the South, with highways, high
9 schools and other things named in his honor.
10 For more than 100 years, there was also a prominent statue of Davis in New Orleans. A handful
11 of protesters lined up beneath it before dawn Thursday, chanting "President Davis" as city
12 workers removed it. After days of tension and protests, crews strapped the 116-year-old statue
13 beneath its arms and wrapped its waist in plastic, according to NBC affiliate WDSU, and just
14 after 5 a.m. hoisted it from its longtime perch -along Jefferson Davis Parkway, no less. "A
15 cheer went up from some of the dozens of protesters on the scene who have been pushing for
16 the monument's removal," the Associated Press reported. "It was then lowered behind trucks
17 encircled around the monument's base and out of view of media gathered on the scene."
18 As the Davis statue came down, a group of proponents for removal who had been largely
19 absent from the area around the Davis memorial since a series of verbal clashes and minor
20 skirmishes with monument defenders, chanted "Nana, na, Naana, goodbye," according to
21 people at the scene. The group stood behind police metal barricades, near the corner of Canal
22 St. and Jefferson Davis Parkway, on an expansive grassy median known in New Orleans as "the
23 neutral ground," a reference to the way that the space once served as a conflict free zone
24 where the Spanish and French settlers who once battled for political, economic and social for
25 control of this city engaged in trade. Across the intersection, monument defenders watched in a

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26 state of sad disbelief. Some jeered and booed the removal crew as it worked. Others, waved
27 confederate flags, a blue Trump banner and groaned as Davis was wrapped in protective
28 sheeting and encased in a wooden frame then wrestled from his perch on the neutral ground
29 with the aid of a massive crane. "These monuments are symbols, symbols of hate and white
30 supremacy that we simply, as a city cannot continue to honor this way," Mayor Mitch Landrieu
31 told The Washington Post before the statue came down. "So while this process has not been
32 easy, we intend fully to move ahead."
33 The Jefferson Davis statue was the second monument to rebel heritage to come down in New
34 Orleans in the past month; in late April, workers dismantled the Battle of Liberty Place
35 monument, which honored members of the Crescent City White League who died trying to
36 overthrow the local government after the Civil War.
37 "Three weeks ago, we began the process of removing statues erected to honor the ‘Lost Cause
38 of the Confederacy,"’ said Mayor Mitch Landrieu (D). "This morning, we continue our march to
39 reconciliation by removing the Jefferson Davis Confederate statue from its pedestal of
40 reverence." As happened with the previous monuments dismantling, the city’s actions provoked
41 immediate condemnation from defenders of Confederate history. “Landrieu cannot be inclusive,
42 tolerant, or diverse when he is erasing a very specific and undeniable part of New Orleans’
43 history," Pierre McGraw, president of the Monumental Task Committee, said in a statement. The
44 committee, which takes credit for restoring the Davis memorial three decades ago, is part of a
45 sprawling statue defense movement in New Orleans that spans from white supremacists such
46 as David Duke to residents who condemn slavery while honoring Confederate soldiers who
47 fought to protect it. Since the first Confederate monument fell last month, all of these factions
48 have been united in anger against Landrieu, the majority black city's first white mayor since the
49 1970s.

1. Comment on the style of the text paying special attention to the main features of online
articles.

2. Write an opinion essay in relation to the topic dealt with in the text. (300 words approx.)

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3. Find synonyms in the text for the following words:

 Heightened.
 Mocked.
 Small areas.
 Derrick
 Lifted.
 Spreading out.
 Clashes.
 Declining.

4. Analyse the following sentence syntactically:

“As the Davis statue came down, a group of proponents for removal who had been largely absent
mum the area around the Davis memorial since a series of verbal clashes and minor skirmishes
with monument defenders; chanted “Nana, na, Naana, goodbye,”

LANGUAGE USE ACTIVITIES

1. Complete the prepositional phrases below by choosing a word from the following list. When
you have finished, try to make up a sentence using each of the phrases.

a cost agreement aid answer behalf compensation peace

the benefit the influence good terms

1. at _____________________with 6.on ____________________of

2. or _____________________of 7. at _____________________of

3. in_____________________ to 8. in_______________________for

4. in_____________________ of 9. under __________________of

5. on____________________ with 10. in__________________ with

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2. Complete the sentences with the words in the box to form idiomatic expressions:

odds and ends a piece of cake ups and downs music

shoulder pros and cons rags use ocean pie

1. The teacher asked us to talk about the ____________________of shopping online.

2. I had to face the __________________________all by myself although I was not the only one
responsible for the problem.
3. Don’t worry about the problems you have in your business. You know there are always-
_____________________ in business.
4. If you think that doing this maths problem is__________________________ just try it.
5. All these promises these politicians make are just __________________________in the sky.
6. The small amount of money donated is just a drop in the ______________________compared
to the large sum of money needed.
7. The police found nothing special in the house of the criminal as he had taken all the important
documents with him, leaving just ____________________________________________
8. They had had a dispute yesterday. That's why she gave him the cold ______________________

9. He has been successful in his life. He went from______________________________ to riches

10. He spends his time drinking and watching TV. He's no __________________to man or beast.

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 TEXT 2

CHAPTER 36
1 The stinging bites, then the itching of the body lice, steadily grew worse. In the fifth, the
2 lice as well as the fleas had multiplied by the thousands until they swarmed all over the hold
3 They were worst wherever the body crevices held any hair. Kunta's armpits, and around his
4 foto, felt as if they were on fire, and his free hand scratched steadily wherever his shackled
5 hand couldn't reach.
6 He kept having thoughts of springing up and running away; then, a moment later, his
7 eyes would fill with tears of frustration, anger would rise in him, and he would fight it all back
8 down until he felt again some kind of calm. The worst thing was that he couldn't move
9 anywhere; he felt he wanted to bite through his chains. He decided that he must keep himself
10 focused upon something, anything to occupy his mind or his hands, or else he would go mad-
11 as some men in the hold seemed to have done already, judging from the things they cried out.
12 By lying very still and listening to the breathing sounds of the men on either side of him,
13 Kunta had long since learned to tell when either of them was asleep or awake. He concentrated
14 now upon hearing farther away from him. With more and more practice at listening intently to
15 repeated sounds, he discovered that his ears after a while could discern their location almost
16 exactly; it was a peculiar sensation, almost as if his ears were serving for eyes. Now and then,
17 among the groans and curses that filled the darkness, he heard the thump of a man's head
18 against the planks he lay on. And there was another odd and monotonous noise. It would stop
19 at intervals, then resume after a while; it sounded as if two pieces of metal were being rubbed
20 hard together, and after hearing more of it, Kunta Hgured that someone was trying to wear the
21 links of his chains apart. Kunta often heard, too, brief exclamations and janglings of chains as
22 two men furiously fought, jerking their shackles against each other's ankles and wrists.
23 Kunta had lost track of time. The urine, vomit, and feces that reeked everywhere around
24 him had spread into a slick paste covering the hard planking of the long shelves on which
25 they lay. Just when he had begun to think he couldn't stand it anymore, eight toubob came
26 down the hatchway, cursing loudly. Instead of the routine food container, they carried what
27 seemed to be some kind of long-handled hoes and four large tubs. And Kunta noticed with
28 astonishment that they were not wearing any clothes at all.
29 The naked toubob almost immediately began vomiting worse than any of the others who
30 had come before. In the glow of their lights, they all but sprang along the aisles in teams of
31 two, swiftly thrusting their hoes up onto the shelves and scraping some of the mess into
32 their tubs. As each tub was filled, the toubob would drag it back along the aisle and go
33 bumping it up the steps through the opened hatchway to empty it outside, and then they would
34 return. The toubob were gagging horribly by now, their faces contorted grotesquely, and their
35 hairy, colorless bodies covered with blobs of the mess they were scraping off the shelves. But
36 when they finished their job and were gone, there was no difference in the hot, awful, choking
37 stench of the hold.
38 The next time that more than the usual four toubob descended with their food tubs,
39 Kunta guessed that there must be as many as twenty of them clumping down the hatch
40 steps. He lay frozen. Turning his head this way and that, he could see small groups of toubob
41 posting themselves around the hold, some carrying whips and guns, guarding others with lights
42 upraised at the ends of each shelf of chained men. A knot of fear grew in Kunta's belly as he
43 began hearing strange clicking sounds, then heavy rattlings. Then his shackled right ankle

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44 began jerking; with flashing terror he realized that the toubob were releasing him. Why? What
45 terrible thing was going to happen now? He lay still, his right ankle no longer feeling the
46 familiar weight of the chain, hearing all around the hold more clicking sounds and the rattling of
47 chains being pulled. Then the toubob started shouting and lashing with their whips. Kunta knew
48 that it meant for them to get down off their shelves. His cry of alarm joined a sudden bedlam of
49 shrieks in different tongues as the men reared their bodies upward, heads thudding against the
50 ceiling timbers.
51 The whips lashed down amid screams of pain as one after another pair of men went
52 thumping down into the aisleways. Kunta and his Wolof shacklemate hugged each other on the
53 shelf as the searing blows jerked them convulsively back and forth. Then hands clamped
54 roughly around their ankles and hauled them across the shelf's mushy filth and into the tangle
55 of other men in the aisle-way, all of them howling under the toubob whips. Wrenching and
56 twisting in vain to escape the pain, he glimpsed shapes moving against the light of the opened
57 hatchway. The toubob were snatching men onto their feet-one pair after another- then
58 beating and shoving them along, stumbling in the darkness, toward the hatchway's steps.
59 Kunta's legs felt separated from the rest of his body as he went lurching alongside the
60 Wolof, shackled by their wrists, naked, crusted with filth, begging not to be eaten.
61 The first open daylight in nearly fifteen days hit Kunta with the force of a hammer
62 between his eyes. He reeled under the bursting pain, flinging his free hand up to cover his
63 eyes. His bare feet told him that whatever they were walking on was moving slightly from side
64 to side. Fumbling blindly ahead, with even his cupped hand and clamped eyelids admitting
65 some tormenting light, trying futilely to breathe through nostrils nearly plugged with snot, he
66 gaped open his cracked lips and took a deep breath of sea air--the first of his life. His lungs
67 convulsed from its rich cleanness, and he crumpled to the deck, vomiting alongside his
68 shaklemate. All about him he heard more vomiting, chains clanking, lashes meeting flesh, and
69 shrieks of pain amid toubob shouts and curses and strange flapping sounds overhead.
Source: Alex Haley, Roots.

1. Comment on the narrative and descriptive techniques used by the author of the text to
create the suffocating atmosphere that surrounds the main character.

2. Write a short composition about the so-called African-American Odyssey, or the quest for
full citizenship of African-American people. (300-350 words)

3. Write a complex sentence using each of the following words or expressions from the excerpt
without changing their form: (in bold in the extract).
1. A slick paste.
2. Thrusting their hoes up.
3. Clumping down.
4. Went lurching alongside.
5. Fumbling blindly ahead.
4. How would you make use of this text in the second year of Bachillerato?

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 LANGUAGE USE ACTIVITIES
1. Write a sentence using each of the following expressions:
1. as the behest of the committee.
2. at stake.
3. at the outset.
4. at this juncture.
5. by common consent.
6. by dint of hard work.
7. correspondingly.
8. curiously enough.
9. deep down.
10. down through history.
3. Explain the following words, acronyms or expressions related to education:
Curriculum-wide approach SEN students CLIL Monitoring
Cross-curricular contents Clustering Peer pressure.
Comprehensible input Needs assessment Performance evaluation

TEXT 3
“Why humans must not give up the quest for Mars”
1. When US president Donald Trump called astronauts aboard the International Space Station last
2. week to congratulate Peggy Whitson, who now holds the record for the most time spent in
3. space by a Nasa astronaut, he also asked when he could expect to see humans land on Mars
4. (answer: the 2030s). “Well, we want to do it in my first term or at worst in my second term,”
5. he joked, “so well” have to speed that up a bit."
6. Nasa’s not alone in its mission. Space agencies worldwide are aiming for Mars, and the coming
7. decades hold numerous plans for manned and unmanned missions. Although other worlds in
8. the solar system hold significant scientific promise (not least Saturn’s moon Enceladus, which
9. hosts a salty underground ocean and was found to have almost all of the ingredients needed to
10. support life as we know it about a week ago), it seems that we just love Mars the most. Too
11. much? I don’t think so.
12. Mars is an especially good mission target due to its proximity to us, and has been easy to see in
13. the sky since the year dot; it is relatively similar to Earth in a number of crucial ways, making it
14. a better bet for manned missions and potential colonisation than any other planet in the solar
15. system. There is still much we do not know about the planet - and so much science to be done
16. there.
17. We have loved Mars for centuries. The planet has firmly embedded itself in our culture, so
18. much so that "Martian" is somewhat synonymous with "alien" - although the aliens you
19. imagine, from sleek black obelisks to giant Wellsian tin cans or little green humanoids, may
20. vary.
21. Science-fiction authors -Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C Clarke, HG Wells, John
22. Wyndham, Robert A Heinlein, Kurt Vonnegut, Philip K Dick - have penned thousands of pages
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23. about the red planet. Enormously influential albums have described otherworldly rock stars with
24. backing bands of Martian spiders. A story about an astronaut (played by Matt Damon)
25. cultivating potatoes on the surface of Mars became a Hollywood blockbuster in 2015, raking in
26. $630m at box offices around the world. All manner of television programmes have found
27. inspiration in Mars, from Captain Scarlet to Looney Tunes’ hapless Marvin the Martian.
28. This cultural interest is mirrored in scientific interest. Our first mission to Mars launched in
29. 1960, and we have attempted more missions to the planet than to anywhere else in the solar
30. system bar the Moon. Given this history, you’d be forgiven for thinking that we must know
31. almost all there is to know about Mars by now -but that’s not the case. For one, we’re still
32. unsure of how Mars formed. The planet is surprisingly small, and doesn’t fit into our models of
33. how the solar system came together. We’re not sure how its two small moons formed, either.
34. These lumpy, bumpy rocks have puzzling properties. They may have formed in orbit around
35. Mars, they may be captured asteroids, they may be the result of a giant, shattering impact that
36. knocked material from their parent planet- or something else.
37. We also lack a complete understanding of Mars’s history. We see signs of past water all over its
38. surface and in its chemistry, and so think it was once much warmer than it currently is in order
39. to support liquid water. However, we’re not sure how this waterworld changed into the arid
40. lump we see today. To support widespread water and warmth, Mars’s atmosphere must have
41. been very thick during the planet’s youth (likely facilitated by a far stronger magnetic field,
42. which has long since switched off). Where did it all go?
43. Then, of course, there’s the question of life. Is the planet habitable? Is there, or was there
44. ever, life on Mars? We don’t know enough to be sure either way. Perhaps dormant microbes lie
45. buried deep in the soil, or are happily thriving in warm underground aquifers away from prying
46. eyes. Perhaps the planet is lifeless and always has been, or life has died out.
47. Uncertainty aside, there is quite a bit we do know about Mars-after all, we have been visiting
48. for more than 50 years. Many of Mars’s positive attributes are similar to those of our home
49. planet (rockiness, proximity, familiar features), placing it at the top of the colonisation list. To
50. learn more, we need more data from both our current missions and those launching in coming
51. years.
Source: Nicky Jenner (The Guardian).
1. Translate the first three paragraphs of the text.
2. Summarize the text in no more than 150 words.
3. What do you think about spending money on space exploration? Write an essay on the topic of
about 250 words.
4. Find in the text synonyms for the following words:
1. Silken.
2. Ring.
3. Bulk.
4. Growing.
5. Undertaking.

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 LANGUAGE USE ACTIVITIES

1. Use the verbs in brackets together with their prepositions to rewrite the following sentences
without changing their original meanings.
1. I knew nothing about the matter but John will confirm it by using several figures. (BEAR)
2. The days grow shorter in November. (CLOSE)
3. Have you compiled a list of points for us to discuss at the conference? (DRAW)
4. I don't think the possibility of our refusing had formed part of their calculations. (ENTER)
5. Don't let go of your ticket! You will need it later. (HANG)
6. The door fell on his head and rendered him unconscious. (KNOCK)
7. This is the price established by the manufacturers. (LAY)
8. You can rely on me. I won": fail to fulfil my obligations. (LET)
9. It was a terrible scandal. I doubt if the family will ever overcome the disgrace. (LIVE)
10. Unfortunately, the film did not fulfil our expectations. (LIVE)

2. Explain the meaning of the following idiomatic expressions and write a complex sentence
using the idiom in its proper context:
1. Queer somebody’s pitch.
2. Come through with flying colours.
3. A walk-over
4. All’s fair in love and war.
5. To go to the wall.
6. To be in a jam.
7. To put/set the cats among the pigeons.
8. Trail one's coat.
9. Keep a tight rein on.
10. It never rains but it pours.

TEXT 4

1. It had been more than Eve years now. He did not think about his son very much anymore, and
2. only recently he had removed the photograph of his wife from the wall. Every once in a while,
3. he would suddenly feel what it had been like to hold the three-year-old boy in his arms-but
4. that was not exactly thinking, nor was it even remembering. It was a physical sensation, an
5. imprint of the past that had been left in his body, and he had no control over it. These
6. moments came less often now, and for the most part it seemed as though things had begun to
7. change for him. He no longer wished to be dead. At the same time, it cannot be said that he

9
8. was glad to be alive. But at least he did not resent it. He was alive, and the stubborness of this
9. fact had little by little begun to fascinate him-as if he had managed to outlive himself, as if he
10. were somehow living a posthumous life. He did not sleep with the lamp on anymore, and for
11. many months now he had not remembered any of his dreams.
12. It was night. Quinn lay in bed smoking a cigarette, listening to the rain beat against the
13. window. He wondered when it would stop and whether he would feel like taking a long walk or
14. a short walk in the morning. An open copy of Marco Polo’s Travels lay face down on the pillow
15. beside him. Since finishing the latest William Wilson novel two weeks earlier, he had been
16. languishing. His private-eye narrator, Max Work, had solved an elaborate series of crimes, had
17. suffered through a number of beatings and narrow escapes, and Quinn was feeling somewhat
18. exhausted by his efforts. Over the years, Work had become very close to Quinn. Whereas
19. William Wilson remained an abstract figure for him, Work had increasingly come to life. In the
20. triad of selves that Quinn had become, Wilson served as a kind of ventriloquist, Quinn himself
21. was the dummy, and Work was the animated voice that gave purpose to the enterprise. If
22. Wilson was an illusion, he nevertheless justified the lives of the other two. If Wilson did not
23. exist, he nevertheless was the bridge that allowed Quinn to pass from himself into Work. And
24. little by little, Work had become a presence in Quinn’s life, his interior brother, his comrade in
25. solitude.
26. Quinn picked up the Marco Polo and started reading the first page again. "We will set down
27. things seen as seen, things heard as heard, so that our book may be an accurate record, free
28. from any sort of fabrication. And all who read this book or hear it may do so with full
29. confidence, because it contains nothing but the truth." Just as Quinn was beginning to ponder
30. the meaning of these sentences, to turn their crisp assurances over in his mind, the telephone
31. rang. Much later, when he was able to reconstruct the events of that night, he would remember
32. looking at the clock, seeing that it was past twelve, and wondering why someone should be
33. calling him at that hour. More than likely, he thought, it was bad news. He climbed out of bed,
34. walked naked to the telephone, and picked up the receiver on the second ring.
35. "Yes?"
36. There was a long pause on the other end, and for a moment Quinn thought the caller had hung
37. up. Then, as if from a great distance, there came the sound of a voice unlike any he had ever
38. heard. It was at once mechanical and filled with feeling, hardly more than a whisper and yet
39. perfectly audible, and so even in tone that he was unable to tell if it belonged to a man or a
40. woman.
41. “Hello?”said the voice.
42. “Who is this?” asked Quinn.
43. “HeIIo?” said the voice again.
44. “I’m listening,” said Quinn. "Who is this?”
45. “Is this Paul Auster?” asked the voice. “I would like to speak to Mr. Paul Auster.”
Source: Paul Auster, The New York Trilogy (City of Glass).
1. Translate from “Quinn picked up the Marco Polo and started reading….” to “I would like
to speak to Mr. Paul Auster.”

2. Comment on the narrative style of the extract.

10
3. Look for synonyms in the text that match the following words or expressions.
1. Confidence.
2. Weakening.
3. To deliberate.
4. Resistance.
5. Nevertheless.
6. Ventriloquist doll.
7. Crony.

4. Write a sentence using each of the following words from the text.
1. Posthumous.
2. Resent.
3. Imprint.
4. Outlive.
5. Crisp.
6. Receiver.
7. Beatings.

LANGUAGE USE ACTIVITIES

1. Complete with the following expressions with “mind”.

1. slipped your mind
2. change my mind.
3. take your mind off.
4. takes a load off my mind.
5. put my mind at ease.
6. make up my mind.
7. a one-track mind.
8. out of their mind.
9. give someone a piece of your mind.
10. peace of mind.
1. Oh no, I had a dentist appointment this morning, but it completely .................................... !
2. “I can’t ............................ about which movie to see tonight.”
3. I’m glad to hear that - it ............................ “ - because it has relieved your worries about losing
your luggage.

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4. You turned down a job with a $100,000/year salary?! You’re................................. !”
5. “I’m going to the gym - exercising will help .............................. the final exams coming up.”
6. “I’m sick and tired of our neighbours playing loud music at 3 AM. I’m going to.......... them
.................................”
7. All Daniel ever talks about is sports - he's really got a ..........................
8. I was worried about starting a new job without any previous experience, but my boss told me I
would receive training during my first week – that……………………”
9. I'd been planning to travel this weekend, but I ........................ because it’s been a really stressful
week -so I’m going to stay home and relax.
10. Having car insurance gives me ............................. , because I know the costs will be covered if I
get in an accident.
2. Complete the following sentences with the correct form of the next phrasal verbs:
dawn on come across get by drum up take in get out
fall out put off dash off(x2) make for cut back on

1. I must.......................sugary drinks if I want to lose some weight.

2. I................................my lost earring while I was sweeping the floor.
3. My French isn’t very good, but it’s enough to....................... .
4. The man said he was a policeman and I believed him. I was completely.........................
5. I promise I'd go to the wedding. I don't want to go, but I can’t ................... of it now.
6. They used to be very good friends. I’m surprised to hear that they ...........................,
7. We wanted to go to the exhibition, but we were ...................... by the long queue.
8. He ..............before I could talk to him.
9. Feel free to ............ an email to us at any time.
10. It.............. me that something unusual was going on.
11. US Defense Secretary Dick Cheney is about to go on a tour of Europe and the Middle East
to ..........................support for the military action.
12. His brilliant explanation ....................a better understanding of the whole issue.

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