MANGOES

Suggestions and answers

A COMPREHENSION
1. Answer the following questions

a. Mrs. Asghar gets the children to return to their homework by telling them that their father will be
most dissatisfied when he gets home and finds that they have not done their work. She reminds them
what will happen then.

b. Nina is obviously doing her maths homework because she wants to know the answer to a
multiplication sum.

c. Right, Left, arm/aam, cheap/cheep, sweet, harmless/aamless/armless/harmful, man go/mango, leave

d. The temptation to see the mangoes draws Aslam to the window again.

e. The Mango seller does speak standard English, apart from a couple of mistakes; the repetition of
‘much’, and ‘… and that man going round with a knife!’

f. The Mango seller laughs loudly when he understands Aslam’s pun on the words aam/armless,
harm/harmless. He giggles later when he hears the same joke again. And finally, he laughs when he says
that Mrs. Asghar is not buying mangoes from him and Majid is going round with a knife.

g. Mr. Asghar thinks that everybody has gone mad because he cannot get a straight answer to any of his
questions and all the members of his household, including Majid, are behaving very strangely.

h. Mrs. Asghar collapses in the end because there has been complete confusion in the house. She has
been shocked by Majid, thinking that he is going to kill the Mango seller with a knife.

2. Reference to context

a. Mr. Asghar speaks these words to Mrs. Asghar.

b. Mr. Asghar asks this question because Mrs. Asghar has just reported to him that she told the Mango
seller to leave, otherwise she would set the dog on him.

c. Mrs. Asghar, in order to get rid of the Mango seller, tells him that she will set the dog on him. Nina
asks her, ‘What dog?’, and says that they have a cat but not a dog. A little later, Mrs. Asghar tells the
Mango seller that they may not have a dog, but that they have a strong servant, who is then summoned.

d. Mr. Asghar does not get an answer to the question. (But Mrs. Asghar has already explained why she
had used the threat
B Working with words

1. Find the meanings of these words, then make up words with the opposite meanings.

a. dishonourable b. unambitious c. uncivilized d. dissatisfied

e. impatient f. unfaithfull g. impossible h. disappearance

C Learning about languages

The perfect tense

1. present: have/has eaten, has/have done, has/have taken

2. past: had eaten, had come, had seen, had worn

3. future: will have done, will have run, will have followed There is also a perfect progressive form (but
you need not deal with this now

1. Use the perfect tenses for the verbs given in brackets and complete the following:

a. had eaten b. have studied c. had learnt d. have (never) told

e. had drunk f. will have spoken g. will have finished

2. Make four sentences from the words given (in brackets). Use the first verb in the simple past tense
and the second in the past perfect tense.

Examples:

a. When I arrived, he had already prepared the meal.

b. By the time she got to the theatre, the play had already begun.

c. Since I took my father to see the bicycle in the shop, they had increased the price.

d. I passed him in the street, but did not recognize him because he had grown a beard.
 The Echoing Green Summary
The poem The Echoing Green (originally Echoing Green) by
William Blake is written in the appreciation of nature in simple
terms. However, if we go deep into it, we will find the theme of
life and death in the world. The poem is told by a young child
who is playing in the “Echoing Green” park.
The poem has been divided into three stanzas which if we go
deep, depict the three stages of life. Each stanza is divided into
10 lines and the rhyme scheme is AABB. Another interesting
thing worth noticing is that the first two stanzas end in “On the
Echoing Green” while the final stanza ends in “On the darkening
Green”. 

A Understanding the poem

1. Answer the following questions.

a. At the beginning of the poem, the Sun is rising so it is early in the morning.

b. Words from the first stanza which create a cheerful mood are: happy, merry,
welcome, sing, and cheerful.

c. In the second stanza, the older people are laughing at the children playing. It
makes them remember when they used to play happily on the green when they
were young.

d. In the final stanza, the Sun is going down so it is the evening.

e. In the final stanza, the children are tired and ready for rest so they sit with
their mothers instead of playing.

f. In the final stanza, the poet compares the mother and her children to birds in a
nest. The children sit with their mothers. The effect of the comparison is that we
can picture the children with their mothers, getting comfort and warmth and
feeling safe.

g. Birds are mentioned in the poem; the sky-lark and thrush are named.

h. A list of sounds mentioned in the poem: bells ringing, bird-song, laughter,

voices of the old folk, the echoing green (is it echoing with the sounds of play?).
No sounds are mentioned in the final stanza.

i. The last line of each stanza is almost the same. In stanzas one and two, the
same words are used: ‘On the Echoing Green’. But, in the second stanza, this is a
line of speech rather than a description. In the third stanza, the word echoing is
replaced with the word darkening.

j. THE ECHOING GREEN CAUSES THR CHEERFULNESS, WHEREAS THE DARKENING

GREEN CAUSES SADNESS WHEN IT IS DARK WE NEED TOO LEAVE ALL ACTIVITIES
WE NEED TO GO HOME AND SLEEP