1 Autobiography
Before you start
1 Think about an important scene in your life
that you remember very clearly. Tell the class.
Example A scene I remember very weli is when I
won a competition at primary school...
Reading
2 Read the Strategies.
Reading Strategies: Revision
• Before reading, Look at the title, pictures
and the first couple of lines of the text.
Look for clues to help you predict what kind
of text it is and what it is about.
• Read the text to get the general idea.
Ignore words you don't know.
• Read the text again. Try to work out the
meaning of important new words. Use a
dictionary if you can't.
• Read any comprehension questions and try
to think of possible answers. Then find
answers to the questions in the text.
Use the Strategies to answer these questions
about the texts.
Text J
1 What time of year do you think it is? Why?
2 Who do you think Peter is? How do you think
the diary writer feels about him?
3 How old do you think the writer i s ? Give your
reasons.
4 What do you think is unusual about the
writer's situation?
Text 2
1 How was the girl different from other
children?
2 Why was her teacher so important for her?
3 How did she learn new words?
4 Why did she feel happy when she understood
the meaning of the word 'water'?
What do you t h i nk happened later to the
writers of the texts? Check your answers on
page 135.
Text 1
T
he weather's been wonderful since yesterday and I've
perked up quite a bit. My writing, the best thing I have,
is coming along well. I go to the attic almost every
morning to get the stale air out of my lungs. This morning
when I went there, Peter was busy cleaning up. He finished
quickly and came over to where I was sitting on my favourite
spot on the floor. The two of us looked out at the blue sky, the
bare chestnut tree glistening with dew, the seagulls and other
birds glinting with silver as they swooped through the air, and
we were so moved and entranced that we couldn't speak. He
stood with his head against a thick beam, while I sat. We
breathed in the air, looked outside and both felt that the spell
shouldn't be broken with words. We remained like this for a
long while, and by the time he had to go to the loft to chop
wood, I knew he was a good, decent boy. He climbed the
ladder to the loft and I followed; during the fifteen minutes he
was chopping wood, we didn't say a word either. I watched
him from where I was standing and could see he was
obviously doing his best to chop the right way and show off
his strength. But I also looked out of the open window, letting
my eyes roam over a large part of Amsterdam, over the
rooftops and on to the horizon, a strip of blue so pale it was
almost invisible. 'As long as this exists,' I thought, 'this
sunshine and this cloudless sky, and as long as I can enjoy it,
how can I be sad?'
Unless you write yourself, you can't know how wonderful it is;
I always used to bemoan the fact that I couldn't draw, but
now I'm overjoyed that at least I can write. And if I don't have
the talent to write books or newspaper articles, I can always
write for myself. But I want to achieve more than that. I can't
imagine having to live like Mother, Mrs van Daan and all the
women who go about their work and are then forgotten. I
need to have something besides a husband and children to
devote myself to! I don't want to have lived in vain like
most people, even those I've never met. I want to go on
living even after my death! And that's why I'm so grateful
to God for having given me this gift, which I can use to
develop myself and to express all that's inside me!