BCG / C-LS / gr8e1.

3w09-13

Name: _________________________________________
Grade 8
2021-22 2022-23
Roll No.: _____ Div.: ____ Date ____ /____ / _______
ENGLISH
2023-24 2024-25 Topic: Analysing writer’s use of language
09
2025-26
Wkst No.

Read the extract on page 16 in the textbook where the protagonist focuses
on a childhood memory of staying with his Aunt Evelyn, to answer question
1a-c.

1. a) Pick out five words or phrases from this description that create a peaceful
atmosphere. For each one, create a mind map to show why you think the
word has peaceful connotations.
 b) Create a spider diagram around each of the following contrasting phrases
that are also taken from this extract.

‘haunt my sleep’

‘abiding strangeness’

‘in an endless variety of dream-distorted versions the garden persists’.

c) Now answer the following questions.

i) What are the connotations of the words used in each of these quota-
tions?

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 BCG / C-LS / gr8e1.3w09-13

Name: _________________________________________
Grade 8
2021-22 2022-23
Roll No.: _____ Div.: ____ Date ____ /____ / _______
ENGLISH
2023-24 2024-25 Topic: Analysing writer’s use of language
10
2025-26
Wkst No.

ii) What kind of atmosphere do these words create?

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iii) What might they suggest to us about the thoughts and feelings of the
narrator?

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2. Refresh: What does the anagram PEA stand for ?

P…………………………………

E………………………………..

A…………………………………

a) Label the following analytical paragraph opening by labelling the point (P)
and the evidence (E).

As well as describing the garden setting in this extract, Sassoon also describes
his own feelings about looking back on his childhood as an adult. He uses
the phrase ‘abiding strangeness’.

b) Now complete the paragraph by selecting an interpretation from the list

below that you think best matches the point and evidence. (A)

A This phrase suggests that what used to feel peaceful and familiar now
feels alien and slightly disturbing to him.
 B This suggests that he looks upon his younger self as a very different
person.

C The adjective ‘abiding’ shows that a feeling of disconnection from his

younger self endures.

D The noun ‘strangeness’ gives the reader the impression that the past
feels like a foreign land to him.

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The following passage is about the royal palace garden of La Granja of Madrid Spain,
built during the 18th century as a royal family retreat.

A few miles south of Segovia, at the foot of the Sierras, I came on the royal
gardens of La Granja - acres of writhing statues, walks, and fountains
rising from the dust like a mirage. It was a grandiose folly, as large as
Versailles and even more extravagant, and I found it in the peak of bloom
and entirely deserted except for a few old gardeners with brooms.

A hundred fountains were playing, filling the sky with rainbows and
creating an extraordinary dreamlike clamour. Marble gods and wood-
nymphs, dolphins and dragons, their anatomies studded with pipes and
nozzles, directed complex cascades at one another or shot them high above
the flowering trees. Everything that could be done with water seemed to
be going on here, almost to the point of hydromania. Lakes, pools, jets,
and falls, flooded grottoes and exotic canals, all throbbed and surged at
different levels, reflecting classical arbours, paths, and terraces, or running
like cooling milk down the statuary.

Yet there was nobody to see it. Nobody but me - except, of course, for
the gardeners, who went shuffling about as though under some timeless
instruction, preparing for the return of some long-dead queen.

I stayed in the gardens for an hour or more, furtively paddling among the
trickling leaves. The fountains,I learned later, played only on rare
 BCG / C-LS / gr8e1.3w09-13

Name: _________________________________________
Grade 8
2021-22 2022-23
Roll No.: _____ Div.: ____ Date ____ /____ / _______
ENGLISH
2023-24 2024-25 Topic: Analysing writer’s use of language
11
2025-26
Wkst No.

occasions, and I don’t know why they played that day. It was like the
winding-up of some monarch’s toy, of which the owner had rapidly tired,
and which now lay abandoned at the foot of the mountain together with
its aged keepers. The fact was that La Granja, when looked at closely, was
more than a little vulgar - a royal inflation of a suburban mind, a costly
exercise with gnomes and toadstools.

From As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning, by Laurie Lee (1971)

Read the passage above to attempt Q.2 a-d.

3. a) The text in bold are phrases, write each phrase in the space
provided and write the meaning and connotation.
phrase meaning connotation

b) Now use the structure of PEA to complete the analytical point of the
atmosphere created in the entire passage. Write in words or phrases.

i) Point : _________________________________________________

ii) Evidence : _________________________________________________

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iii) Analysis : _________________________________________________

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 BCG / C-LS / gr8e1.3w09-13

Name: _________________________________________
Grade 8
2021-22 2022-23
Roll No.: _____ Div.: ____ Date ____ /____ / _______
ENGLISH
2023-24 2024-25 Topic: Analysing writer’s use of language
12
2025-26
Wkst No.

c) Based on the language used, do you think the narrator’s experience

is a pleasant or an unpleasant one? Write a paragraph of 100 words
explaining your choice and giving examples of the language from the
passage to support your point.

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Read the extract on page 18 in the textbook to answer questions 3 a-d.

4. a) Make a list of the thoughts and feelings Sassoon has about his experience.
i) It was extremely physically uncomfortable.

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 ii) It is hard to remember exactly how it was.

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b) Find examples of where Sassoon has used the following techniques to

describe his experience in the trenches.

Technique Example

i) powerful verbs

ii) use of the senses

iii) similes and metaphors

iv) contrasts and oppositions

v) precise adjectives

vi) onomatopoeia

vii) effective use of punctuation

viii) use of the present tense

ix) adverbs and adverbial
phrases at the start of
sentences

c) Pick an example of a technique that Sassoon has used and write a sen-
tence analysing in detail and depth what the writer’s choice of language
suggests about his thoughts and feelings.

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 BCG / C-LS / gr8e1.3w09-13

Name: _________________________________________
Grade 8
2021-22 2022-23
Roll No.: _____ Div.: ____ Date ____ /____ / _______
ENGLISH
2023-24 2024-25 Topic: Analysing writer’s use of language
13
2025-26
Wkst No.

d) Using the evidence from your grid, write three paragraphs on how
Sassoon’s description of the trenches reveal his thoughts and feelings
about them.

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