WORKSHEET 1 : Explicit Meaning

TEXT 1: The Salt Road by Jane Johnson.

When I was a child, I had a wigwam in our back garden: a circle of thin yellow cotton draped
over a bamboo pole and pegged to the lawn. Every time my parents argued, that was where
I went. I would lie on my stomach with my fingers in my ears and stare so hard at the red
animals printed on its bright decorative border that after a while they began to dance and run,
until I wasn’t in the garden any more but out on the plains, wearing a fringed deerskin tunic
and feathers in my hair, just like the brave in the films I watched every Saturday morning in
the cinema down the road.

Even at an early age I found it preferable to be outside in my little tent rather than inside the
house. The tent was my space. It was as large as my imagination, which was infinite. But
the house, for all it grandeur and Georgian spaciousness, felt small and suffocating. It was
stuffed with things, as well as with my mother and father’s bitterness. They were both
archaeologists, my parents: lovers of the past, they had surrounded themselves with boxes
of yellowed papers, ancient artefacts, dusty objects; the fragile husks of lost civilisations. I
never knew why they decided to have me: even the quietest baby, the most house-trained
toddler, the most studious child, would have disrupted the artificial, museum-like calm
they had wrapped around themselves. In that house they lived separated from the rest of
the world, in a bubble in which dust motes floated silently like the fake snow in a snow-globe.
I was not the childe to complement such a life, being a wild little creature, loud and messy
and unbiddable.

[…] I had dolls, but more often than not I beheaded them or scalped them, or buried them
in the garden and forgot where they were. I had no interest in making fashionable outfits for
the oddly attenuated oink plastic mannequins with their insectile torsos and brassy hair
that the other girls so worshipped and adorned.
Task 1 : Explore the Skill
Read the extract from The Salt Road by Jane Johnson above. The use the four steps on
scanning to identify a word or phrase from the text that suggests the same idea as
the words underlined.

a) Izzy’s wigwam consists of cotton hanging from a bamboo pole.

[1]

b) Izzy would rather be outside.

[1]

c) Izzy found the house impossible to breathe freely in.

[1]

d) Izzy’s parents studied the evidence of vanished cultures from long ago.

[1]

e) Izzy was not the kind of child to go well with her parents’ lifestyle.

[1]

Task 2: Build the skills

Writer’s choose words very carefully for their precise meanings.

While reading:-

Think about- The PRECISE meaning of INDIVIDUAL WORDS.

Ask yourself:-

a) Why the AUTHOR has CHOSEN that WORD?

b) What other WORDS (Synonyms) might have been Used INSTEAD?

Look back at TEXT 1. Look up the words that have been highlighted and complete the
table below.
 WORD Precise Meaning Synonym What the writer wanted
to convey?
Infinite Having no limits or boundless The girl is highly
measurable extent imaginative.
Stuffed Very full

Yellowed

Dusty
Task 3: Develop the Skills
You are asked to explain the meanings of words and phrases.

The sentence stems can help you star this kind of explanation.

Example:

The writer chooses the word……., which in everyday language means…

The word used by the writer, …….means…

The writer uses the phrase…, which is another way of saying …

Use each of the sentence starters above to write about three of the highlighted w ords in
TEXT 1.
Task 4: Apply the Skills – ( /25 Marks )
A range of question will test your understanding of EXPLICIT MEANINGS.

Most common are the simple “Closed” questions that appear in Comprehension or
SUMMARY.

Using Tex t 1. Answer the following Reading Com prehension and Sum m ary
Questions.
a) Give two reasons why the girl likes to go outside?

[2]
b) How did the girl treat her toys?

[2]

c) Explain, how the girl liked to enjoy herself?

[3]

d) Using your own words, explain what the writer means by ‘In that house they lived
separated from the rest of the world, in a bubble in which dust motes floated silently
like the fake snow in a snow-globe.’

[3]
e) Using details that you have learned from the text, sum up what you know about the
girls childhood.
Write no more than 120 words.
Your summary must be in continuous form.
10 m arks are available for content and 5 m arks for language.

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