Choose a picture of one of the animals found in the sea. Try to describe it as clearly as possible.

Remember, you want other people reading your work to see this picture in their minds as clearly as you yourself saw it. To achieve this, you will have to use adjectives. Underline these adjectives.

Prepositions are words that show the relationship of one thing to another. They often tell you where one thing is in relation to another, or the `position' that it is in. They are always attached to a noun or pronoun.

Some examples: before, on, across, over, into, past, under, up, in, down, near, to, until.

Complete the following sentences by supplying a suitable preposition

What do these expressions mean?

Read the following proverbs and find out what they mean:

Look before you leap.

A stitch in time saves nine.

Let sleeping dogs lie.

Don't count your chickens before they are hatched.

Reflections on Holiday

I sat in the sand dunes, the wind blowing particles of sand into my hair, eyes, even my teeth, and surveyed the scene before me. Seagulls were arguing over a mysterious-looking object cast up by the sea, vivid with its shade of green and silver as seen from a distance. Children were playing with heaps of coloured stones, making patterns on the light, brown sand. Far out, a man was digging for mussels in the soft, dark, sea-wet sand of the bay. He looked strong and capable, with his open sack beside him. He was bending and thrusting against a spade with a foot clad in a large, black wellington boot, turning over piles of sand to view the smooth wave pattern left by the sea. Further out still, cargo boats, grey and orange, serviceable, yet with an air of mystery, moved slowly along an invisible river in the centre of the wide expanse of sand, grey trails of smoke just to be seen against the still, grey sky, with now and then the sound of a far-off hooter, sad and wistful.

Lisa, aged 18

Find all the pronouns in this passage. Write these down and give the plural of each pronoun.

Read the passage "Saved by a dolphin" and answer the questions that follow in your groups:

SAVED BY A DOLPHIN

This is the end, Adam Maguire thought as blood streamed from where a piece of flesh had been torn from his stomach. His surfboard had gone too - the only shield between him and the shark's terrible jaws. He prayed, then screamed for his two friends, but they were too far away. Desperately he struck the water with his fists in a vain attempt to frighten off the 4,2 m monster.

Suddenly something miraculous happened: he was surrounded on all sides by shiny grey bodies - 12 dolphins that rammed the shark with their snouts and drove it to the depths.

Tales of this kind are not unfamiliar. There are stories of people saved by animals from the sea in Greek mythology, and these were probably dolphins. Young Adam Maguire of Sydney, Australia, has no doubts and feels the fact that he's alive is proof.

Dr Graham Ross, deputy director of the Port Elizabeth Museum and an expert on dolphin behaviour, also has doubts. "Whenever I hear this kind of story I have to ask myself: how objective was this person? If he were drifting around weakly in the water, scared and shocked, would he not feel the dolphins were leading him to the coast? You must bear in mind dolphins are by nature curious. They bump and jostle any unusual object in the water to find out what it is, and they always approach something unusual from the seaside. If it's a person and the dolphins nudge him in the direction of the land, he could easily think they were trying to save him." Tame dolphins in a controlled environment such as a dolphin aquarium have been known to kill sharks, but along the Natal coast bottle-nosed dolphins leave as soon as the water becomes cloudy because they're afraid sharks will eat their young. Many bear the scars of shark attacks and while they might play with small sharks they would flee from large ones.

Experts can say what they like, but people who've actually experienced something like this find such theories difficult to believe.

Ten years ago there was an incident when four fishermen were convinced dolphins saved them from a watery grave in thick mist near Dassen Island off our west coast.

They were in a snoek boat on the open sea when the wind suddenly came up, enveloping them in thick mist and leaving them unable to see anything.

Skipper Koos Stander swung the boat round in the direction he thought Yzerfontein's harbour lay, but lost his bearing. Then one of the fishermen, Mac Macgregor, noticed dolphin fins in the water. Four of them swam alongside the boat and one suddenly struck three blows to the left with his tail. The skipper turned left and was horrified to see a huge rock jutting out of the water to the right. Again and again the dolphins "directed" the boat past rocks and when they began playing around the boat, Koos Stander realised he could drop anchor.

Can anyone still doubt dolphins are sympathetic towards people after hearing stories such as these? Not so fast, say the experts. Dolphins have no reason to be particularly sympathetic towards people. It's sheer curiosity.

The species has the habit of assisting each other ... perhaps they apply the principle to humans.

Adapted from: YOU, 18 January 1990

Total: [20]

Using your dictionary find the meaning of each of the following words:

Note: You may use reference books to help you.

Prepared oral:

Here is the News.....

Prepare a 5-minute oral to say to the class. Begin by introducing the news to your listeners. Report on a shark attack. This should be your main feature story.

Read this amusing poem:

A STING IN THE TALE

I picked up a shell on a golden beach

and asked it to reveal to me

the secret wonders of the sea

the mysteries that seemed out of reach.

I held the shell close in order to hear

its stories of rolling waves,

of mermaids and treasures in pirate caves ...

then a crab came out and painfully pinched my ear!

P. & B. Louw

Writing: In pairs try to write your own poem about the sea.

2.

(a) to

(b) beside / with / behind

(c) for

(d) of

(e) among / amongst

(f) with

3.

(a) to take a short nap

(b) to face and deal with a situation caused by one’s actions

(c) to forget about past differences – to forgive and forget.

(d) to pretend not to see / know about something

4.

(a) Think before you act.

(b) Prompt action when needed saves a lot of future trouble.

(c) If there is no trouble, do not cause any; leave well alone.

(d) Do not make plans that are based on something that is not certain.

5. (b)

(c) I we

me us

he they

Note to the teacher: its shade / his sack (its and his are not pronoun, but adjectives. See earlier work on adjectives. These are possessive adj.)

6.

(a) Australia

(b) surfing

(c) 12 dolphins protected him by attacking the sharks.

(d) A traditional fiction story told by Greeks.

(e) They are curious and bump and jostle person to find out what it is.

(f) “… they’re afraid sharks will eat their young” “… they would flee from large ones”

(g) Lost his bearing – saw rock – was “directed” to shore by dolphins.

(h) They are also sometimes hurt by humans.

(i) Scientists are probably right – scientifically founded not opinion, subjective.

(j) (i) nudge

7.

(a) feeling sorry for someone or showing that you are sorry.

(b) remote, lonely

(c) validate, establish the truth or correctness of something

(d) push or bump against something roughly

(e) direction or position relative to a fixed point

(f) captain of a boat or ship