English For Today chapter 9: Gardening

Gardening

1.1 Imagine, you have a garden in front of your house. You grow different plants in your garden. Ask and answer the following questions in pairs.

Figure

Description: Two coloured illustrations side by side. The left one shows a girl in a blue dress among flowering plants and trees near a house, with a river and fields behind. The right one shows a boy in a white shirt and blue trousers standing in a garden with pink flowers and green vegetable plants.

a) Do you like gardening? b) What plants would you like to grow?

1.2 What do you use for gardening? Write them in the circles. One is given.

Figure

Labels: Seed, Planting Tree Description: A mind-map with the centre circle "Planting Tree" (filled blue) and four surrounding ovals. The top oval is labelled "Seed". The other three ovals (left, right, bottom) are empty.

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1.3 Look and say.

Figure

Labels: a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j Description: A grid of ten picture boxes labelled a to j. a: several seeds; b: a single leaf; c: a young plant with leaves; d: a hand placing a seed in soil under a mound; e: four garden tools (a spade, a fork, a trowel and a hoe); f: a boy digging soil with a spade; g: a watering can; h: a bag or block with seed holes and a seed; i: a flower pot; j: a basket of vegetables.

1.4 Read the text.

Rina wanted to make a garden. She discussed with her father about gardening. They discussed how to use the land in front of their house. Rina was excited. She and her father used a spade to dig the land. They prepared the soil with cow dung. Rina wanted to make the garden colourful. Rina and her father bought different flower plants from a nearby nursery. They also bought some tubs and a watering pot. Then, they planted the flower

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plants in the garden. Rina took care of the plants in her leisure time. She also watered the plants early in the morning.

The green plants were growing up. Soon, the flowers were in full bloom. The colourful flowers and butterflies made her family happy. Rina's mother also wanted to grow vegetables in this garden. Rina was pleased to see her mother's interest. They collected some seeds to plant in their garden. Rina helped her mother to grow tomatoes, onions and beans. They picked the vegetables together from the garden. They enjoyed the fresh vegetables in their daily meals. Gardening became their favourite pastime.

2.1 Read the statements and circle the correct word.

a) To plant a tree in your garden, you need to dig/grow the soil. b) You can dig the land with a hammer/spade. c) Someone can buy flower plants from a nursery/farmland. d) We use a watering pot/tub to water the plants. e) Gardening can be an interesting/a boring pastime.

2.2 Ask and answer the following questions in pairs. Then, write the answers in your exercise book.

a) Why was Rina excited? b) How did Rina's father help her in gardening? c) What did they buy from the nursery? d) How did Rina help her mother in gardening? e) Why was gardening enjoyable for Rina's family?

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3.1 Language Focus: Countable and Uncountable Nouns

Look at the following words used in the text.

spade, tubs, pot, nursery, flowers, leaves, butterflies, seeds, tomatoes

These are countable nouns. They have singular and plural forms.

• To make plural, we usually add s to the end of a noun.

  Examples: book—books; table—tables; key—keys; kite—kites.

• For nouns ending in ch, sh, x or z, add es. Change y to i and f/fe to v then add es to make plural. Examples:

• Again, look at the words 'land, leisure' used in the text. These are uncountable nouns. You cannot count them, and they have no plural forms.

  Examples: water, rice, air, furniture, information etc.

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3.2 Language Focus: Opposite Words

Rina told her friends Taslima and Monir about how she enjoyed gardening. After that, her friends also started gardening. Let's know about their garden.

Figure

Description: Illustration of Taslima's garden: a small house with a tiled roof on the left, a large tree, and flower plants of many colours in front of the house, with fields and a river in the background.

Taslima planted some flower plants in her small garden in front of her house. Then, she watered the plants regularly. Her flower plants grew fast and bloomed quickly. She was happy to see the colourful flowers.

Monir started a vegetable garden in a big land behind his house. He planted tomatoes, green leaves and beans. He tried to take care of his garden. But, he watered the plants irregularly. So, the growth of vegetable plants was slow. Some of them faded away. He felt sad to see the vegetable plants dying.

Figure

Description: Illustration of Monir's vegetable garden: rows of plants with pink flowers at the back, round green cabbage-like plants in the middle, red-fruited plants on the left and tall green plants on the right, with a dirt path between them.

Notice the first two sentences of the two paragraphs Here the words in front and behind, small and big carry opposite meanings. These are the opposite words. They are called antonyms. Examples:

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3.3 Language Focus: Simple Past Tense

Look at the first two sentences of the text 1.4. Rina wanted to make a garden. She discussed with her father about gardening. Here, the verbs ‘wanted’ and ‘discussed’ used to describe Rina’s past activities. We use simple past tense to talk about events that happened sometime before. We use the past form of verbs in the simple past tense. For example:

Some verbs do not follow the rule of adding -ed/-d at the end to make past forms of words. They are irregular.

We use the following structure for the simple past tense.

Examples: a) She helped the old man. b) He became captain of the class. c) She drew a colourful picture.

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3.1.1 Identify the singular and plural words and put them in the correct column. Then, write their singular or plural form.

class, friends, monkey, wolves, life, bush

3.2.1 Read the text again given in activity 3.2. Find out the opposite words. One is done for you.

3.3.1 Read and write the past form of the verbs. One is done for you.

4.1 Write a short composition describing what you did in your free time in the last weekend. Use simple past tense in your writing.