Vocabulary Training

I. Understanding Word Meaning from Context.

Choose a word or a word group that has the same meaning as the word in bold.

1. My dog likes chasing rabbits.

a. eating b. running after c. watching d. killing

2. She marched over to me and demanded an apology.

a. called b. returned c. walked d. shouted

3. She yelled at the child to get down from the wall.

a. looked b. told c. expected d. shouted

4. There were strange creatures on the poster advertising the movie.

a. people b. animals c. beings d. insects

II. Note that the words “land” and “pin” can be used both as nouns and verbs. Explain their meaning in each case and give your examples.

III. The word “to march” has the basic meaning “to walk”. Can you explain and illustrate the difference in meaning between these manners of walking? What other ways of moving on your feet can you think of?

IV. How many meanings and uses does the verb “to fit” have? Illustrate two of them with your own examples. (In the text it is used as a phrasal verb: to fit back together).

V. Explain the following words in English. Use an explanatory dictionary if necessary. If a word has several meanings, point out the meaning in which it is used in the text.

1) orphanage 2) to quiver 3) to pray 4) dormitory

VI. a) The narrator uses the grammatical structure “would + Infinitive” three times (twice in the 2^nd paragraph and once in the last). What does it mean? Make up an example of your own.

b) The construction “would not + Infinitive” is used in the 7^th paragraph. It is used to complain about people or things that don’t obey. Can you think of an example of your own?

c) In the last paragraph the narrator uses the construction “try and + Infinitive”. This is the same as “try + to-Infinitive”, but it is more common in colloquial language and is often used when giving advice or promising to do something. Think of an example of your own.

VII. Find 8 phrasal verbs in the 6^th paragraph. Make up one sentence using two or three (or more) of these phrasal verbs at the same time.

Recounting and Interpreting Details

1. Where did the narrator live as a little boy? What was his daily routine?

2. In the 2^nd paragraph the narrator compared himself with a soldier (“just like the little soldier”). This is an instance of simile. Can you explain what he meant?

3. Prove that the idea of beauty was important for the boy (use different parts of the text).

4. What symbolized beauty for him while he was at the orphanage?

5. What did he witness one day?

6. Did the boy save one of the butterflies from the house parent’s collection? Why did the boy spit on the butterfly’s wing?

7. What was the house parent’s reaction to the boy’s being there with his collection?

8. Who ruined the collection?

9. What was the fate of the collection? Describe the “burial” of the butterflies.

10. Was the house parent really upset about the collection, to your mind?

11. The narrator says he was sitting “in the dirt” while trying to fit butterfly pieces back together. This is an instance of landscape detail and of symbol. Can you explain why he mentions this detail?

12. How did the incident with the butterflies change the boy’s world outlook?

13. In the first paragraph the narrator says that a certain point in his biography (when he was six or seven) turned him “into an old man”. This is a case of foreshadowing, i.e. from this phrase we understand that the narrator was going to face some disaster or experience a misery. Can you explain his phrase?

Creative Follow-up Work

Text 4 “Butterflies” is not fiction, but an autobiographical sketch. In nonfiction there can hardly be unaccountable, “pure” villains demanded, for example, by the genre of a detective or horror story.

Can you account in any way for the behaviour of the house parent (not to justify it, but to explain)? What could his life story be?