Chapter 1. Back to Class: Listening and Speaking FREE
Listening With Your Whole Body
The first week back at school is always noisy. Bags are dropped on desks, chairs scrape across the floor, and everyone has a holiday story to tell. Before we can share our own news, though, we need to practise something that often gets forgotten: listening. Good listening is not just sitting quietly. It means looking at the speaker, keeping your hands still, and thinking about what the person is actually saying instead of planning what you will say next. In a group discussion, a good listener nods, waits for a pause, and only then adds a comment or asks a question.
Mrs Dlamini's class at a school in Soweto tried an exercise called "the talking stick." Only the learner holding a decorated ruler was allowed to speak, and everyone else had to listen without interrupting. When the ruler was passed to Karabo, he spoke about the taxi ride to his grandmother's house in Bloemfontein. Nobody laughed or spoke over him, because they knew their turn was coming too. By the end of the lesson, even the learners who usually called out answers had learned to wait.
Speaking Politely in a Group
Speaking politely does not mean speaking quietly or never disagreeing. It means giving other people a chance to finish their sentence, using words like "please" and "I think" instead of shouting an opinion, and disagreeing with the idea rather than the person. Instead of saying "That's wrong," a polite speaker might say, "I see it differently, because..." This keeps the discussion friendly, even when learners do not agree.
- Wait for the speaker to finish before you respond.
- Look at the person who is speaking.
- Use a calm voice, even when you disagree.
- Ask a question if you did not understand something.
Revising Nouns and Their Plurals
While we talk about our holidays, we naturally use plenty of nouns: names of people (Karabo, Mrs Dlamini), places (Soweto, Bloemfontein) and things (bag, chair, ruler, taxi). A noun is simply a word that names a person, place, animal or thing. Most nouns form their plural by adding "-s", such as "bag" becoming "bags" and "chair" becoming "chairs". Some nouns need "-es" instead, especially when the word ends in "s", "x", "ch" or "sh" - "bus" becomes "buses" and "box" becomes "boxes".
Other nouns change in surprising ways. "Child" becomes "children", "foot" becomes "feet", and "mouse" becomes "mice". These are called irregular plurals, and the only way to know them is to read widely and notice how they are used. A few nouns, like "sheep" and "fish", stay exactly the same whether you mean one or many. When Karabo told his story about the taxi, he used both regular and irregular plurals without even thinking about it: "taxis", "people", "suitcases", and "feet" (his feet were sore from carrying his bags!).
As the term begins, keep an ear out for nouns in every conversation you have, at the taxi rank, in the school hall, or around the dinner table. Notice which ones add "-s", which add "-es", and which change completely. The more you notice, the easier spelling and grammar will become for the rest of the year.