First Attempt by S P Raj

  Introduction   This essay "What is poverty ?" has been written by Jo Goodwin Parker an anonymous person from West Virginia, the Southern United States. Parker mailed her essay to George Henderson, preferring that the editor present no byline. George Henderson, a professor at the University of Oklahoma, received it while he was writing his 1971 book, America’s Other Children: Public Schools Outside Suburbia. It was signed “Jo Goodwin Parker”. No further information was ever discovered about the essay or its source. Whether the author of this essay was in reality a woman describing her own painful experiences or a sympathetic writer who had adopted her persona, Jo Goodwin Parker remains a mystery. So in keeping with the spirit of its initial publication, Parker’s essay is kept here without any biographical data about its author. This personal essay 'What is Poverty?' is about Parker who has personally experienced rural poverty. She explains her story from childhood to...

  3. What I Require From Life  J. B. S. Haldane (1892-1964)  Introduction  This personal essay What I Require From Life has been written by a British-Indian scientist John Burdon Sanderson Haldane. He is known for his work in the study of physiology, genetics, evolutionary  biology, and mathematics. He served in the British Army during World War I. After returning from the war, Haldane began his teaching career at University.  This essay was initially published in a newspaper named The  Daily Worker in 1940. It has included various political and philosophical views related to the requirements of the people’s life. It has mainly focused on socialistic convictions demanding democratic activities in workplaces. The writer has used very simple and lucid language in his essay. His requirements and experiences of life also resemble the requirements of most of the working-class people of the world. This essay has presented basic and general needs of working-c...

 Introduction : "How to Live Before You Die" is an inspiring speech delivered at the commencement of  Stanford University in the year 2005  by Steve Jobs, an American business magnate, industrial designer, investor, and media proprietor. He was the CEO and co-founder of Apple Inc. and one of the pioneers of microcomputer technology. Steve Jobs uses autobiographical anecdotes in a tripartite structure to communicate a massage of resilience and personal integrity. The three life- related stories were told to motivate the people who were at the commencement. Three stories are:- 1. About Connecting the Dots: 2. About Love and Loss: 3. About Death: Summary : 1. His First Story about Connecting the Dots: His first story is about various facts that are linked with his life. He has expressed about his birth, adoption and his struggles. According to him, his biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student who decided to put him up for adoption before his birth. She...

 1. Sharing Traditions Frank LaPena (1937-2019 )  Frank LaPena has presented the importance of oral tradition for the preservation of culture and values. The essay, Sharing Tradition is about passing on culture and values from generation to generation through oral tradition in an art form. In the essay, LaPena has emphasized on our traditional and cultural values which are very much important for our bright future. For him, we must listen to our elders to maintain our cultural and traditional norms and values.  LaPena has shown his favour of the preservation of oral traditions. There are different factors which have affected oral tradition. They have also created problems to maintain our culture and values. He presents the example of oral tradition. He keeps on telling all his readers about his experiences and thoughts related to oral tradition. The oral tradition refers to a form of art of human communication where knowledge, art, ideas and cultural material are receiv...

 Unit 1 Short Stories 1 The Selfish Giant Oscar Wilde Before Reading Answer these questions. a. Look at this picture. Is it a real man or mythical human? b. Is it good to be selfish? c. How do selfish people behave? About the Author Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was an Irish wit, poet, novelist, and playwright. Wilde was born of professional and literary parents. His father, Sir William Wilde, was an ear and eye surgeon, who also published books. His mother was a revolutionary poet and an authority on Celtic myth and folklore. He published a book of poems, lectured in the United States and Canada on the new "English Renaissance in Art" and interior decoration, and then returned to London where he worked prolifically as a journalist. Known for his biting wit, Wilde became one of the best-known personalities of his day. He is best known for his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), and his comic masterpieces Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1...

5 The Gift in Wartime Tran Mong Tu (translated by Vann Phan)  Before Reading  Answer these questions. a. Have you ever experienced the death of someone close to you? If yes, how did  you feel? b. Is war always destructive? c. Using a cause-and-effect chart like the one given here, describe the immediate  effects that person’s death had on you and others.                                Cause Effect       Effect           Effect       Effect       Effect Tran Mong Tu was born and grown up in Hai Dong, North Vietnam in 1943. She worked for Associated Press in South Vietnam in the 1960s. She moved to the US in 1975 after South Vietnam fall. Tran had wanted to be a writer since elementary school, but her poetry was not published until she reached the United States. Today, she freque...

 English: Grade 11    page no. 251 4 . Who are you, little i? E. E. Cummings   Before Reading  Answer these questions. a. Have you ever looked out through a window and taken pleasure in what you  saw? If so, what did you look at? b. Which beautiful scenes do you think would make you want to look out through  the window? c. Do you write the pronoun ‘I’ capital or small in writing? E(dward) E(stlin) Cummings (1894-1962), often styled as e e cummings, was an American poet, painter, essayist, novelist, and playwright. He wrote approximately 2,900 poems, two autobiographical novels, four plays, and several essays, as well as numerous drawings and paintings. He developed the style of poetry writing for which he became renowned, with its unconventional use of capitalization, punctuation, spacing, and structure. He is regarded as an eminent voice of the 20th century English literature. Cummings’ poem 'who are you, little i' describes a child looking out a wind...