A short intermediate level English resource.

Guy Fawkes day

    
Many countries have a National Day. Americans celebrate their independence on July 4th; the French celebrate on July 14th. Yet Britain has no official National Day, no day when there are big processions and a public holiday. On the other hand, it has "bonfire night" or "Guy Fawkes Night", on November 5th.
On this evening, there are big bonfires and = (fireworks all over the country.  The tradition is very old. In the year 1605, a group of men decided to blow up the British Parliament — with the King inside.
The men were Catholic fanatics, who  did not like the Protestant parliamentary system.  In October  1605, they hired a cellar under the Par- liament building, and hid 30 barrels of gunpowder in it! They knew that the king would be in Parliament at the start of November.
  Fortunately, someone advised  one Member of Parliament not to go to the House on November 5th. Naturally, the Member  was suspicious, and  told the guards, who inspected the cellars. In them they found Guy Fawkes, one of the conspirators! He was just ready to light the fuse!  Guy Fawkes and the other conspirators were arrested. They were then executed for treason.  Since then, Guy Fawkes Day has become an _ unofficial festival. Big fires are lit in the evenings in villages, towns, parks and schools; many people have big fires in their gardens. On top of the fires, they place an effigy of Guy Fawkes, called "the Guy". The effigy is usually made out of straw, or leaves, or old textiles, and dressed in old clothes.
  As the fire begins to burn, there are fireworks; and when the flames reach the Guy, everyone cheers.
  These days, there are more and more "official" bonfires and fireworks. The fire-service are not happy when people have big bonfires and fireworks in_ their  gardens. Every year, on Novem-  ber 5th, some children and adults are burned by fireworks, and other accidents happen. Playing with fire can be dangerous.

CHANGING COWBOYS

 

WORD GUIDE
   bonfire: a_ fire outside - fireworks: artistic displays of fire, with explosions and coloured fire - blow up: make an explosion (under) - hire: borrow use - hid: past tense of hide - advise: tell, inform - suspicious: alarmed - conspirators: people who plan together to do something bad - fuse: detonator - executed: killed - treason: crime against the state - effigy: figure - straw: dry grass - 


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Student Worksheet

Here are some sentences which summarise information in the article. However, the words are not in the right order. Reorganise them into correctly-expressed sentences:

   

For Teachers

Vocabulary: Can pupils find the opposites of these words, as they read through the article? The answers are given below: some of the opposites will certainly not be in your pupils' active vocabulary; they will need to search for them.

Find the opposites of: not yet / rarely / hardly ever / small / useful / sick / abundance / the same as / easy / safe / very poor / useless / departure points /

Answers: still / often / often or very regularly / large / useless / healthy / shortage / different from / hard / dangerous / excellent / useful / destinations /
    Pay attention  in particular to different from and useful (-ful is always spelt with one "l" as a suffix, not two.)

Reading for information:
Have pupils divide a sheet of paper into two columns, then, on the left, note the points that they would like about life as a cowboy, on the right those that they would not like.

Written exercise:
here are some things that a cowboy would use,  not all of them mentioned in the article: have pupils write down a sentence, saying why each is important. Sentences should exploit the structure so that....

For example:
    A cowboy needs a horse, so that he can travel across the prairie.
    Cowboys need fences, so that their cattle cannot walk on big roads.

This teaching resource is © copyright Linguapress 1995 renewed 2020.
Fully revised and extended 2020 . Originally published in Horizon, the Low-intermediate level English newsmagazine.
Republication on other websites or in print is not authorised

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