INTRODUCING THE CLASSICS

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

THE CONTENTS OF THIS PAGE

• Pedagogic Instructions

• Section I: Dictation for groups A & B (+ Dictionary Work)

• For Group A Students: (pink background for easy comparison)

  • Section I: Excerpt-A (Reading)

  • Section II: Vocabulary-A (Matching)

  • Section III:  Writing-A (Summarising)

• For Group B Students: (lilac background for easy comparison)

  • Section I: Excerpt-B (Reading)

  • Section II: Vocabulary-B (Matching)

  • Section III: Writing-B (Summarising)

• Anagram Store Cupboard:  What The Dickens!  (Anagrams of words found in the excerpt on this page)

• Return to the index page for Classical Literature

PEDAGOGIC INSTRUCTIONS & CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT

• LEVEL:    Upper Intermediate - Advanced

• SKILLS:   Listening, Reading, Writing & Spelling, Speaking

• PRACTICE:  

  • Reading Comprehension

  • Old English v Modern English

  • Vocabulary & Phrases

• FUNCTIONS:

  • Explaining & Aiding others

  • Describing

  • Summarising

PEDAGOGIC INSTRUCTIONS & CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT

• ADVANCE PREPARATION

  • Find information about the life of Charles Dickens and make a copy for each person in the class.  These copies should be given to early-finishers as appropriate and to the remainder of the class for homework.

  • Make copies of the excerpts, vocabulary and writing worksheets for everyone in either group A or B

  • Cut and divide the dictation for Groups A & B

• SECTION I:  DICTATION & DICTIONARY WORK 

  • Divide the class into two groups:  A & B

  • Dictate the words from Section I to the relevant groups.  Instruct students not to write all the words, but only the ones for their group (either A or B)

  • Instruct students to compare their lists with others in their group.

  • Give each students a list of their vocabulary (either A or B) and instruct them to check their spellings.

  • Next, encourage them to work as a group and ensure that everyone in their group understands the meanings of the words.

  • When everyone is ready, instruct them to team up with a partner from the other group and to teach their partner the meanings of their list of words.  By the end of this exercise, both sets of students should have two lists of words and meanings. (Students could be tested as a class at this point to double-check how well words and meanings have been imparted.)

• SECTION II: VOCABULARY-A & VOCABULARY-B

  • First of all, instruct students to return to their original groups (A & B)

  • Hand out to each student a copy of Section II vocabulary A or B, according to their group.

  • Instruct students to ensure everyone in their group completes the first matching exercise

• SECTION III:  EXCERPT-A & EXCERPT-B 

  • Hand out excerpts, relevant to groups A & B

  • Instruct students to read their excerpts and to ensure that everyone in their group has understood what they have read, by asking each other questions

  • Encourage them to complete the second matching exercise (Dickens English v Modern English) on their vocabulary sheets.

  • When students have completed these tasks adequately, instruct each one to team up with a different person from the other group.

  • At this point, they must not show any of their papers to their new partners.  Collect the papers in, if necessary.

  • Hand out WRITING-A & WRITING-B worksheets.

  • Student A should then describe to student B the contents of excerpt-A, so Student B can write a summary of what they have been told..  Student A checks the summary and corrects it as appropriate.

  • Student B should then describe to student A the contents of excerpt-B, so student A can write a summary of what they have been told.  Student B checks the summary and corrects it as appropriate.

  • Finally, students should exchange excerpts and vocabulary lists with their partners and explain any further queries.

SECTION I - DICTATION FOR GROUPS A & B

DICTATION FOR GROUP A

DICTATION FOR GROUP B

• absolutely

• airless

• beetles

• blotchy

• bridegroom

• centrepiece

• chamber

• circumstance

• cobwebs

• considering

• conspiracy

• crawling

• cruel

• crutch

• damp

• degradation

• discernible

• disposed

• dust

• elderly

• excluded

• expanse

• expressive

• faintly

• fair

• feast

• fixed

• fungus

• ghastly

• grate

• groped

• handsome

• hearth

• heartlessly

• illness

• kindled

• landing

• marsh

• mist

• mould

• oppressive

• overhung

• panels

• ponderous

• profits

• prominent

• property

• rattling

• realization

• reluctant

• ruin

• scheme

• shame

• shared

• short-sighted

• shrink/shrank/shrunk

• spacious

• speckled

• table-cloth

• transpired

• troubled

• waxwork

• wintry

WORKSHEETS FOR GROUP A (Sections: II, III, IV)

SECTION II - Excerpt-A for students in group A

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

by Charles Dickens (1861)

Scene: In Miss Haversham’s House

Characters: Pip & Miss Haversham

I crossed the staircase landing, and entered the room she indicated. From that room, too, the daylight was completely excluded, and it had an airless smell that was oppressive. A fire had been lately kindled in the damp old-fashioned grate, and it was more disposed to go out than to burn up, and the reluctant smoke which hung in the room seemed colder than the clearer air — like our own marsh mist. Certain wintry branches of candles on the high chimneypiece faintly lighted the chamber: or, it would be more expressive to say, faintly troubled its darkness. It was spacious, and I dare say had once been handsome, but every discernible thing in it was covered with dust and mould, and dropping to pieces. The most prominent object was a long table with a table-cloth spread on it, as if a feast had been in preparation when the house and the clocks all stopped together. An epergne or centre-piece of some kind was in the middle of this cloth; it was so heavily overhung with cobwebs that its form was quite undistinguishable; and, as I looked along the yellow expanse out of which I remember its seeming to grow, like a black fungus, I saw speckled-legged spiders with blotchy bodies running home to it, and running out from it, as if some circumstance of the greatest public importance had just transpired in the spider community.

I heard the mice too, rattling behind the panels, as if the same occurrence were important to their interests. But, the black beetles took no notice of the agitation, and groped about the hearth in a ponderous elderly way, as if they were short-sighted and hard of hearing, and not on terms with one another.

These crawling things had fascinated my attention and I was watching them from a distance, when Miss Havisham laid a hand upon my shoulder. In her other hand she had a crutch-headed stick on which she leaned, and she looked like the witch of the place.

`This,' said she, pointing to the long table with her stick, `is where I will be laid when I am dead. They shall come and look at me here.'

With some vague misgiving that she might get upon the table then and there and die at once, the complete realization of the ghastly waxwork at the Fair, I shrank under her touch.

`What do you think that is?' she asked me, again pointing with her stick; `that, where those cobwebs are?'

`I can't guess what it is, ma'am.'

`It's a great cake. A bride-cake. Mine!'

SECTION III - VOCABULARY-A (for group A students)

INSTRUCTIONS:  Match words and phrases from the left-hand column with those from the right-hand column

• hard of hearing
• I will be laid
• to not be on (good) terms with s.o.
• to be on bad terms with s.o.
• took no notice of s.t.
• With some vague misgiving

• to ignore s.t.
• to have fallen out with s.o.
• to feel intuitively wary
• to be at loggerheads with s.o.
• someone will lay my body there
• deaf

Dicken’s English v Modern English

INSTRUCTIONS: Using the words provided in the right-hand column, find an alternative (according to the meaning in the text) for the words underlined

THE MISSING WORDS

SECTION-IV - WRITING-A (for students in Group A)

INSTRUCTIONS: Write a short summary of Excerpt-B

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WORKSHEETS FOR GROUP B (Sections: II, III, IV)

SECTION II - GREAT EXPECTATIONS (Excerpt-B)

by Charles Dickens (1861)

Scene: Herbert Pocket speaking to Pip

The marriage day was fixed, the wedding dresses were bought, the wedding tour was planned out, the wedding guests were invited. The day came, but not the bridegroom. He wrote her a letter —'

`Which she received,' I struck in, `when she was dressing for her marriage? At twenty minutes to nine?'

`At the hour and minute,' said Herbert, nodding, `at which she afterwards stopped all the clocks. What was in it, further than that it most heartlessly broke the marriage off, I can't tell you, because I don't know. When she recovered from a bad illness that she had, she laid the whole place to waste, as you have seen it, and she has never since looked upon the light of day.'

`Is that all the story?' I asked, after considering it.

`All I know of it; and indeed I only know so much, through piecing it out for myself; for my father always avoids it, and, even when Miss Havisham invited me to go there, told me no more of it than it was absolutely requisite I should understand. But I have forgotten one thing. It has been supposed that the man to whom she gave her misplaced confidence, (4)acted throughout in concert with her half-brother; that it was a conspiracy between them; and that they shared the profits.'

`I wonder he didn't marry her and get all the property,' said I.

`He may have been married already, and her cruel mortification may have been a part of her half-brother's scheme,' said Herbert. `Mind! I don't know that.'

`What became of the two men ? ' I asked, after again considering the subject.

`They fell into deeper shame and degradation —if there can be deeper — and ruin.'

`Are they alive now?'

`I don't know.'

SECTION III - VOCABULARY-B (for group B students)

INSTRUCTIONS:  Match words and phrases from the left-hand column with those from the right-hand column

• to lay something to waste
• the light of day
• misplaced confidence
• Are they alive now? 

• Are they alive today, or have they died?
• daylight
• to ruin something
• to trust someone erroneously

Dicken’s English v Modern English

INSTRUCTIONS: Using the words provided in the right-hand column, find an alternative (according to the meaning in the text) for the words underlined

• acted throughout in concert with her half-brother (..........)
• At the hour and minute (..........)
• marriage day (..........)
• Mind ..........
• mortification (..........)
• piecing it out (..........)
• requisite (..........)
• wedding tour (..........)

THE MISSING WORDS

• you
• wedding
• that moment precisely
• procession
• piecing it together
• necessary
• humiliation
• cahoots

SECTION IV - WRITING-B (for students in Group B)

INSTRUCTIONS: Write a short summary of excerpt-A

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