Explorers or boys messing about?

Either way, taxpayer gets rescue bill by Steven Morris

The following activities are designed to explore the linguistic and structural
devices the writer uses to influence his audience.
Activities and questions on content
1. With a partner, discuss and make notes about what the words adventure and
expedition suggest to you. Look up the dictionary definitions and compare them to
your own ideas.
2. Join up with another pair and share your ideas and findings with each other. Add any
new ideas that come up to your notes.
3. On your own, read the article Explorers, or boys messing about? Either way, taxpayer
gets rescue bill (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2003/jan/28/stevenmorris) and
while you are doing it, highlight each time you come across the words adventure and
expedition (or words derived from them such as adventurer).
4. Get back into your pairs and compare your highlighted words. What impression of
the men does the writer give us through his vocabulary choices?
5. Write a paragraph about the way the writer has used language to try to influence the
readers opinion of the two men.
How many of the following words can you use in your paragraph? Look
them up in a dictionary if you are not sure what they mean.
connotation

point of view

perspective

repetition

synonym

6. In this article, the author combines facts about the expedition and rescue and
background information about the two men with comments from other interested
parties.
a) To start with, are these statements true or false?
The men ditched their helicopter in the sea at 1am (British time) on
Tuesday 28 January 2003.

True / false

The men were rescued up by the Chilean Navy at 10.20am (British

time) on Tuesday 28 January 2003.

True / false

b) Use the correct versions of the statements and use them to form the start and
end of your timeline. Add any other events and developments, bearing in mind
that you may not be able to specify the exact times.
7. Complete the table below to show whose views or comments the author has chosen
to include in this article.

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Explorers or boys messing about? Either way, taxpayer gets rescue bill by Steven Morris
Who said it?

What did they say?

Direct quotation or
reported speech?

Showing men in
positive/negative
light?

Can you explain in more detail what

impression this gives of the men?

They are boys messing about with

a helicopter.

the emergency people a general

term suggesting they arent sure
who is responsible. Makes them
sound like amateurs.

It was nothing short of a miracle

that they had survived.

Gunter Endres,
expert on
helicopters

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Explorers or boys messing about? Either way, taxpayer gets rescue bill by Steven Morris

Who said it?

What did they say?

Direct quotation or
reported speech?

Showing men in
positive/negative
light?

Can you explain in more detail what

impression this gives of the men?

The flying conditions had been

excellent.

Ministry of
Defence
spokesperson

theyll probably have their

bottoms kicked and be sent home
the long way.

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Explorers or boys messing about? Either way, taxpayer gets rescue bill by Steven Morris
8. Either: What conclusion can you draw about the authors intentions and attitudes in
this article, based on his selective use of comments and quotations? Write three or
four paragraphs, remembering to support your conclusions with references to the
text.
Or: Looking at columns 2 and 3, can you complete this sentence to show how the
author influences the readers opinion of the two men?
Most of the comments or quotations included by the author give readers a
positive/negative (delete one word) impression of the two men, for example (add
an example or two).
Challenge: Can you add a sentence or two to explain how your example(s) creates
this impression?
9. The writer includes facts about the experience and qualifications of these two men.
He reports that Mr Brooks, for example, has been taking part in expeditions for 15
years.
Which statements apply to which man? Add any other details from the text that could
complete the table.
Steve Brooks or
Quentin Smith?
Flew a helicopter from Alaska to Chile
Hiked solo to Everest base camp
Is a qualified mechanical engineer
Kayaked on the Zambezi river
Has twice flown round the world in a helicopter
Walked barefoot for 3 days in the Himalaya mountains
Won the world freestyle helicopter flying competition

a) Look over the facts in the table. How does this information give readers a
positive impression of the two men?
b) Could you use these same facts to describe the men in a negative way? Explain
your answer.
Questions on structure
1. Look at the structure by dividing the article up into sections. To begin with, number
the paragraphs and draw a line after paragraph 3. What is the subject of these first
three paragraphs? Write it in the margin.

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Explorers or boys messing about? Either way, taxpayer gets rescue bill by Steven Morris
2. What do paragraphs 4-7 deal with? Mark and label this section on your text.
3. Now read on through the paragraphs dealing with the events of the crash and rescue.
Once again, indicate on your text where this section ends and a new subject is
introduced. What do you notice about the way these paragraphs have been written?
Annotate your ideas in the margin.
4. Look at paragraphs 15-17. How does the subject matter change? Mark it on your
text.
5. How would you describe the content and the style of paragraphs 19, 20 and 21?
6. How would you sub-divide and label the last 4 paragraphs and why?
7. What parallels or connections can you find in the way this article has been
structured? (look closely at paragraphs 4, 5, 6, 7 and 22 and 24) What effect might
these paragraphs have on the reader?
8. As you know, introductions and conclusions are very important. With a partner, read
just the first and last paragraphs again. Discuss the effects of:

the word farce in paragraph 1

the phrase have their bottoms kicked in the last paragraph
the relationship between the two paragraphs
the authors choice to begin and end his article in this way

Annotate your ideas on the text.

Final question
How would you describe the writers opinion of Steve Brooks and Quentin Smith? How
does he use language and structure to create a particular impression of them?
Use evidence from the text to support your ideas.

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Explorers or boys messing about? Either way, taxpayer gets rescue bill by Steven Morris
Further teaching ideas

Use the Syntex activity as a pre-reading activity. Ask students to create a

meaningful text from the words and punctuation they are given. Telling them it is
a headline will help as they might then expect determiners to be missing. Once
completed, discuss what they can deduce about tone, viewpoint, and likely
content.

The article uses the standfirst Helicopter duo plucked from liferaft after Antarctic
crash. This refers to the news event that inspired this article. Ask students to
create the original news report by selecting relevant facts from the article,
omitting irrelevant or inappropriate content, adopting an appropriate style and
structuring the report properly. Activity 6 in the main resource is useful
preparation for this task.

To introduce the text, get students to analyse the first paragraph in isolation.
Prompt them with questions such as:
Is this what you would expect from an opening paragraph of an article in a
newspaper?
What expectations do you have of the rest of the article?
What is the effect of using their rather than identifying the subject of the
article?
What does farce mean and how does it steer the reader to an opinion of the
people referred to?
Tell the students the men referred to have been on another expedition then give
them the final paragraph from the article. Prompt discussion with questions such
as:
What
idea?
What
What
What

do you think happened on this recent expedition and what gives you this
links the two paragraphs?
adjectives would you use to describe the men why?
do you think is the authors opinion of them why?

This could be done immediately before the Questions on structure section.

Allocate sections of the article to pairs of students in such a way as the whole
article is covered. Students should decide on the key idea of their section and
choose from it a single word or a short phrase that could function as a sub-heading.
As there are 25 paragraphs, one option would be to work together on the first
couple, with the teacher modeling the first one then all students working on the
second; pairs on one each thereafter leaving a few at the end for early finishers or
allowing more able to work on their own. Alternatively, use the whizzy matching
activity for the first ten paragraphs and ask students to work out which description
fits each section of the text. Either of these suggestions could be combined with,
or done instead of, the Questions on structure section.

Use the whizzy activity before task 9, to look into the mens previous experiences.
Use the extension activities to explore the impact of this information further.

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Explorers or boys messing about? Either way, taxpayer gets rescue bill by Steven Morris

This article was used in the May 2005 exam (Paper 2H) and some candidate answers
with examiners grades and comments are available in the Exemplar candidate
responses from the May 2005 examination session (Jan 2006), available at the time
of publishing at:
http://www.edexcel.com/migrationdocuments/Current%20IGCSE/261903_Eng_Lan
g_exemplar_booklet_final_draft.pdf . Students could try to rank the answers,
grade them, and correctly match them to the examiners comments. What targets
would they set to improve? Can they redraft sections to improve the answers?

Are they explorers or just boys messing about? A few ideas for speaking and
listening:
Create a line of agreement with the two interpretations at opposite ends of
the line. Ask students to stand on the line at a point which reflects their
opinion, then invite individuals to justify their position. As students put forward
supporting arguments, other students may shift their positions (literally) and in
turn be invited to persuade others to do the same.
Have pupils collect evidence for both sides of the argument and stage a debate
in pairs.
Hot-seat the two men (students in role) with teacher or another student taking
on the role of interrogator using questions prepared by other students.

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