Professional Documents
Culture Documents
May 2011
Level Advanced
Style Individual or group activities
Welcome to the Guardian Weeklys special news-based materials to support learners and teachers of
English. Each month, the Guardian Weekly newspaper selects topical news articles that can be used to
practise English language skills. The materials are graded for two levels: Advanced and Lower Intermediate.
These worksheets can be downloaded free from guardian.co.uk/weekly/. You can also find more advice
for teachers and learners from the Guardian Weeklys Learning English section on the site.
Materials prepared by Janet Hardy-Gould
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News-based English language activities from the global newspaper Page 2
May 2011
3 Vocabulary from the article. Complete the sentences 3 They dont have a lot in common, says Daniel
with the verbs below. What do the words in bold Suslak, a linguistic anthropologist from Indiana
mean? University, who is involved with a project to
converse, ensure, pass on, revitalise, take hold produce a dictionary of Ayapaneco. Segovia, he
a Manuel Segovia plans to says, can be a little prickly and Velazquez, who
his native tongue to the is more stoic, rarely likes to leave his home.
younger generation.
4 The dictionary is part of a race against time
b Before the indigenous language dies out, people to revitalise the language before it is too late.
want to it once more. When I was a boy everybody spoke it, Segovia
said. Its disappeared little by little, and now I
suppose it might die with me.
c Segovias family are unable to
fluently in the 5 Segovia, who denied any active animosity
Ayapaneco language. with Velazquez, retained the habit of speaking
Ayapaneco by conversing with his brother until
he died about a decade ago. Segovia still uses
d Educating children in Spanish, helped to it with his son and wife who understand him,
the demise of but cannot produce more than a few words
Ayapaneco. themselves. Velazquez reputedly does not
regularly talk to anybody in his native tongue
anymore.
e Spanish began to in the
1950s and the core group of speakers disappeared.
6 Ayapanecos demise was sealed by the advent of
education in Spanish in the mid-20th century,
which for several decades included an explicit
prohibition on indigenous children speaking
Article anything else. Urbanisation and migration from
the 1970s then ensured the break-up of the core
Last two speakers of dying group of speakers concentrated in the village.
language wont converse Its a sad story, says Suslak, but you have
to be really impressed by how long it has hung
1 The language of Ayapaneco has been spoken in around.
the land now known as Mexico for centuries.
It has survived the Spanish conquest, seen off 7 The National Indigenous Language Institute is
wars, revolutions, famines and floods. But now, planning a last attempt to get classes going in
like so many other indigenous languages, its at which the last two surviving speakers can pass
risk of extinction. their knowledge on to other locals. Previous
efforts have failed to take hold due to lack of
2 There are just two people left who can speak it funding and limited enthusiasm.
fluently but they refuse to talk to each other. 8 The classes would start off full and then the
Manuel Segovia, 75, and Isidro Velazquez, 69, pupils would stop coming, Segovia said.
live 500 metres apart in the village of Ayapa in
the state of Tabasco. It is not clear whether there Jo Tuckman Mexico City
is a long-buried argument behind their mutual
avoidance, but people who know them say they
have never really enjoyed each others company.
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News-based English language activities from the global newspaper Page 3
May 2011
While reading
1 Read the article and answer the questions.
a How long has Ayapaneco existed? What events has it g What has happened to plans in the past?
survived?
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News-based English language activities from the global newspaper Page 4
May 2011
Answers
c Segovia still uses it with his son and wife (para 5). Before reading
2 a die out/disappear.
b two speakers of the language.
c they wont converse/talk to each other.
d sad/melancholy/lonely.