Look around your town on any morning. A tailor is bent over his sewing machine, turning cloth into a shirt. A teacher is standing at the blackboard, explaining a lesson to a full classroom. A barber is trimming a customer's hair in front of a mirror. Each of these people does a job, and each job gives us something we need. The tailor gives us clothes to wear. The teacher gives us knowledge and good habits. The barber keeps us neat and clean. When we talk about people, the first questions we ask in English are simple ones: Who are they? What do they do? What benefits do we get from them?

Famous places also give us benefits, though in a different way. The pyramids of Egypt and the Great Wall of China teach us history and show what people long ago could build. Lumbini, the birthplace of Gautam Buddha, is a place of peace and pride for Nepal. Such places attract visitors from all over the world, and tourism brings income to the people who live near them. So both people and places can be answered with the same two questions: who or what are they, and what do we get from them?

Here is a song about workers who are all proud of their own jobs. In the song, people wearing aprons could be cooks or lab workers, people carrying camera lenses could be photographers, and people controlling devices from a distance could be engineers. Every one of them shouts that his or her job is the best one. Sing it and enjoy the picture it paints.

The truth behind the song is simple. No single job is better than all the others. A doctor cannot work without the farmer who grows food, and the farmer needs the engineer who builds tools. Every honest job deserves respect. After singing, think of one electronic gadget you like most and tell a friend which of its features attracts you. For most people today, that gadget is the mobile phone, and that is exactly what our reading is about.

Most of us nowadays carry the world in our pocket. That sounds amazing, but it is true. A mobile phone can connect us to the rest of the world within a second. Because of it, mothers do not have to stay in tension when their sons or daughters are late; one call tells them everything. Businessmen no longer queue up in front of a telephone booth to make an important call. Apart from making calls and sending SMS, the mobile phone works as a calculator, a timepiece, a calendar, a voice recorder, a media player, a camera, a gaming device and a net browser. One small machine does the work of many, and that is why we call it a multipurpose gadget.

The development of the mobile phone brought convenience and advantages to the whole world. Communication between people has become easy and very fast. We can keep in contact with others from any place, on a bus, in a street or in a meeting, by sending a message for less than the price of a call. The Internet can be accessed through it, and it is also used to click photos and shoot videos. Parents can keep track of their children, and during emergencies a phone is essential. Business deals can be done on a single call outside the office, in a park or in a shopping centre. This invention truly gets the world closer to a single point.

The mobile phone is a giant step of technological advancement, yet its abuses cannot be overlooked. Talking or texting while driving may lead to accidents. Some students misuse this tool in various ways and give way to social pollution. The radiations of mobile phones may be dangerous to health. They may cause a headache, an earache and blurring vision. These invisible radiations destroy cells located in the ear and head, which can damage the brain and the nephrons in the head region. Using a phone in certain places, such as a classroom, causes disturbance. Camera phones are also creating privacy problems, because a phone can be misused as a hidden camera to take pictures and make videos of people without their permission.

Learn these words from the passage. They carry the meaning of the whole text and they are the ones you will be asked about.

• multipurpose: having many uses
• giant: very big
• essential: very important
• invisible: that cannot be seen
• tension: worry
• queue up: stand in a line and wait
• overlooked: ignored, not noticed
• convenience: ease and comfort
• radiation: invisible energy waves given out by a device
• blurring: becoming unclear

When we see people doing something, we ask about them with question words. "Who are they?" asks about the people. "What are they doing?" asks about the action happening right now. The answers use is, am or are with a verb ending in -ing. Read these two short conversations aloud with a partner, taking one role each.

Now practise with the pictures below. One partner asks, "Who is she? What is she doing?" and the other answers in a full sentence, like "She is a teacher. She is writing on the blackboard." The caption under each picture shows you a model answer. When you finish, try the same game with the real world: look out of your classroom window, watch what is happening, and say at least five things to your friends.

Study these three pairs carefully, because the wrong version in brackets is the mistake students make most often.

• I get up every morning at 7:00. (NOT I am getting up every morning at 7:00.)
• She is reading a book now. (NOT She reads a book now.)
• They aren't reading a book now. (NOT They don't read a book now.)

The time words in a sentence tell you which tense to choose. Words like every day, every Saturday, often and always point to the present simple, because the action repeats. Words like now, at the moment and Look! point to the present continuous, because the action is happening in front of you. The helping verb must also match the subject: I takes am, he, she and it take is, and we, you and they take are. So we say: He is dancing. They are playing basketball. I am singing now.

Long before mobile phones, the most powerful tool people had was the spoken word, and few people used it better than the philosophers of ancient Greece. Plato was born in Athens in 427 BC. His life was not always easy; at one time he was even sold as a slave. In 385 BC he opened a school in Athens called the Academy, and it became a famous place of learning. Plato died in 347 BC, but before his death he passed the responsibility of the Academy to his sister's son. The Academy kept teaching students for hundreds of years after him, until it was finally closed in 529 CE.

Nepal has its own famous people too: poets, climbers, players and social workers. Think of one famous person from your own locality. Why is he or she famous? What has he or she given to the community? Talking about a real person's life and contributions is good practice for both speaking and listening.

Small words carry big jobs. Read these three sentences spoken by three children: "I am eating an apple." "I am eating a mango." "I have a mobile phone." The little words a and an appear before the nouns. They are called articles, and English has three of them: a, an and the.

• Use the for things of which there is only one: the sun, the Earth, the Prime Minister.
• Use the with superlatives: the tallest student, the highest mountain.
• Use the with the names of rivers: the Karnali River.
• Use a or an the first time you mention something general: I saw a cat. I need a bottle of water.

The mobile phone has a surprising history and some strange effects on people. Some of us are so attached to our phones that being without one actually frightens us, and scientists have given that fear a name.

• The first smartphone was called SIMON. It supported a calendar app, an address book, a world clock, a calculator, a notepad, e-mail, fax and games. It came with a touchscreen keyboard and cost around 1000 US dollars.
• The first phone call was made in April, 1973, while the first text message was sent out in December, 1992.
• The first camera phone was released in Japan in 2000.
• The average person unlocks their smartphone at least 110 times every day.
• The first commercial phone weighed around 2.5 pounds; the average weight of smartphones today is around 250 grams.
• Modern smartphones are more powerful than the equipment used in the Apollo 11 moon landing, and they are nowadays used as cheap satellites.
• Mobile phone throwing is an official sport in Finland.
• Scientists have developed a way to charge mobile phones using urine.
• One ton of mobile phone waste contains 60 times more gold than one ton of gold ore.

A paragraph without capital letters and full stops is a wall of words nobody can read. When you correct such a paragraph, work through it like this.

• Read the paragraph aloud and find where each complete idea ends. Put a full stop there.
• Begin every new sentence with a capital letter.
• Give capital letters to the names of people and places, like Alfred and Europe.
• Put a comma after opening time phrases like In 1862.
• Read the whole paragraph again to check that every sentence makes sense on its own.

Here is a paragraph about Alfred, the famous inventor, after all its errors have been corrected: In 1862, he built a small factory to manufacture Nitroglycerin. In 1863, he invented a practical detonator. Later, he invented an improved detonator called blasting cap. In 1865, he became very famous for this invention. Similarly, in the year 1870-80, Alfred built a network of factories throughout Europe to manufacture dynamite called blasting gelatin, which he patented.

The second writing skill is describing a picture. Use the present continuous, because you are saying what is happening in the scene right now. Look at the busy park below and read the model sentences that follow it.

• People are walking around the park.
• Two boys are playing football.
• Three children are skipping rope.
• A boy is riding a bicycle.
• Two children are playing on the seesaw.
• A woman is selling food at a stall.
• Two children are flying kites.

You can also describe a thing instead of a scene. To describe your mobile phone, radio or television, tell its name and colour, its size, its main features, and what you use it for. For example: I have a small black radio. It has two knobs and a long antenna. I listen to the news and songs on it every evening. Finally, for your project, draw a picture of your own village or town, then describe it to your friends: name its main places, say what people do there, and tell what is happening in your picture using is, am and are.

Every word in an English sentence belongs to a class, and each class does its own job. Here are five word classes you should be able to name and recognise.

Test yourself with one sentence: "Wow! He is sitting on the wall because the sun is warm." Wow is an interjection, he is a pronoun, on is a preposition, because is a conjunction, and the is a determiner. One short sentence can hold all five classes.

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