People and Places

When we talk about a place, we usually answer two questions: where is it, and how do you get there? A good answer names the district or the region, and then describes the journey: by bus along the highway, by plane to a small airstrip, on foot up a trekking trail, or by cable car to a hilltop. Practise sentences like these: 'It lies in the far west of Nepal.' 'You can fly to the nearest airport and then walk for two days.' 'The easiest way is to take a bus to the district headquarters.'

Places become famous, and so do people. Some people become famous for what they write, some for what they win, and some for what they give to others. Nepal has athletes who have carried the national flag onto international podiums and social workers who have been honoured around the world. When you introduce a famous person, say who they are, what they did, and why it matters: 'She is a social worker who is famous for caring for children.' 'He is an athlete who won gold medals for Nepal.'

Paulo Coelho is a well known Brazilian author and lyricist. He was born on 24 August 1947 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. From an early age he loved writing and dreamed of becoming a writer, but his parents were against it. They wanted him to become a lawyer, and during his adolescence they sent him to a mental hospital three times, only because he would not give up his dream of writing. In his twenties he was arrested and tortured in Brazil, yet the dream survived. After his release he enrolled in law school, and for a while he abandoned writing. One year later he dropped out and lived as a hippie, travelling through South America, North Africa, Mexico and Europe, and he started using drugs in the 1960s.

At the age of 36 his life changed radically. He made a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, where he experienced a spiritual awakening, and he felt inspired to write the book The Pilgrimage (1987). Only one year later he wrote The Alchemist in a two week spurt of creativity. At first the book attracted little attention. Then, in the early 1990s, a French language translation suddenly leapt onto the bestseller lists in France, new translations followed, and The Alchemist became a worldwide phenomenon. By Coelho's own count the book has sold roughly 35 million copies, and it is now the most translated book in the world by any living author.

The Alchemist tells of a shepherd boy who follows a mystical trek in which he learns to speak the 'Language of the World' and thus receives his heart's desire. Since that breakthrough Coelho has published books at a rate of about one every two years. In 2013 approximately 150 million copies of his books had been published in at least 71 languages. Several of his books are autobiographic in nature and deal with spirituality and faith, societal impacts on individuals, and love. His 26 books have sold more than 65 million copies in at least 59 languages.

He has also published collections of excerpts from his oeuvre, that is, from his whole body of work: Frases (1996) and Life: Selected Quotations (2007), which is a similar collection translated into English. Selections from his weekly column in the newspaper O Globo were compiled into a volume titled Maktub, which means 'It is Written'.

Coelho is now the world's most widely read author, with several prestigious international awards, including the Crystal Award given by the World Economic Forum and France's Legion d'honneur. His fans call his books inspiring and life changing. His critics say the books merely promote vague spirituality devoid of rigour, which means without careful, disciplined thinking. Coelho dismisses his naysayers' critiques with confidence. He rejects the self-help label, saying 'I am not a self-help writer; I am a self-problem writer', and adds, 'When I write a book I write a book for myself; the reaction is up to the reader. It's not my business whether people like or dislike it.'

Coelho has been married to his wife, the artist Christina Oiticica, since 1980. The couple spend half the year in Rio de Janeiro and the other half in a country house in the Pyrenees Mountains of France. In 1996 he founded the Paulo Coelho Institute, which provides support to children and the elderly.

When a stranger stops you in the street, the conversation follows a simple pattern: a polite opening, a question, clear directions, and thanks. Read this model conversation aloud with a partner, then make your own for other places on the map.

• Ask politely: 'Excuse me. How can I get to the bus station?' or 'Could you tell me the way to the library?'
• Give the route step by step: 'Go straight on.' 'Turn left at the crossroads.' 'Take the second street on your right.'
• Say where it is: 'It's on your left.' 'It's next to the cafe.' 'It's about 100 metres ahead.'
• Reassure the listener: 'You can't miss it!' means it is very easy to find.
• Close politely: 'Thanks!' and 'You're welcome.'

Practise giving directions in real situations too: a new friend who cannot find the school library, a visitor looking for a nearby bank, a friend coming to your home for the first time, a visitor who wants to meet the head teacher in her office, and your sister who wants to buy books but does not know where the stationery shop is. In each case, imagine the starting point, then guide the listener one step at a time.

Watch how articles work in this old fable. A dove saw an ant fall into a brook. The ant struggled in vain to reach the bank, and in pity, the dove dropped a blade of straw beside it. Clinging to the straw like a shipwrecked sailor to a broken spar, the ant floated safely to the shore. Soon after, the ant saw a man getting ready to kill the dove with a stone. But just as he cast the stone, the ant stung him on the heel, so that the pain made him lose his aim, and the startled dove flew to safety in a distant wood.

Use the whenever only one such thing can be meant: with superlatives (the best holiday, the hardest substance, the nearest grocery shop), with things that are one of a kind (the Moon, the end of this street), with named rivers (the Narayani River), with a known position or post (the S.P. of Nepal Police, the head teacher's room, the second floor), and with things already introduced (Sudip bought an expensive guitar yesterday. The guitar is beautiful.). We also say the radio and the cinema as fixed habits: 'Do you often listen to the radio?' 'Do you go to the cinema very often?'

Some nouns take no article at all in general statements. Meals go bare: 'Where did you have lunch?' 'I never eat breakfast.' So does television when we mean watching it: 'I watch a lot of films on television.' So does space when we mean outer space: 'Would you like to travel in space?' If an exercise tells you no article is needed, mark the blank with a cross (X) instead of forcing a word in. But notice the contrast: we travel in space, yet we go to the Moon, because the Moon is one particular object.

A good review has four parts, and the model review of The Alchemist shows all of them. First come the facts: Title: The Alchemist. Author: Paulo Coelho. Year: 1988. Publisher: Harper Collins (English translation). Characters: The Coptic Monk, The Shopkeeper, Melchizedek, Fatima, The Alchemist, The Englishman, Santiago. Genre: Adventure fiction.

Second comes the story in brief. The plotline is a simple quest. A Spanish shepherd boy, Santiago, keeps getting the same dream that there is treasure lying underneath the Egyptian pyramids. After meeting an old king who offers him advice and some magic stones, Santiago crosses the Mediterranean Sea and the Sahara Desert to find his treasure and accomplish his Personal Legend, a concept equivalent to our purpose in life. Amidst swindlers, tribe wars and endless sand, he finds his one true love, learns alchemy and the language of his heart, and fights to reach his treasure.

Third comes the judgement, where the reviewer weighs the book honestly. The model review praises the insightful ideas about destiny, rising above failure and the unity of the Universe, and calls the descriptions awe inspiring and the word choice immaculate, while admitting the diction of the text is comparatively simplistic. Fourth comes the recommendation: anyone who reads this will not only escape reality but also understand it, so the book deserves a place on your bookshelf. When you review a book you have recently read, follow the same four steps in the same order.

Langston Hughes was a great African American poet. In this poem a housemaid named Alberta speaks in her own voice about the woman she works for. Both women can be called Madam, which is a formal and polite way of speaking to a woman, and that is the joke hiding in the title: the maid, too, deserves the respectful name.

The speaker begins by saying her employer 'wasn't mean', and then spends the whole poem proving the opposite. The Madam never shouts or beats her, so she does not look unkind, yet she loads Alberta with a twelve room house to clean, three meals to cook, children to mind, washing, ironing, scrubbing and even the dog to walk. It was too much, and it nearly broke her down, which means it nearly made her collapse. When Alberta asks whether the Madam is trying to make a pack-horse out of her, a horse used to carry heavy loads, the Madam answers with sweet words: 'You know, Alberta, I love you so!' Alberta refuses the false sweetness. Saying 'I love you' costs nothing; paying fairly and sharing the work would cost something real.

English is full of these double words, and a dictionary entry for one will list its separate meanings one after another. Read the sentence, decide which meaning fits, and check the pronunciation given in the dictionary as you go. Here are the fifteen homonyms to study, each with two of its common meanings.

The listening task plays a conversation about finding the way in a town. Before the audio starts, look at the picture and guess: where are the three people, what is the man with the map asking for, and what is the lady doing? Then read the statements you must judge. They tell you exactly what to listen for: whether the girl wants to go to the art museum, whether she prefers the bus or walking, how far the bus station is, what she must do at the Royal Hotel, and on which side the museum appears after the junction. In the second listening you answer short questions in no more than three words, so catch the key words only: the best method to get there, the reason for walking, where the Royal Hotel is located, what to do after going over the junction, and what the girl can do if she is still lost.

• Before listening, read every statement and question so your ears know what to hunt for.
• During the first listening, judge each statement True or False; do not stop to write long notes.
• During the second listening, note the exact words that answer each question, and keep every answer within three words.
• Listen hardest to direction words: left, right, straight, junction, crossing, near, far, on your left.
• After listening, give directions yourself: guide a new friend from your classroom to the head teacher's office, step by step.

• Collect the facts: birth, childhood, education, career, works, awards, personal life, death.
• Arrange the facts in the order they happened.
• Write in complete sentences and in the past tense, turning each group of facts into a paragraph.
• Check every date, place and name against your source, because a nearly right date is a wrong date.

Here is a model biography built from an outline of the life of Nepal's National Poet. Madhav Prasad Ghimire was born on 23 September 1919 in Pustun, Lamjung. After his mother's death he was brought up by his father and grandfather, and as a boy he learned the Panchanga. He went to Duradanda, Lamjung, for his early studies, later moved to Kathmandu to study Sanskrit, and also studied in Banaras, India.

His writing career began in Lamjung. He worked as a writer for Bhashanubad Parishad and later served as an editor for The Gorkhapatra. His works include the epics Gauri and Shakuntala, the lyrical anthology Kinnar-Kinnari, the essay collection Charu Charcha, and Malati Mangale, Manjari, Indrakumari, Rastra Nirmata, Aafno Bansuri Aafnai Geet, Himal Pari Himal Wari, Aswathama and Rajheswari. He received many honours, among them the Distinguished Academy Medal, the Shree Prasiddha Praval Gorkha Dakshinabahu, the Bhanubhakta Award, the Tribhuwan Pragya Puraskar, the Padmashree Sadhana Samman Puraskar and the Sajha Award. He had six daughters and two sons from two marriages. He died on 18 August 2020, at the age of 100, at Lainchaur, Kathmandu, and was cremated with state honours.

Fame does not live only in books and on television. Find information about any one popular personality in your own locality: a teacher, a social worker, an athlete, a musician, an entrepreneur. Note the important details of his or her life, birth, education, work and achievements, exactly as you did for Madhav Prasad Ghimire, and then share what you found with your friends. You will be practising every skill of this unit at once: gathering facts, ordering them, and presenting a person to an audience.