Study Work Guide: My Children! My Africa! Grade 12 First Additional Language

By Peter Southey

How well do you know your prescribed drama? Do you understand the contents of your drama? Are you ready to write your exams? This study work guide has been compiled to help learners understand and grasp the drama, My Children! My Africa!, prescribed for Grade 12 English First Additional Language.
This study work guide has been compiled to the requirements of the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) and all important aspects relating to the drama have been covered – in accessible language.
Remember! This guide cannot be used on its own as it refers to the prescribed text throughout.
What makes our study work guides different?
This study work guide forms part of a series. As the name suggests, this is not only a guide in which the drama is discussed, but also a workbook in which learners can make notes. This helps with revision for exams and tests and keeps valuable notes from going astray.
The contents of this study work guide
• Background information on the drama.
• An in-depth scene-by-scene summary of the drama.
• Contextual questions (with space for learners’ answers).
• Plot summaries.
• Photographs of the play.
• An example of an examination question.
All study work guides in this series have been compiled according to CAPS requirements. This study work guide supplements the prescribed drama My Children! My Africa! for Grade 12 English First Additional Language. The answers to all contextual questions and formal assessment questions are available on www.bestbooks.co.za.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Best Books
• Release date: Feb 13, 2017
• ISBN: 9781776070602

Peter Southey

Peter Southey has taught English as both first and second language for the past 45 years at three high schools, a college of education and two universities. Although literature teaching has always been his first love, his degrees at three levels are in Applied Linguistics.

Book preview

Best Books Study Work Guide: My Children! My Africa!

for Grade 12 First Additional Language

Compiled by Peter Southey

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The layout in this digital edition of the Best Books Study Work Guide: My Children! My Africa! for Grade 12 English First Additional Language may differ from that of the printed version, depending on the settings on your reader. The layout displays optimally if you use the default setting on your reader. Readers can experiment with the settings to enhance display.

The page references in this version refer to the pages in the printed school edition of the play.

In instances where learners are asked to ‘answer the questions below’ the questions may appear on the next page depending on the device being used. Where learners are asked to answer questions in the book, we suggest jotting down answers in a separate workbook.

References to the back cover of the book refer to the About the book section in this version.

Foreword to the learners: My Children! My Africa!

You cannot study this study work guide instead of studying the play itself. The two must be used together. Your edition of the play includes a great deal of information about the playwright and about the background to the play and the play itself. It also includes post-reading activities and questions with answers, a glossary and literary terms. This study work guide helps you to understand these notes and it also adds to them, using page numbers to refer you to the page you need to have open in your copy of the play. The main purpose of the study work guide is to provide explanations and questions that will lead you to a fuller understanding of the play itself.

The first eight pages of this study work guide focus on pp. 4−12 of the introductory section. The next section (pp. 10−63) takes you through the play itself. This is followed by a revision exercise. The final section discusses the Grade 12 examination for English First Additional Language and provides guidelines and examples for the essay option.

Enjoy working through this resource!

The author and publishers

Section A: Background information

About My Children! My Africa! (p. 4)

Photograph: The playwright Athol Fugard with the characters Thami, Isabel and Mr M on the set of the stage production of My Children! My Africa!. (Credit: Ruphin Coudyzer)

Fill in the blanks below, using your own words wherever possible. The first question relates to the first paragraph (p. 4); the following five questions deal in turn with each of the bullets under Why study this play today?.

1. ____________________________ declared a State of Emergency in ____________________________ in order to counter ____________________________ declared by black South Africans. (3)

2.The two ways of opposing an unjust social system like apartheid that this play examines are to ____________________________ and to ____________________________.  (2)

3.Studying this play will help ____________________________ to understand how South Africa came to be ____________________________. (2)

4.Three reasons for reading this play are that it is ____________________________, it was written by ____________________________ and it ____________________________. (3)

5.The two-word phrase from the fourth bullet that best expresses the advantage of reading a drama such as this one is ____________________________. (1)

About Athol Fugard (p. 5)

1.List three facts from the second paragraph that suggest that Athol Fugard was unconventional.

•____________________________

•____________________________

•____________________________

(6)

2.Fugard wrote the works listed in this section in the following order: Sizwe Banzi is Dead (1972), Statements after an Arrest under the Immorality Act (1972), Tsotsi (1980) and My Children! My Africa! (1989). Tsotsi differs from the other works listed here in that it was originally written as ____________________________ and was later made into ____________________________. (2)

3.In addition to the three listed here, Fugard also wrote thirty other _________________________________. (1)

(Note: Jerusalema, mentioned in paragraph four in this section, was not written by Fugard, but is a film produced in 2008 by writer/director Ralph Ziman.)

4.We are not told directly why Fugard moved to America in the eighties, but we can assume that it . (2)

What is a drama? (p. 6)

1.Underline any words or phrases in this Merriam-Webster definition of drama that are not included in the definition of drama at the top of p. 6:

A piece of writing that __________________________________ and is performed _____________________________. (2)

2.On the other hand, the p. 6 definition mentions __________________________________, which is not included in the Merriam-Webster definition. (1)

3.Here are key features of a drama to add to the notes on drama in your copy of the play:

3.1Literature appears in different genres: prose (novels and short stories), poetry and drama (plays). Drama differs from the others in that living actors in costume tell the story by performing it on a stage for an audience.

3.2For this reason the layout of a written play separates the words the actors speak (the primary text) from the information they or their director might need. Below the title you find the list of characters (the dramatis personae). Their names in