English 8

• Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia
• Africa has one-fifth of the entire land surface of the globe
• There are 54 countries in Africa
• Africa has the world’s largest desert
• Africa is home to the world’s longest river, the Nile
• Most of the world’s diamonds come from Africa
• Africa contains ninety-eight percent of the diamond mines of the world and fifty-five percent of the gold mines
• Africa makes 70% of the world’s cocoa beans
• Africa produces two-thirds of the world’s supply of cocoa and three-fifths of the world’s supply of palm oil
• 1.2 billion people live in Africa
• There are over 2000 different languages spoken in Africa
• Africa is called the Dark Continent not because of the complexion of the original inhabitants but because most people know very little about it
• Africa has immense reserves of water power
• African art is closely related to religion
• African art


  Very primitive in nature and closely associated with superstition
• Masks


  Intended to frighten away evil spirits
• Contemporary dance music is based on African music with its short rhythm based largely on the drum beat
• African music is bound up with religious ceremony
• Drums may be entirely wood, hollowed, and slit; they may be made of wood and hide
• It is believed that the invention of the drum was related to the ritual of driving the spirits of the dead away
• African literature


  Literature that has been written for or by African people
• Oral literature


  May be in prose or in poetry
• Storytellers in Africa often tell stories using the call-and-response technique
• Poetry is often sung or recited in a singsong voice
• Two basic rules to follow when in national parks: Never get out of the car and never use, fire off, discharged, or explode any kind of firearm
• The parks are very extensive, some are over forty square miles
• The animals are not accustomed to people on foot
• Visitors at the parks stay in their cars to protect themselves and the animals
• If the animals get used to the sight of men walking around, they might be tempted to wander into town where they might attack people and get shot
• Parallel structure is the use of similar patterns of words for the purpose of giving the same level of importance to two or more ideas
• Often, parallelism is applied to achieve the art of speaking or writing effectively
• Examples of parallel structure


  • The people fear them, eat them, and worship them.
  • Good roads wind through the park and in a few hours, one can see a mother lion feeding her cubs, a pair of tigers making love, a giraffe peacefully eating the leaves of a tall tree and elephants stalking along.
• Tips for checking parallelism

  • Use words of similar forms consistently
  • Make sure that all items in a list follow the same form
  • Maintain the structure used for parallelism
• Graphic organizers


  • Idea Web
  • Chart
  • T-Chart