Secrets
Exercises for the Internet
By Philip Hewitt
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1. Picking the right words
Chapter 8 of the story is entitled ‘A peek into the past’. There are many other synonyms for ‘look’, including peep, glimpse, glance and gaze. These words can be used as verbs or nouns. Only one of them can replace ‘look’ and the other words in italics in each of the following sentences – but which one?
a) I showed her the letter, but she only looked at it quickly.
b) I saw a woman’s face looking at me from behind the curtain.
c) We only got a quick look at (= caught a … of) the Queen as she drove past.
d) For a long time we looked at the beautiful sunset.
Now put these words for various types of noise into the right sentences: scream, shriek, yell, groan.
e) “Look out!” … the skateboarder. “I’m coming through!”
f) The huge crowd at the stadium … when the Manchester United player missed an easy penalty.
g) While they were walking through the railway tunnel, the children suddenly heard the … of a locomotive whistle.
h) When he saw the mouse in the kitchen he jumped onto a chair with a loud …
2. A quick crossword
This crossword is not difficult. Copy it onto a piece of paper and see if you can complete it within 15 minutes. If you can complete it in less than ten minutes, you are a language genius!
1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 56
7
8
9
10 / 11 / 12 / 13 / 14
15 / 16
17 / 18
19
Across
1 You don’t want people to know this.
4 Short form of ‘Abraham’.
6 Large Australian bird like an ostrich.
7 Abbreviation for ‘Roman Catholic’.
8 Name and characteristics of a person.
10 Past tense of ‘to bleed’.
13 Pictures which you see while you sleep.
15 He isn’t as clever … me.
16 American word for ‘Mum’.
17 A … of glasses, shoes etc.
18 What are you doing … the weekend?
19 Means the same as ‘come in’.
Down
1 Not very comfortable with strangers.
2 To hold somebody lovingly and softly.
3 An important happening.
4 Abbreviation for ‘in the morning’
5 To put something in the ground and cover it.
6 To go to a new country to start a new life.
9 Idealized picture of something.
11 Gas or water coming slowly out of a damaged pipe.
12 To have the courage to do something.
14 “I’m lost! I don’t know where I …!”
18 His mother works … a garage in town.
3 Jumbled words
These ten sentences are all taken straight from the story. But they will only make sense if you can ‘unjumble’ one of the words. And first you have to decide which word is jumbled.
a) Which of these diks was going to be her new friend?
b) “Do you like gods? We’ve got two.”
c) “They’re waiting for the market to pomiver.”
d) At last she got out of the car and walked up the pests to the front door.
e) Harriet had almost forgotten her mother’s doom of the day before.
f) For the next two hours they wartled the Internet.
g) “I’ll show you our old family mubal after supper,” said Mr Murray.
h) “X marks the tops.”
i) “Martin and Kev are interested in ghosts and the alasunpretur.”
j) He reached into the plastic bag and took out a black face mask, a pair of black vogels and a doctor’s long white coat.
4 English for fun: reverse spellings, anagrams and palindromes English is a language of short words, and you can have a lot of fun with them! There are many words in English, particularly short ones, which have a completely different meaning if they are written back to front, as you can see from sentences b) and h) in the exercise above: dog – god, tops – spot. Here are some more examples:
lever tug tool room loop pat tin
top bat not pal bog pit pots
Write these words down in a list – forwards and backwards. If you do not know the meaning of any of the words, look it up in a dictionary and write it down beside the word. See if you can find any more!
An anagram is simply a jumbled word or group of words. Some anagrams of famous people’s names are very funny. Others have close connections with the original word, name or phrase: Desperation – a rope ends it; Goodbye – Obey God. Here are ten more names, words or phrases and their anagrams. See if you can match them up. If you have a problem, just count the letters!
Christine - Bad credit
Listen - Moon starer
The Morse Code - Twelve plus one
Mother-in-law - I’ll make a wise phrase
The Titanic disaster - The great charmer
Debit card - Nice shirt
Margaret Thatcher - Death – it starts in ice
Eleven plus two - Here come dots
Astronomer - Silent
William Shakespeare - Woman Hitler
If you enjoyed this exercise and would like to see – or make – more anagrams, just type “anagram” on your Internet web browser and download some software. You can start off by finding anagrams for your own name!
A palindrome is a word or sentence which reads the same forwards or backwards. Some word palindromes:
level, boob, mum, dad, tot, pop, minim, deed.
Some sentence palindromes:
Was it a rat I saw? / A man, a plan, a canal: Panama! / Do, O God, no evil deed – live on, do good!
Adam (introducing himself to Eve): Madam, I’m Adam.
Eve (angrily to Adam): Name no one man!
5 Use the right conjunction
It is not always easy to join two sentences together with words like ‘because’, ‘although’ and ‘if’. Try to find which two parts of the sentence go together and ‘join’ them with the right ‘conjunction’:
Jack still worked at the hospital ever since he had lived in Richmond.
Harrie had never asked her mother what had happened to the head.
The inspector had no idea because he had met Jenny Hargreaves.
Karen had never written to Jack whether she had any secrets.
Arthur Thackray had killed twice before it was no longer open.
Allie had hated the hospital although he had been married.
6. Describing your impressions of a picture
This is the picture which inspired the author to write the story of Harrie and Allie. Imagine the thoughts that went through his head when he took this photo and describe your own impressions of the hospital. Remember: it had been empty for some years before the photo was taken.