4.1 Giving advice  (Page 2/4)

Greg did not know a soul at his new school. Being a stranger to Cape Town, he felt shy and awkward and was eager to be accepted by his classmates. One afternoon, a boy in his class, Terry, surreptitiously called Greg aside, showed him a broken-off bottleneck and asked him if he knew what it was. Greg shook his head. He shrugged.

“It’s a dagga pipe”, said the older boy … “it’ll make you feel absolutely amazing. I guarantee that it’ll help you to forget all your troubles.” As Greg did not want to disappoint his friend, he took the pipe. Within a few weeks Greg was smoking dagga pipes every afternoon after school and regularly over weekends.

Greg recalls, “It made me feel ‘cool’ and one of the crowd. I knew that the drug was illegal and that it was affecting my health, but I was desperate to be accepted by the other guys. If they had asked me jump off a building with them, I would have jumped.”

The months passed and Greg found that he needed to smoke more and more in order to achieve the same sensation. “My marks at school deteriorated and I bunked classes at every opportunity. I was a keen sportsman, but I lost interest in rugby. I began to steal small amounts of money to finance my habit. I lost interest in my appearance and personal hygiene. I was scruffy and unshaven and washed my hair only when I was forced to do so. Of course, at the time I thought I looked quite normal.”

Greg told his parents that he had taken up jogging, to avoid arousing their suspicion. As soon as he had left the house, he would sprint along the road to the drug dealer’s house, smoke himself into a stupor and rush home again. In that way he could con his parents into thinking his red face was from the exertion of the exercise …

Answer the following questions:

Explain in your own words what the following mean (in context).

• stranger
• awkward
• illegal
• sensation
• Select the correct answer: Terry promised Greg that using drugs would help him (to cope at school academically; to cope with everything that was bothering him; make it into the first rugby team).
• Why do you think Greg continued smoking dagga, even though he knew it was illegal and not good for his health?
• Find a sentence in the extract and write it down, which tells the reader that Greg was becoming addicted to the drug.
• How did taking drugs affect Greg’s schoolwork?

1. Greg said he thought he looked quite normal. How do we know that this was not the case?
2. True or False: Greg took up jogging.
3. Complete the sentence: Greg’s parents thought that …….
4. Do you agree or disagree with the statement and say why (give a reason)?

Greg knew what he was letting himself in for whenhe started smoking dagga pipes.

SPEAKING

What interests teenagers? Select something which interests you and present it to your peers in an ‘out of the ordinary’ way.

Prepared reading exercise

Select a piece of text, of your own choice, to read for enjoyment and evaluation purposes.

Your peers will be assessing your reading skill, using the following criteria: