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Grade 8

8.L.5.a 

NCSCOS Grade 8 ELA / Reading - Skill: 8.L.5.a 

Excerpt from "IN THE OLD VALLEY"
by Lucy Maud Montgomery

The man halted on the crest of the hill and looked somberly down into the long valley below. It was evening, and although the hills around him were still in the light, the valley was already filled with kindly, placid shadows. A wind that blew across it from the misty blue sea beyond was making wild music in the rugged firs above his head as he stood in an angle of the weather-grey longer fence, knee-deep in bracken. It had been by these firs he had halted twenty years ago, turning for one last glance at the valley below, the home valley which he had never seen since. But then the firs had been little more than vigorous young saplings; they were tall, gnarled trees now, with lichened trunks, and their lower boughs were dead. But high up, their tops were green and caught the saffron light of the west. He remembered that when a boy, he had thought there was nothing more beautiful than the evening sunshine falling athwart the dark green fir boughs on the hills. 

As he listened to the swish and murmur of the wind, the earth-old tune with the power to carry the soul back to the dawn of time, the years fell away from him, and he forgot much, remembering more. He knew now that there had always been a longing in his heart to hear the wind-chant in the firs. He had called that longing by other names, but he knew it now for what it was when, hearing, he was satisfied. 

He was a tall man with iron-grey hair and the face of a conqueror-strong, pitiless, unswerving. Eagle eyes, quick to discern and unfaltering to pursue; jaw square and intrepid; mouth formed to keep secrets and cajole men to his will-a face that hid much and revealed little. It told of power and intellect, but the soul of the man was a hidden thing. . . . Yonder below him was home-the old house that had sheltered him, the graves of his kin, the wide fields where his boyhood dreams had been dreamed. 

Should he go down to it? This was the question he asked himself. He had come back to it, heartsick of his idols of the marketplace. For years they had satisfied him, the buying and selling and getting gain, the pitting of strength and craft against strength and craft, the tireless struggle, the exultation of victory. Then, suddenly, they had failed their worshipper; they ceased to satisfy; the sacrifices he had heaped on their altars availed him nothing in this new need and hunger of his being. . . . Were there not better things than these, things he had once known and loved and forgotten? Where were the ideals of his youth, the lofty aspirations that had upborne him then? Where was the eagerness and zest of new dawns, the earnestness of well-filled, purposeful hours of labor, the satisfaction of a good day worthily lived, at eventide the unbroken rest of long, starry nights? Where might he find them again? Were they yet to be had for the seeking in the old valley? With the thought came a great yearning for home. He had had many habitations, but he realized now that he had never thought of any of these places as home. That name had all unconsciously been kept sacred to the long, green, seaward-looking glen where he had been born. 

So he had come back to it, drawn by a longing not to be resisted. But at the last he felt afraid. There had been many changes, of that he felt sure. Would it still be home? And if not, would not the loss be most irreparable and bitter? Would it not be better to go away, having looked at it from the hill and having heard the saga of the firs, keeping his memory of it unblurred, than risk the probable disillusion of a return to the places that had forgotten him and friends whom the varying years must certainly have changed as he had changed himself? No, he would not go down. It had been a foolish whim to come at all-foolish, because the object of his quest was not to be found there or elsewhere. He could not enter again into the heritage of boyhood and the heart of youth. He could not find there the old dreams and hopes that had made life sweet. He understood that he could not bring back to the old valley what he had taken from it. He had lost that intangible, all-real wealth of faith and idealism and zest; he had bartered it away for the hard, yellow gold of the marketplace, and he realized at last how much poorer he was than when he had left that home valley. His was a name that stood for millions, but he was beggared of hope and purpose.

A PINCH OF SALT
by Robert Graves

When a dream is born in you
 With a sudden clamorous pain
When you know the dream is true
 And lovely, with no flaw nor stain,
5 O then, be careful, or with sudden clutch
You'll hurt the delicate thing you prize so much.

Dreams are like a bird that mocks,
 Flirting the feathers of his tail.
When you seize at the salt-box,
10 Over the hedge you'll see him sail.
Old birds are neither caught with salt nor chaff:

They watch you from the apple bough and laugh.
Poet, never chase the dream.
 Laugh yourself, and turn away.
15 Mask your hunger; let it seem
 Small matter if he come or stay;
But when he nestles in your hand at last,
Close up your fingers tight and hold him

QUEEN'S ENGLISH
by Janice Weaver 

The English language, now spoken by about half a billion people worldwide, was actually brought to England by invaders from northern Germany. In the mid-fifth century A.D., three seafaring tribes-the Angles, the Jutes, and the Saxons-saw their chance to fill the void left by departing Roman soldiers and launched their own assault on the southern and eastern coasts of England (or "the land of the Angles"). The language they carried with them across the cold and stormy North Sea developed into Old English, then Middle English, and finally Modern English, the most widely used language in the world. 

English is often accused of being an impossibly complicated language, horribly difficult for nonnative speakers to learn. It is full of words like "eight" and "enough" and "feign," which look as if they should be pronounced something like ey-get, en-oog, and fi-gen, but of course are not. In fact, though, people who study languages tell us that about 84 percent of English words are entirely straightforward and get pronounced exactly as they seem they should. Another 13 percent follow the rules closely enough that most people can sound them out without making too many mistakes. The problems lie in the final 3 percent, a small but troublesome group of words that don't behave in any predictable fashion and simply have to be committed to memory. Unfortunately for anyone trying to learn the language, that 3 percent includes four hundred of our most commonly used words, such as "of," "four," "done," and "love." 

English is probably the world's most well-documented language, and this is one reason why so many illogical spellings have survived through to the present day. People began producing English-language dictionaries almost as soon as the printing press was invented in Europe, in the 1400s . . . and these dictionaries fixed, perhaps for all time, many of the spellings that make the least sense to us today. 

Over the past four centuries or so, a number of people have argued for the simplification of English spellings. One of them, Noah Webster, the creator of the 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language, was successful enough in his efforts that, to this day, Britons and Americans spell many words differently (with Canadians, as always, trying to occupy a neutral middle ground). Webster gave the world -or spellings instead of -our (favor/favour), -er instead of -re (center/centre), and -yze instead of -yse (analyze/analyse). He also introduced many phonetic spellings-that is, spellings based on how words sound-including "skeptical" (for "sceptial"), "plow" (for "plough"), and "check" (for "cheque"). One theory is that Webster hoped to make the language more rule-abiding so that Americans, who tended to have less formal education, could more easily learn to read and write.
 
But Webster was, by all accounts, a grim, miserable man, and in the end, he was not able to talk people around to accepting some of his more radical changes, like spelling "women" as wimmen and "tough" as tuf. He learned that the more common a word is, the greater the resistance to changing it. There's hardly an English-speaker on earth who won't for example, oppose spelling "of" as ov, whether it makes more sense or not. 

We hang on to many of our oddest spellings because, for one thing, they reflect the English language's far-reaching linguistic ancestry. Though it began life as a Germanic dialect, English has, over 1500 years, picked up influences from all over the world. It is estimated, for instance, that when the Normans ruled England, from 1066 to 1154, they introduced ten thousand French-derived words into the language, a full three-quarters of which we still use today. We have also borrowed freely from Latin, Greek, Danish, Swedish, Spanish, and even Russian. In fact, many people have argued that one of the great strengths of English is its willingness to embrace words from just about anywhere. We adopt, without translation, terms like "macho," "kindergarten," "maitre d", " and, more recently, "smorgasbord" and "glasnost." This gives our language a richness and an inclusiveness that others sometimes lack. (Although English, of course, has repaid the favor, infiltrating languages all over the globe, and sometimes creating hybrid monsters like Denglish, a mix of German and English, and Franglais, a mix of English and French.) 

Today, most language experts agree that there are about 200,000 English words in everyday use. (French makes do with roughly half that number.) With a language so vast, we can often be more precise with meaning than non-English speakers, distinguishing between, for example, "earth" and "ground," "house" and "home," "story" and "history," And the language continues to grow and evolve, transforming itself to meet the requirements of an ever-changing world. When the first English-language dictionaries were published, they listed about 3,000 words. Samuel Johnson's landmark Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1755, contained 43,000 words, and the granddaddy of them all, the Oxford English Dictionary, has a mind-boggling 615,000. When you add all the scientific, medical, and technical terms that don't get included in dictionaries meant for the general public, you're probably talking about many millions of words, with perhaps tens of thousands more being coined with each passing year.

A POETIC CITY
by Erika Samovici, 13 

The echo of a rooster's call woke 12-year-old Anna Maria from a deep sleep early one beautiful Saturday morning in June. Opening the door to the balcony, she noticed that the tallest mountain peaks were just beginning to get greener. Taking a deep breath she could almost taste the crisp mountain air. To her left, Anna Maria could just make out one of the towers on Bran Castle. In the distance she could hear the villagers calling out to one another while starting their morning duties. She wished she could stay here all day, writing poetry, but knew that the 3 12 -hour drive to the city couldn't wait. With a sigh, she closed the door and made her way inside to prepare for the trip. 

An hour later, when Anna Maria was finished packing, she took one last glimpse out the window and hurried downstairs. Her aunt was already there, talking to her parents. They both kissed each other on the cheek. Then Anna Maria said goodbye to her parents and loaded her suitcase in the back of her aunt's car. She jumped into the car and waved goodbye one last time. 

During the ride to the city, Anna Maria used her time looking out the window. They passed by Bran Castle, also known as Dracula's Castle. She took note of the towering building and the light fog that surrounded it, almost making the castle look even older than it was. Her aunt was taking the scenic route and after a while they entered the town of Sinaia. After passing houses built so close together you couldn't see in between them, the car started up a winding mountain road along a cliff. Anna Maria opened her notebook and described the scene below: a green valley with scattered houses, farms, and tall pine trees. She thought to herself that this could be the beginning of a great poem. 
After an hour and a half, Anna Maria and her aunt began to see scattered oil rigging equipment in empty fields. They looked like huge birds pecking in the ground for worms. Anna Maria wasted no time putting this description in her notebook. 

Finally, they arrived at Anna Maria's aunt's apartment, in the middle of Bucharest, only six blocks from the People's House. Taking the elevator up to the fifth floor, they were greeted by Anna Maria's 12-year-old cousin Alexandra. 

"Buna," said Alexandra excitedly. 

"Buna," replied Anna Maria with the same amount of enthusiasm as her cousin. Alexandra and her mother led their guest into the apartment. The two girls then ate dinner and talked until it was time to rest for the day. 

Anna Maria spent the next day sightseeing. She visited beautiful parks, an impressive monument of the 1989 revolution, and an estate of a Romanian artist. Each time Anna Maria pulled out her notebook and jotted down poetry ideas. Looking out the car window, on the way to her home-away-from-home, Anna Maria noticed how crowded the houses were compared to her village home. Cars filled every part of the street and were even parked on the sidewalks. People stood in lines on the sidewalk waiting for their chance to receive a free carton of eggs for their family. Anna Maria's aunt then turned down a cobblestone road to avoid the continuous flow of cars. It took them an extra 30 minutes to return to the apartment. 

After a dinner of mititei (Romanian sausage) and potatoes, Anna Maria climbed into her bed and began writing in her notebook. Not realizing it, ideas flowed through her mind and onto the paper. After 20 minutes, she closed the journal and fell asleep. 

The next morning, Anna Maria, her aunt, and Alexandra decided to take a tour of the People's House. After breakfast they walked four blocks to the main road, which had 41 fountains down the middle. Anna Maria thought they were breathtaking. Her aunt explained that these fountains stood for the 41 main cities in Romania. The largest symbolized Bucharest, the capital. 

As the trio approached the enormous structure, Anna Maria was amazed at its size. No wonder it was the second largest building in the world. In front of it three tall flagpoles stood, with their very large flags waving in the breeze. The one in the middle was the Romanian flag with three vertical stripes of blue, yellow, and red. Every side of the building was covered with glass windows that were arched at the top and concrete columns lined the front. 

They paid for the tour and followed the tour guide into the building. Walking down the long corridors, with the smooth, rare pink marble under their feet, the group made their way to a stairway. After climbing around 50 steps, the tour guide took everyone into one of the conference rooms. They all passed through a door on the opposite side, which led to an outdoor balcony. Anna Maria stood in front of the fountains, looking at the square and the grassy garden. The view was spectacular! Taking out her notebook, Anna Maria wrote down poetry ideas quickly, because she thought the view wouldn't last. 

An hour later Anna Maria found herself in her aunt's favorite restaurant. . . . After enjoying a lunch of mititei, vegetables, and fruit, the three sightseers walked home feeling good about what they had seen that day. 

That night in bed, Anna Maria took out her notebook and began writing. . . 

A WONDROUS CITY 
Looking past the towering buildings, much more can be seen. 
Beautiful parks 
filled with flower formations of animals:
5 fierce tigers, graceful swans, and slick dolphins. 
each telling a story of their own. 
Shiny, silver statues
honoring the famous and the brave, teaching all about the country 
10 with their own voices. 
Forty-one fountains in a row
shooting droplets of sparkling water to the sky, making a rainbow as they go
bringing me to something much larger. . . 
15 The People's House.
Flowers bloom in the garden,
up above a balcony stands,
waiting for a true leader to come and speak to all. 
Delightful memories of this wondrous city will always come to mind, 20 When I think of Bucharest, Romania.

Measures 1 skill from
Grade 8
English
North Carolina Standard Course of Study

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Measures 1 skill fromGrade 8EnglishNorth Carolina Standard Course of Study

Our brand new solo games combine with your quiz, on the same screen

Measures 1 skill from
Grade 8
English
North Carolina Standard Course of Study