A Simple Living

Here's a quiet truth this unit builds on: the richest people aren't the ones with the most money — they're the ones who can do without it. A family that grows its own chillies, mends its own kettle and cooks at home is freer than one that buys its way out of every small problem. Unit 7 looks at that idea of simple living — saving water and electricity, growing vegetables, eating home-cooked food — and gives you the English to describe it.

The grammar that fits is the past perfect (told through Kavindu's grandfather story — the tense for "what had already happened before"), and the handy imperative → passive switch that turns kitchen orders ("Dice the onions") into the smooth recipe English of TV chefs ("the onions are diced"). You'll write a recipe, an instructions notice, and a 200-word article on living simply.

Notice the one big word the passage keeps circling: self-sufficiency — being able to manage your own work instead of paying others. The writer doesn't preach; he simply piles up small, doable examples — painting a room, clearing the garden, mending a shoe, growing vegetables — and lets them add up to a quiet argument. That's a technique worth copying in your own writing: an abstract idea ("simple living is better") becomes believable only when you anchor it to concrete little actions a reader can picture. And the closing line is the kind of memorable sentence you can borrow to open an essay: the wealthy are "those who give away what they do not need".

When you tell a story, things don't always come out in the order they happened — sometimes you need to reach further back, to something that was already finished before the main moment. That "earlier-than-the-past" is exactly what the past perfect is for. Picture two events on a line: the past perfect is the one further to the left, the thing that had already happened by the time the main past action arrived.

Think of it as a flashback in a film. The main story runs in past simple; when the camera cuts to "this had happened before", that earlier scene wears had + the V3 form. "When the sister got up, Kavindu had already prepared the bed tea" — getting up is the main moment; the tea-making happened before it, so it steps back into the past perfect.

Recipe: had + past participle (V3) — and "had" is the same for every subject.

• Kavindu's grandfather had had a fall. (before the story's "now")
• His aunt had taken him to the doctor.
• The doctor had prescribed a cast.
• When the sister got up, Kavindu had already prepared the bed tea.
• When his friends arrived, he had swept the house.
• His friends had come to invite him to a party.

The way to choose correctly: when two past actions sit in one sentence, ask which happened first? The earlier one takes past perfect, the later one takes past simple. Trigger words like by then, before, after, already usually flag where the past perfect belongs.

Listen to how a cook talks to you versus how a recipe book describes the process. The cook gives orders — "Dice the vegetables. Boil the water." — with the verb barking first. But written recipes and TV chefs prefer the smoother passive — "the vegetables are diced, the water is boiled" — where the food takes centre stage and the cook disappears. This unit teaches you to flip one into the other, because the exam loves asking for it.

The trick is simple once you see the swap: take the thing being acted on and move it to the front, then add is/are + the V3 form. "Add the spices" (order) → "the spices are added" (description). The object of the command becomes the subject of the sentence; the action becomes "is/are + past participle". That's the whole move.

The one detail that decides "is" vs "are": match it to the food. One thing → is ("water is boiled"); more than one → are ("the spices are added"). Then thread the steps together with first · next · then · after that · finally and you have a clean, professional recipe.