Sri Lanka is barely the size of Ireland, yet inside it there are cloud forests, coral reefs, ancient cities, and a single forest reserve holding 301 kinds of plant. We live on one of the most crowded patches of life on Earth, and this unit teaches the English needed to talk about it — how to describe a natural place in clean, factual prose, and how to argue for or against an environmental issue in a debate.
The grammar quietly powering all of this is a small, slippery family of words: prepositions of movement (into, towards, across, through, along) and prepositions of time (at, on, in, since, for). They look tiny, but one wrong choice — "since two years", "in Monday" — instantly marks an answer as second-language English, and the exam tests them every year. By the end of this unit you should be able to write a tourist-information article and a debate speech, and place every one of those little prepositions exactly right.
The Grade 10 Pupil's Book passage on Kanneliya is worth reading twice — once for the forest, and once for its layout, because that layout is a template you can reuse for any tourist description. Kanneliya Forest Reserve sits in the Galle District of the Southern Province, about 125 km from Colombo, and is one of Sri Lanka's largest and most biodiverse forest reserves.
Inside the forest, many streams feed the vegetation, and although deforestation has affected them, they still form beautiful cascades. High rainfall from May to July, and again in October and November, makes those months the ideal time to see waterfalls — the Anagimale Falls sits just 2 km from the entrance, while Narangas Ella lies a little deeper inside. The reserve holds 301 plant species, about 133 animal species and 59 bird species, making it exceptionally rich in biodiversity. For hiking, the best months are different again — March to April and August to September, when the streams run low.
Notice how easy the passage is to read, and ask why. Each subheading — Location, Waterfalls, Bio-diversity, Hiking — answers exactly one question: where, what is special, how many species, when to go. The writer never mixes two ideas inside one block. That is the secret of good factual writing: one fact per paragraph, in a sensible order. When the exam asks for a 100-word tourist article in Test 14, do not invent a new structure — borrow this one.
These words fall into a natural story: the land itself, the words that praise it, the threats against it, and the rescues that save it. Holding them in those four groups means that when you write or debate, you can move from describing a place, to naming what endangers it, to proposing what protects it — which is exactly the arc a strong environment essay follows.
| Category | Words |
|---|---|
| Landforms | forest reserve, cascade, waterfall, stream, cave, cliff, valley, plateau, marsh, lagoon, coral reef |
| Adjectives | lush, pristine, breathtaking, dense, arid, tropical, evergreen, endemic, indigenous |
| Issues | deforestation, pollution, climate change, soil erosion, poaching, over-fishing, plastic waste |
| Solutions | conservation, reforestation, protected area, wildlife sanctuary, recycling, awareness campaign |
When something moves, English fusses about exactly how it moves, giving each kind of motion its own little word. Walking into a cave is different from walking through it, which is different again from walking past it. The good news is that every one of these words is really just a picture — if you can see the motion in your head, you can pick the right preposition without memorising a rule.
So learn these by imagining the movement rather than reciting a list. "Into" is a step inside a box; "across" is a line straight over to the far side; "through" threads inside and out the other end; "along" follows the length of something like a river; "around" encircles a place; "past" simply goes by it.
| Preposition | Picture in your head | Example |
|---|---|---|
| into | enter an enclosed space | The frog jumped into the well. |
| out of | leave an enclosed space | He came out of the forest. |
| onto | up onto a surface | The cat jumped onto the table. |
| off | down from a surface | She got off the bus. |
| towards | in the direction of | He walked towards the entrance. |
| across | from one side to the other | We swam across the lake. |
| through | passing inside something | The path runs through the forest. |
| along | following the length of | Walk along the river. |
| around | encircling | The road goes around the lake. |
| past | going by | The bus drove past the temple. |
One trap catches many students: "The river flows through the bridge" is wrong, because water does not go inside a bridge — picture it, and you see that the water passes under it instead. Always test your preposition against the mental picture, not just against how the sentence sounds.
Three little words — at, on, in — carry almost all of time, and the trick is that they work like a zoom lens moving from narrow to wide. Use at for the smallest, most pinpoint times (at 6.30, at noon); zoom out to on for a whole day or date (on Monday, on 5th May); zoom out further to in for the big stretches — months, years, seasons (in March, in 2027). Narrow goes with "at", medium with "on", wide with "in".
Two more words cause endless trouble: since and for. Keep them apart by asking whether you are naming a starting point or a length. "Since" points to when something began (since 2018); "for" measures how long it lasted (for eight years). "I have lived here since 2018" and "I have lived here for eight years" can describe the very same fact from two different angles.
| Preposition | Used for | Example |
|---|---|---|
| at | clock time, mealtimes | at 6.30, at noon, at lunch |
| on | days and dates | on Monday, on 5th May, on Vesak Day |
| in | months, years, seasons, parts of day | in March, in 2027, in the morning |
| since | a point in the past (start) | I have lived here since 2018. |
| for | a length of time | I have lived here for eight years. |
| till / until | an end point | Wait till the bell rings. |
A debate is not won by having the loudest voice — it is won by leading the listener's mind down a clear path. The set phrases below act as signposts on that path: they tell the audience "here comes my first reason," "here comes evidence," "now I disagree," "and here is my conclusion." Without signposts a speech is just a pile of opinions; with them, it feels like an argument that is actually going somewhere.
Learn one or two phrases from each row until they become automatic. Then, in any Test 16 speech, you are never stuck for how to start the next idea — you simply reach for the right signpost and keep moving. That fluency is exactly what earns marks.
| Function | Phrases |
|---|---|
| Opening | To begin with… / It is obvious that… / I stand here today to argue… |
| Building | Firstly… Secondly… Furthermore… In addition to that… |
| Disagreement | However… / Contrary to what you say… / I strongly disagree because… |
| Evidence | According to a recent study… / The figures show that… / As we all know… |
| Conclusion | In conclusion… / To sum up… / Therefore I urge you to… |
Beyond Kanneliya, a handful of other places recur across past papers and general-knowledge questions, so it pays to have one fact-sentence ready for each. Sinharaja is a wet-zone rainforest and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Horton Plains sits at about 2,100 metres in the central highlands and is known for the cliff edge called World's End and for Baker's Falls. Sigiriya is a 5th-century rock fortress. Polonnaruwa was Sri Lanka's second ancient capital, home to the Gal Vihara rock carvings. Yala and Wilpattu are national parks known for leopards and elephants. Delft Island, off the Jaffna peninsula, is known for its wild horses and its old baobab tree.
These are useful as supporting detail inside a tourist-description paragraph or a "protect our natural heritage" essay, alongside the location → feature → season → biodiversity shape you met in the Kanneliya passage.
A model description of Horton Plains ("Where the Earth Ends", about 100 words) turns the Kanneliya layout into flowing sentences. Trace the order: it opens with name and location, gives one vivid striking feature (World's End and Baker's Falls), states the best season with a reason ("the grasslands turn golden"), and closes with the biodiversity numbers — 24 endemic plant species and the rare sambar deer. It is the same skeleton as the textbook passage — location → feature → season → species — simply dressed as a magazine article instead of bullet headings. When you get a tourist-place task, reach for this proven order rather than improvising a new one.
A model debate speech arguing against the motion "tourism does more harm than good to our natural places" shows the signpost phrases at work. It opens by addressing the chair and stating its side plainly, then lays out three reasons in order — each launched by a signpost ("To begin with…", "Furthermore…", "In addition to that…") and each backed by a concrete figure, such as 18 villagers employed by one hotel, because numbers beat slogans. The clever move comes near the end: the speech concedes that the other side has a point ("badly managed tourism brings plastic, traffic and disrespect — we do not deny it") before answering it, and that fairness makes the argument stronger rather than weaker. A crisp conclusion then lands the whole case in one memorable line.
| Task | Official word count |
|---|---|
| Notice | 40–50 words |
| Paragraph (Test 8) | 50–60 words |
| Tourist description / letter (Test 14) | ~100 words |
| Debate speech / essay (Test 16) | ~200 words |
Prepositions of time and movement are guaranteed to appear in the word-box fill-ins of Tests 11 and 12, and the environment or tourist-place topic is one of the most common essay choices in Test 16. The descriptive layout and debate phrases above are the ready tools for both.
| Past-paper test | What was tested |
|---|---|
| 2018 Test 9, 2017 Test 11 | Fill the blanks describing tourist places (Anuradhapura / Polonnaruwa / Tanzania) |
| 2016 Test 16 (c) | Essay on 'Let's protect our forests' |
| 2017 Test 16 (c) | Essay on 'Our responsibility towards preventing Dengue in our area' |
| Every Test 11/12 | Prepositions of time / movement in a word-box fill-in |
| 2018 Test 16 (b) | Essay on 'Sports as an important part of student's life' — uses descriptive prose like this unit teaches |