The polythene bag you toss into the canal on the way to school today will still be lying there when your own grandchildren sit their O/Ls. Plastic doesn't rot — it just breaks into smaller and smaller pieces and waits. That single, uncomfortable fact is what this whole unit is about: looking at the mess we are making and learning the English to argue, clearly and calmly, for a better tomorrow.
The grammar that fits is the second conditional — "if we recycled, we would save…" — the tense for imagining a better world that doesn't exist yet. You will also nail down capitalisation (the seven small rules that quietly cost marks), and learn the shape of a TV interview and a public announcement, before writing a 200-word environment essay.
The programme "For a Better Tomorrow" hosts environmentalist Mr Sunil Weerasinghe to discuss polythene. Asked the biggest problem, he explains that most polythene does not decay — it accumulates in the environment and creates further problems. Read it again and watch the shape of the interview, because that shape is exactly what the exam asks you to reproduce. The presenter never just fires questions — he welcomes the guest ("Welcome to the programme"), the guest warms up ("It's a pleasure to be here"), then comes the first real question, and after the answer the presenter invites him to expand ("Could you tell us something about them?"). Welcome → question → invite-to-expand.
Notice too how naturally the host stays polite and the expert stays clear and short. When you write your own interview script, keep that courtesy and that rhythm; markers reward the manners as much as the facts.
People mix these three up all the time, so here is the simple way to keep them straight: they go in order of how much good they do. Reduce is best because the rubbish never gets made in the first place. Reuse is next — the thing already exists, so you squeeze more life out of it before binning it. Recycle is last because it costs energy to melt something down and remake it — better than the dump, but not as good as never buying it. Reduce → Reuse → Recycle: a staircase from "best" down to "still good".
| R | Means | Real-life example |
|---|---|---|
| Reduce | Buy only what you need; buy in bulk to cut packaging | Take a cloth bag to the market |
| Reuse | Use the same item again before throwing it | Refill glass bottles; carry a steel lunch box |
| Recycle | Turn waste into something new | Newspapers → egg cartons; plastic → garden chairs |
The whole spirit of this unit is "if only things were different" — and that feeling has its own tense, the second conditional. You reach for it when you imagine a world that isn't real yet but could be: "If we recycled half our waste, our dumps would shrink." Nobody is recycling half their waste today — that's the point. The second conditional is the grammar of a daydream about a better tomorrow.
Think of the "if" part as taking one step back from reality into the imaginary, and English marks that step by pushing the verb into the past form — even though you're talking about now or the future. "If we recycled…" uses the past tense not because it happened, but to signal "this is pretend". Then the result half uses would, the word that means "this is what would follow, in that imagined world".
Recipe: If + past simple, … would + bare verb.
The slip to guard against is putting "would" in both halves — "If we would recycle…" — never. The if-half takes the plain past; only the result half gets "would".
Capital letters feel too small to matter — and that is exactly why students leak marks on them. The examiner has a checklist of seven places a capital must appear, and a paragraph that misses them looks careless even when the ideas are good. The simple way to remember the list: capitals mark beginnings and names — the start of a sentence, and every kind of proper name.
The two traps worth naming: students often forget to capitalise languages and nationalities (it's Tamil, not "tamil"), and they sometimes capitalise common nouns by mistake ("the River" when no name follows — just "the river"). Capital = a specific name; no name, no capital.
| Category | Words |
|---|---|
| Waste and plastic | polythene, single-use plastic, biodegradable, compost |
| Damage | deforestation, poaching, soil erosion, air pollution |
| Climate | greenhouse effect, global warming, climate change, carbon footprint |
| Action | conservation, reforestation, awareness campaign, environmentalist |
An announcement has one job — to deliver every fact a reader needs without a single wasted word — and it does it in a fixed, formal voice. The model on a scheduled power cut shows the moves: a clear heading ("Public Notice"), then who is speaking ("The Ceylon Electricity Board"), then the four facts the reader actually needs — where, when, for how long, and why — and finally a polite regret and a signature. There is no "I" and no chattiness; it stays in the calm third person an official body would use. Capitalisation does its quiet work too — "Tuesday", "March", "Maharagama North" all earn their capitals as names and days.
The interview script on dengue prevention wins by copying the exact shape of the NIE model — proof that the textbook example is the template to steal. It opens with a proper welcome that names the guest and her title, lets her settle, then asks two questions that build on each other: the first diagnoses the problem ("why has it spread?"), the second turns to action ("what should every household do?"). The answers stay short and concrete — "even a bottle cap is enough for a mosquito" is the kind of vivid, specific image that lifts a script above vague advice. It closes courteously.
| Task | Shape / word count |
|---|---|
| Public announcement (Test 6 alt) | 40–60 words — heading, who, date, time, affected zones, reason, apology, sign-off |
| TV interview (Test 14 alt) | ~100 words — welcome → 1st Q → invite to expand → 2nd Q → advice → close |
| Environment essay (Test 16) | ~200 words — striking statistic → 3 action steps → memorable close |
The environment is one of the most predictable essay topics in the whole paper — forests, dengue, polythene come round again and again — and the interview/announcement shapes are fixed Test 5 and Test 10 tasks. Learn the second conditional well, because it is the sentence that makes an environment essay sound persuasive rather than preachy.
| Past-paper test | What was tested |
|---|---|
| 2016 Test 9, 2018 Test 13 | Sort rules; word-box (clear, reach, accumulate) |
| 2016 Test 16 (c) | Essay on 'Let's protect our forests' |
| 2017 Test 16 (c) | Essay on 'Our responsibility towards preventing Dengue' |
| 2018 Test 16 (c) | Speech on 'The Effects of Using Polythene' |
| 2019 Test 16 (a) | Article on 'Eating healthy food leads to a healthy life' |
| Test 11 every year | Word-box fill-in on environment, garbage, polythene |