Here is 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 will write a recipe, an instructions notice, and a 200-word article on living simply.
Life becomes easy, the passage says, when one learns to reuse, recycle and give things away. Self-sufficiency is a good trait of a person who leads a simple life — managing one's own work, such as painting a room, clearing the garden or mending a shoe, makes life easier. Growing fruits and vegetables for one's own use saves money for a worthy cause, and a person who leads a simple life is stress-free, with the chance to live a life that inspires.
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. The closing line is the kind of memorable sentence you can borrow to open an essay: wealthy people 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.
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".
| Imperative | Passive instruction |
|---|---|
| Dice the vegetables. | First, the vegetables are diced. |
| Boil water. | Then water is boiled. |
| Smash boiled potatoes. | Boiled potatoes are smashed. |
| Add the spices. | The spices are added. |
| Pour coconut milk. | Coconut milk is poured. |
| Stir for two minutes. | The mixture is stirred for two minutes. |
| Serve with rice. | It is served with rice. |
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.
| Category | Words |
|---|---|
| Lifestyle | self-sufficient, stress-free, home-cooked, kitchen garden |
| Habits | reuse, recycle, repair, give away, share |
| Rural / practical | chena cultivation, compost, save, earn |
A useful "twist" word for essays: wealthy is often used to mean rich, but the passage's argument is that wealth is not the same as money — the truly wealthy are those who give away what they don't need.
The model recipe for parippu is a clean demonstration of everything the imperative-to-passive rule was for. Every single step is in the passive — "are washed", "are placed", "are added", "is brought", "is served" — so the lentils and the milk stay centre-stage and the cook is invisible, exactly as a real recipe reads. Notice the is/are choices follow the food, and the sequencing words — First… then… Finally — carry the reader through in order. It even names real quantities (100 g, 400 ml, fifteen minutes), which makes it feel like a recipe you could actually follow.
The article "How my family has grown simpler" persuades by contrast and concreteness, not by lecturing. It opens with a sharp before-and-after — "this time last year… this year" — which instantly shows change rather than claiming it. Then it earns belief with tiny, vivid details: chillies grown in a yoghurt cup, a table without phones, a kettle mended instead of replaced. Crucially it anchors the payoff in a real number ("8,000 rupees a month richer") — a figure is far more convincing than "we save money". The unit's grammar lives inside it naturally: "my grandfather had a fall" sets the earlier event, "we have planted a garden" shows the present result.
| Task | Official word count |
|---|---|
| Notice (Test 6) | 40–50 words |
| Short paragraph (Test 8) | 50–60 words |
| Recipe / letter (Test 14) | ~100 words — pure passive instructions, sequencing words, real Sri Lankan dish |
| Simple-living essay (Test 16) | ~200 words — hook (a paradox) → 3 reasons → "simple is the smarter rich" close |
The past perfect is a staple of the verb-form passages, and the imperative-to-passive switch is a near-guaranteed task whenever a recipe or set of instructions appears. "Simple living / a person I admire / how I spend my time" are common free-writing and essay themes, so the vocabulary built here pays off across several questions.
| Past-paper test | What was tested |
|---|---|
| 2019 Test 12, 2018 Test 12 | Verb-form passages testing past perfect |
| 2016 Test 11, 2019 Test 11 | Word-box on rural / simple living vocabulary (Sudara / Edison) |
| 2015 Test 8 (a), 2017 Test 8 | Free paragraph: 'How I spend my free time' / 'A person I admire' |
| 2018 Test 16 (a) | Article: 'Public property belongs to all of us' (simple-living theme) |
| 2017 Test 16 (c) | Essay: 'Our responsibility towards preventing Dengue' (clean kitchen / garden) |