10.

Divorce among newly-weds

9. Child marriage

8. Pacts alliances and jokes

7. From an illegal migrant to a national hero.

6. Family Planning

5. Parents are the best teachers

4. School Violence: A Call to Action

3. Tips to Learn and Improve your English

2. A Woman's determination for her daughter's schooling

1. Adolescents Pregnancy and its Health Impact

 1. Adolescents Pregnancy and its Health Impact

About 70,000 adolescents, in developing countries die annually of causes

related to pregnancy and childbirth (UNICEF, 2008). Complications of pregnancy are
a leading cause of death for older adolescent females (WHO, 2012).

Adolescents who become pregnant tend to be from lower - income households

and nutritionally depleted. Although rates vary by region, overall, approximately one
in two girls in developing countries has nutritional anaemia, which can increase the
risk of miscarriage, stillbirth, premature birth and maternal death (Pathfinder
International, 1998: Balarajan et al., 2011)

A number of factors directly contribute to maternal death, illness and disability

among adolescents. These include the girl's sage, her physical immaturity,
complications from unsafe abortion and lack of access to routine and emergency
obstetric care from skilled providers. Other contributing factors include poverty,
malnutrition, lack of education, child marriage and the low status of girls and women
(world Health Organization, 2012).

Adapted from the State of World Population, 2013-pp 18-19

Vocabulary

Jeopardy = danger

Miscarriage = fausse couche

2. A Woman's determination for her daughter's schooling

"You must go to school. You don't know what suffering I have gone through
because apart from being poor and a woman, my parents did not send me to school.
I don't want you to suffer the way I have suffered. I want you to grow up to stand on
your own feet and not look to marriage or men for salvation. Marriage and men are
not salvation but ruin of any woman who can't stand on her own feed. I want you to
go for with your education so that you can support yourself, earn a good living and be
free and independent in your life. You must go to school!"

"But how, mother? Where are you going to get one hundred thousand kwatcha
from in the little time left before I am supposed to report for school? For how long
have you been trying, and where have you not done but failed? Don't you feel sorry
for yourself?"

Nasula, now in a state of distress was silent. The words from her daughter felt
like rocks falling from afar, blows to her consciousness. Sula, that child, was another
one. The power of her words would knock down an elephant. Yes, how was she, her
mother, to send her to school without money? Where was she going to find one
hundred thousand kwatcha in the next seven or so days when she had been trying
and failing to raise the money for the past more than one year?

Wishing, she thought, can eat ablay a person's sanity and wisdom. Nasula
how do you insist the child must go to school when you have not the faintest idea if
and where you can find the money to pay for the schooling? Come to think of it,
Nasula, Woman, are you not going mad?...

BINWELL Sinyangwe, A cowrie of Hope, pp. 37-38

Vocabulary

Kwacha: It is a unit of Zambian currency

3. Tips to Learn and Improve your English

English is now the international language. So it is very important to learn

English well. We should study English in the correct way, so that we can make the
most of the time we spend learning English. Discovering ways to improve their
English is a problem which baffles many students. There are three ways to improve
one's English.

First of all, we have to learn many English words and study English grammar
in great detail. Reading is the best way to increase vocabularies and learn how to
avoid making grammar errors. If we read magazines written in English, regular
reading will make it easier for us to remember the many new words we come across.
Having a dictionary is just like having a teacher close at hand. We need to use a
dictionary to look up those words that we don't know. It makes reading a very
enjoyable pastime.

Secondly, besides learning to read English, we must learn to understand

spoken English, and practice speaking. Try and listen to radio stations, and if at first
you don't understand, keep listening and maintain a regular habit of listening to radio
a stations. Repeat after the broadcast and learn how to pronounce correctly and
frequently.

Thirdly, we should try talk, with our comrades; find native English speaking
people who will give you conversation practice. Don't be afraid to speak, afraid to be
laughed at. If we never learn to take risks to open mouths, it will be impossible to
improve speaking skills. There is no reason to be ashamed of speaking poor English.
we can learn from our mistakes, failure can become part of our success. In fact, the
secret of success may come from failure.

In conclusion, there is no short cut to learning English. Persistence is the

major secrets of success. If you want to use English as your native language, don’t
ever give up trying to achieve your goal. If we are prepared to work hard at it, we will
be successful in the end.

Michael Hughes, Learning English in a Non-native Environement, 2015,

p.13.
4. School Violence: A Call to Action

Violence in schools has become a worldwide problem. This has really

panicked the parents as well as the children. The attack on school children in
Pakistan, Kenya and some West African countries such as Burkina Faso, Mali and
Cote d'Ivoire has forced people to rethink the way they were thinking about the
violence in schools.

Children grow through different phases during their development. During

teenage children are more prone to commit mistakes, violence, etc. The experimental
nature end the tendency to imitate can be considered as major reasons of violence in
schools. It has been largely accepted that the children who see act of violence in the
family life are more prone to do so. If the parents are quarrelsome then it will have an
adverse effect on the children. Again in many cases the parents do not spend quality
time with the children because of their busy life style. As a result, different contents
on violence are easily accessible to children through the internet. Then children now
imitate a lot. There is a need to tackle this violence before it becomes late.

Exemplary disciplinary against the culprits are highly required now. In some
countries many children below the age of 18 years are able to escape punishments
for their heinous crimes and violence. The absence of punishment, late
administrative and judicial decisions are spoiling the whole essence of laws, acts and
policies. Appropriate disciplinary measures can create fear among the pupils who are
prone to commit violence.

The parents need to behave when the children are growing in the family. They
have a larger role to make their children socially responsible, having good morals
and values. So from an early age they need to educate children properly so as later
in life they don't create any problems for others. We need to understand that human
lives are valuable and mutual relation brings prosperity and happiness. Let's spread
this message as this may lead to end of violence in all sphere of life.

Adapted from The State of World Education by Dr. Birupakshya, April

2017

Vocabulary: culprit faulty person

5. Parents are the best teachers

To begin with, parents teach their children values, principles and manners
from an early age. The family is like a cradle where those values and principles are
fashioned for life and stay with the child forever. Those values are down from one
generation to the other, be they cultural or religions, or even academic hard work
discipline, being courteous and attentive with others, tolerance, are some positive
examples that reflect how a child is being brought up to behave in life.

Second, parents know best: they have gone through life's many experiences
having been children themselves. In that respect, they can provide guidance to the
children and try to help them with their lives or academic choices. As they have their
children interest at heart, they want what is best for their offspring.

Parents develop emotional bond with their children that no one else outside
the family can forge or establish. There exists a complicity as well as proximity
between parents and children that is essential when you deal with teaching. This is
what parenting is about: it rests on an on - going and permanent dialogue between
parents and children. Given the time parents and children spend together, who else
can establish such a privileged and valuable connections?

One final argument may be put forward to wit that teachers influence is not
greater than parents.. Yet, teachers have a heavy workload, several classes and
hundreds of students to look after whereas parents can grant their children undivided
and unlimited attention. Parents are most of the time, if not all the time solicited when
the children are at home, when they are sick, when they have vacations or simply
when the children, and therefore they are in a privileged position to help them if need
be.

Adapted from Florent Gusdorf, TOEFL/TOEIC EXPRESS, Special Writing, 2017

p. 57.
6. Family Planning

Although a fast of definition have been advanced for the term "Family
Planning" its simplest and most widely accepted meaning is the spacing of birth with
the view to controlling the population growth of a country.

There are several ways of applying Family planning but three most effective
ones are the use of drugs, education in schools and lastly government policy restrict
couples on the number of children to be produced.

Many people disagree with this birth control for the reasons that the labour
force will diminish and secondly that it will go against the principle in the African
context which goes that, there is a prestige in having many children. Thirdly they fear
that infertility can result from a continuous use of contraceptives. But this last
argument has no scientific proof.

Now with the welfare of the economy at heart, it is advantageous for family
planning to be enforced. When anyone talks of decrease in the labour force, when
birth control policies are implemented, that one should also consider the economic
danger involved where there are more mouths to feed against the low agricultural
productivity. Therefore there is the need for this planning to avoid over population
which can finally generate problems like starvation, over-crowding and employment.

Birth control will allow to share the scarce resources equitably among
reasonable number of citizens. In addition, there will be advantages for both parents
and children who are going to enjoy good health and acceptable living standard.

Adapted From BEST GUIDE to succeed, in ENGLISH LANGUAGE VOL.2,

p. : 31
7. From an illegal migrant to a national hero.

Mamadou GASSAMA is to be made French citizen after mounting daring

rescue to save a small boy dangling from a balcony in Paris. The Malian "Spiderman"
as he was nicknamed, is a young boy who arrived in France in 2017 after he had left
his native Mali in 2013. T crossed the Sahara desert via Burkina-Faso, Niger and
Lybia. Then, he traversed the Mediterranean to Italy in 2014 at his second attempt.
He first bid failed when he was intercepted at sea by police. He travelled to France
because he did not know anyone in Italy and his brother had been living in France for
many years

The drama that thrust him to fame unfolded on Saturday, 26th May 2018.
GASSAMA was walking past when he saw people gathered in front of building. In
fact, a child was suspended to the fourth floor of a huge building. He narrated, "I
didn't have time to think. I ran across the road to go and save him.” He went farther
saying, "I climbed up and God helped me. to go higher.". The more I climbed, the
more I had the courage to go higher.”

Local media said the a-year-old boy's parents were not at home at that time.
The boy had left L'île de la Réunion there three weeks ago, where his mother and his
grandmother live, to join his father in Paris.

After his bravery act, Mr GASSAMA was invited by President Macron to

the ...Citizen. Elysée Palace. The President said the young Malian would be
naturalized. He thanked him, gave him a courage medal and said he would be
offered a role in five brigades Paris Macron, Anne HIDAGO was also among those
who praised the hero of Paris. She said he is an "example for all citizens"

Adapted from BBC. News, 28th May 2018.

Vocabulary: Unfold = happen

8. Pacts alliances and jokes

We should all - especially those of us who belong to the political classes, keep
this flame alive, a flame which illuminates our precious country, which has always
been able to suppress its fears and crises in unison and with understanding. This is
what some refer to as the Senegalese exception, made up of tolerance and natural
respect. It seemed simpler to assume that they lay in our charming system of joking
cousinage in the ambiance created under the palaver tree, where mutual trust and
the moral cod of unbroken promises have always prevailed.

It has to be said that Burkina Faso is a typical country. Another asset not to
say secret is the joking kinship that unified a number of ethnic groups by its genuinely
cohesive qualities. It is a piece of unprecedented cultural good fortune.

In spite of the many ethnic groups which characterize it, Niger is one of those
rare African countries where symbiosis, harmony and natural respect reign among
the people.

Connections of joking cousinage among the ethnic groups from time

immemorial mean that tensions and potential social crises are automatically averted
as soon as armor of joking cousinage is put on.

From Cahiers d'Etudes Africaine 4, n°184 2006 by Cecile count and

Etienne Smith
9. Child marriage

Underage girls married off to adults are more exposed to gender - based
violence, with studies showing that child brides are more likely to be beaten by their
husbands than those who married as adults.

The greater the age difference between girls and their husbands, the more
likely they are to experience intimate partner violence", says Girls Not Brides, a
global partnership of civil society organizations, fighting to end child marriage.

Worldwide there are more than 700 million women alive today who were
married as children, with the top five countries being in Africa, according to UN
Women. With 76 % of its girls entering child marriages, Niger ranks first, followed by
Central African Republic and Chad (both at 68 %), Mali (55 %) and Burkina Faso,
Guinea and South Sudan Call at 52 %).

Forcing children into marriages is a human rights violation, because, among

other consequences, they are stripped of their right to education. UNICEF reported in
2016 that girls who attend school acquire education, marry later when they are more
mature and are better equipped to improve their Overall socio economic and
emotional well-being.

Adapted from: AFRICA Renewal Special edition on youth 2017 page 27

10. Divorce among newly-weds

A young man and his girlfriend decided to get married. There were a lot of
guests for the wedding ceremony which was sumptuously organized. After the
wedding ceremony, the bride and the groom went to a hotel for their honeymoon.

As soon as they were on the hotel room, the bride took her new smartphone to
reply to congratulations that had been sent by her numerous relations and friends.
When her new spouse came close, she was busy texting and kept replying to each
and every received message instead of responding to his advances.

Seeing that she was more interested in texting her friends than being intimate
the groom asked her to stop texting. But she refused and become angry. When he
asked her if her friends were more important than he was, the bride answered that
they were. As the argument between them become unexpectedly heated, the groom
told his bride he was divorcing her and left the hotel. A divorce case was filed and left
the hotel. A divorce case was filed and the court referred it to the reconciliation
committee to see if the newly-weds could be reconciled.

But the groom refused to withdraw the case and insisted on the divorce.
Eventually, the bride was divorced by her husband due to a problem on their wedding
night.

A legal expert warned against the alarmingly growing figures of divorce among
newly-weds, saying that they reached around 50 %. "Misunderstanding, differences
in views and the easy approach to marriage without deep appreciation of the
responsibilities are among the major causes for divorce among young people. He
added: "Marriages are bound to fail when there are no robust foundations or trust.

Adapted from http://WWW.mirror.co.UK/news/World-news groom- divorces-

bride wedding-Night