Go back to the Prologue of Alice Pung's Unpolished Gem and write a paragraph that discusses how the author utilises language choices to construct the colourful atmosphere of the market and the interaction between Alice's father, the stall holders and other customers. In your paragraph, you should aim to explore how Pung positions the audience to view the market place and its customers though her use of language.

In the prologue of Alice Pung's Unpolished Gem the author is very descriptive with her words. This helps create a strong image in the reader's mind of what the market place was actually like. The author describes what is seen such as fat pigs hanging from hooks and thin people waiting to buy segments of the pigs. The author also describes what the characters can feel such as the wet blood on his shoes as well as what the characters can hear. The market place is compared to Phnom Penh, and in comparison the market place seems very nice. The author uses lots of adjectives to describe the appearances of people in the market place as well as how the different shops looked and the whole crowded market place in general. The author spells words the way that a person who could not speak english well would pronounce them so the reader gets an idea of how the father, the stall owners and the other customers communicate. The author positions the audience to see the market as busy, loud and hectic and make the audience see that conversations were very difficult.

Family Member

Choose a member of your family (this can include a pet if you think it would be easier to write about) and write a piece of prose that invites the audience to develop a clear picture in their mind of the individual. You don't have to mention his/her name but you do need to work on appealing to the senses of the reader. Try to be creative in your description by utilising emotive language, similies, metaphors, personification, etc.

One member of my family spends all of her time outside. She is playful and energetic and loves to run. She is beautiful and majestic. She has long white hair that forms a curtain over her eyes. Our neighbour is her best friend who she spends nearly everyday with. Her favourite foods are carrots and apples and she is a vegetarian. She will take you anywhere and can always be relied on. Her nose is pink like a rabbits and she has whiskers on her chin, just like an old man. She always has a wooly coat and a long pony tail that sweeps the ground as she grazes. She is very quiet, barely ever making a sound and she gives the best hugs. She is my horse Silky.

TASK: Take your readers on a journey into a childhood memory.

It was an extremely hot day, probably in the mid thirties, in central Australia. I was really excited for what we were about to do. We got on a bus early in the morning and travelled through the vast dessert of the Kata Tjuta National Park. For miles all I could see was red dirt with the odd tree standing alone. The dirt road was bumpy and left a cloud of red dust in it's wake. Within a few minutes, I could see an enormous rock standing out in the distance. As we approached it grew larger and clearer. In front of us was the magnificent Uluru. As we got off the bus, I realised how big Uluru actually was and how high I would be once I climbed it. As we began to climb my sister got really scared and stopped. My mum and brother stopped with her, but I ran off up the rock even though I could hear them yelling at me to stop. I sped up the extremely steep incline and climbed up and down the deep ridges. It was hard for me considering that I wasn't tall enough to reach the bottom of the dips or the top of them once I slid down to the bottom. Some people stopped to help me get up and down. At one stage I was slowly sliding down a ridge that had a sharp turn at the end and I realised how dangerous it actually was up there, but that didn't stop me from making it to the top as quickly as I could. The view from the top was absolutely break taking. I could see for what felt like forever. I stayed up there for a while, just admiring the view. I then made my way down, much more slowly and carefully than I made my way up. Down the bottom I met up with my mum, brother and sister who were not happy with me for running off. We looked around the base of Uluru at some of the Aboriginal artwork. Once we had seen everything we made our way back to the bus for the drive back to our hotel.