POINT-EVIDENCE-EXPLAIN (P-E-E)

Point: The idea or argument you are making about a text

Answer: The opening sentence suggests that the setting is not an inviting place
(Point). The writer says that “There is no Lake at Camp Green Lake.” (Evidence)
Without textual evidence, the answer would have been brief and unsubstantiated. With
evidence, the answer is more specific and supported.

1
Prepared by: Ms. Sewwandi Dilhara, Lyceum International School, Gampaha.
How do you explain your evidence?

Answer: The opening sentence suggests that the setting is not an inviting place. The writer
says that “There is no Lake at Camp Green Lake.” This makes it sound like a strange place
that is perhaps not as nice as it sounds. (Explanation)
The explanation of the evidence teases out what the quote suggests and how it supports the
original point made.
Question 2: What did Camp Green Lake use to be like?
P: Camp Green Lake used to have a large lake and wasn’t dry like it is now.
E: The writer says it had “the largest lake in Texas”.
E: This makes it sound as though the town was one of the best places that you could choose
to live over a hundred years ago, as it had lots of water in a very hot climate.

2
Prepared by: Ms. Sewwandi Dilhara, Lyceum International School, Gampaha.
 PEE TASK 1
I felt shock. I felt a great emptiness within me, which then filled with silence. My chest hurt
with pain and fear for days afterwards. I think there was an explosion. But I can’t be sure. It
happened while I was sleeping. It woke me up. The ship was no luxury liner. It was a grimy,
hardworking cargo ship not designed for paying passengers or for their comfort. I woke up
with a start, as if Ravi had burst a balloon in my ears. I looked at my watch. It was just after
four-thirty in the morning. I leaned over and looked down at the bunk below. Ravi was still
sleeping.
Use the PEE technique to answer the following question; How does the writer create a
mood and atmosphere of confusion and worry?
PEE TASK 2
29th November 1901
Dear Diary,
I am getting more worried by the day! Every time I stay in this dreadful place, I hear all
kinds of noises and sounds and I see shadowy figures walk past the end of my bed!! Last
night I woke up and heard an old-fashioned nursery rhyme being sung by what sounded like
young girls, I could also smell a strong scent of liquorice. When I got up and turned on the
light both the singing and the smell vanished. I am so scared and the main problem is no one
believes me. The landlady just tells me to keep working. Change those beds, polish the silver,
sweep the floor. I think I am going mad!
I will go again tonight and look in ‘Room 13’ I will write more soon God willing.
Goodnight and God bless
Charlotte
Use the PEE technique to answer the following question;
What mood is created in this diary entry?
PEE TASK 3
This is an extract taken from Anne Frank’s famous diary, she wrote it while her family were
hiding during the Second World War. "Our many Jewish friends and acquaintances are being
taken away in droves. The Gestapo is treating them very roughly and transporting them in
cattle cars to Westerbork, the big camp in Drenthe to which they're sending all the Jews....If
it's that bad in Holland, what must it be like in those faraway and uncivilized places where
the Germans are sending them? We assume that most of them are being murdered. The
English radio says they're being gassed. I've reached the point where I hardly care whether I
live or die. The world will keep on turning without me, and I can't do anything to change
events anyway. I'll just let matters take their course and concentrate on studying and hope
that everything will be all right in the end.”
Answer this question using PEE; The mood in this extract is very miserable and
gloomy. Anne Frank clearly feels depressed and is very sad. Use PEE to explain why
and how it is clear she feels like this.

3
Prepared by: Ms. Sewwandi Dilhara, Lyceum International School, Gampaha.
 Examination Questions
June 2018
Adapted from the novel Six Suspects by Vikas Swarup
In this passage, the writer describes different types of houses in India.
Ashok took him to see Vicky Rai’s farmhouse after lunch. They went through the Sanjay
Gandhi slum, a warren of narrow, dark alleyways containing an assortment of small,
squalid huts held together by bamboo poles and tattered sacking bags, their roofs an
ugly patchwork of tarpaulin, plastic sheets, pieces of metal, old clothes – anything the
owners could lay their hands on – and weighed down with rocks as protection against
the wind. A group of men lazed in the open while their women filled pots of water from
a municipal tap or chopped vegetables. Naked children caked in dust played with mangy
dogs. Piles of rubbish and animal waste littered the ground like dead leaves. The smell of
wood smoke and dung cooking fires drifted in the air.
Almost directly opposite the slum stood Number Six. Set behind high metal gates, it
was a three-story marble mansion, towering over the neighbourhood like a permanent
taunt. Behind the mansion the fluted sandstone minaret of the Qutub Minar peeked out,
barely a kilometre away.
Crossing the road to take a closer look at the farmhouse, Ashok and Eketi came to the
rust-coloured boundary wall, fifteen feet high and topped by barbed wire.
‘How will we ever manage to enter this place?’ Eketi wondered.
‘We will. Don’t worry,’ Ashok assured him as they passed the main gate, which had at
least six guards in police uniforms. They rounded a corner and turned left towards the
northern end of the property. They came across a service entrance which appeared to
be unguarded. Ashok tried the door, only to find it firmly locked from inside. The barbed
wire- topped boundary wall stretched for another five hundred metres and had no cavities,
gaps or fractures which could be exploited. It was only when they were circling
the rear boundary that Ashok saw something which made him pause. Tucked inside the
cement wall was a small brown metal door, probably some kind of pedestrian entrance.
It didn’t appear to be in use as the paint had flaked off and the edges were rusted. Ashok
tried the rusty metal handle, but the door did not open. In fact, there was so little give
that it appeared not only to be locked but also boarded up from the inside. He stepped
back and surveyed his surroundings. Behind him was a clump of eucalyptus trees and
then a thorny jungle, full of acacia bushes. The brambles made the entire area behind
Number Six not only uninhabitable but also virtually inaccessible. ‘If only we could get
this door to open,’ he said wistfully.
‘I will show you,’ Eketi said and began sliding up the trunk of the eucalyptus tree. Within
seconds he had reached the top. Catching hold of a sturdy branch, he began pulling it
down with his weight till it became taut as a slingshot. Then kicking the trunk with his
feet, he launched himself like a human arrow at the branches and foliage of a jamun tree
jutting over the boundary wall. As a horrified Ashok watched, he flew through the air and
landed on top of the jamun tree. From there it was child’s play for him to make his way to
the ground. A minute later the rusted metal gate creaked open.
Ashok was in a state of excitement as he took his first few steps inside the grounds of
Number Six. He couldn’t believe that within hours of arriving in Delhi he was actually
inside the farmhouse. The sound of flowing water entered his ears, together with the
mechanical hum of a lawnmower. He glimpsed a gardener busy shaving the grass on the
lawn, barely a hundred feet away, and was about to duck behind a tree when he realized
4
Prepared by: Ms. Sewwandi Dilhara, Lyceum International School, Gampaha.
that the natural darkness of the wooded area would make it impossible for anyone on
the lawn to detect him. From where he stood, the layout of the entire complex was
clearly visible and once the gardener had moved further away, he pointed out the main
features to Eketi - the three-story mansion in the distance, the Olympic-sized pool, the
gazebo, and the small temple in the right-hand corner of the lawn.
They spent another fifteen minutes exploring the wooded area, coming across two
magnificent peacocks. At the very edge of the wood, near the north-eastern corner, they
saw a man-made waterfall. Water cascaded down a few large boulders into a narrow
canal which ran alongside a cobbled pathway leading towards the garages and the
front gate.
Explain how the writer presents his ideas about this unusual type of housing.
You should support your answer with close reference to the passage, including
brief quotations.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………………………………….

5
Prepared by: Ms. Sewwandi Dilhara, Lyceum International School, Gampaha.
January 2019
Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming
adapted from a lecture given in London by Neil Gaiman
In this passage, the writer talks about the importance of reading.
It’s important for people to tell you what side they are on and why, and whether they
might be biased. So, I am going to be talking to you about reading. I’m going to suggest
that reading fiction, that reading for pleasure, is one of the most important things one
can do. And I am biased, obviously and enormously: I’m an author, often an author of
fiction. I write for children and for adults. For about 30 years I have been earning my
living through my words, mostly by making things up and writing them down. It is
obviously in my interest for people to read, for them to read fiction, for libraries and
librarians to exist and help foster a love of reading and places in which reading can occur.
So, I’m biased as a writer. But I am much, much more biased as a reader.

And I’m here giving this talk tonight, to support the Reading Agency: a charity whose
purpose is to give everyone an equal chance in life by helping people become
confident and enthusiastic readers, which supports literacy programmes, and libraries
and individuals and unashamedly encourages the act of reading. Because, they tell us,
everything changes when we read. And it’s that change, and that act of reading, that I’m
here to talk about tonight. I want to talk about what reading does. What it’s good for.

Fiction has two uses. Firstly, the drive to know what happens next, to want to turn the
page, the need to keep going, even if it’s hard, because someone’s in trouble and you
have to know how it’s all going to end … that’s a very real drive. And it forces you to
learn new words, to think new thoughts, to keep going. To discover that reading is
pleasurable. Once you learn that, you’re on the road to reading everything. And reading
is key. There were comments made briefly, a few years ago, about the idea that we were
living in a post-literate world, in which the ability to make sense out of written words was
somehow redundant, but those days are gone: words are more important than they ever
were: we navigate the world with words, and as more and more reading matter is found
online, not in books, we need to follow, to communicate and to comprehend what we
are reading. People who cannot understand each other cannot exchange ideas, cannot
communicate.
The simplest way to make sure that we raise literate children is to teach them to read,
and to show them that reading is a pleasurable activity. And that means, at its simplest,
finding books that they enjoy, giving them access to those books, and letting them read
them. I don’t think there is such a thing as a bad book for children. Every now and again
it becomes fashionable among some adults to point at a subset of children’s books, a
genre, perhaps, or an author, and to declare them bad books, books that children should
be stopped from reading. I’ve seen it happen over and over: comics have been accused
of promoting illiteracy. Well-meaning adults can easily destroy a child’s love of reading:
stop them reading what they enjoy, or give them worthy-but-dull books that you like,
the 21st-century equivalents of Victorian ‘improving’ literature. You’ll wind up with a
generation convinced that reading is uncool and worse, unpleasant.
And the second thing fiction does is to build empathy. When you watch TV or see a film,
you are looking at things happening to other people. Prose fiction is something you
build up from 26 letters and a handful of punctuation marks, and you, and you alone,
using your imagination, create a world and people it and look out through other eyes.
You get to feel things, visit places and worlds you would never otherwise know. You
learn that everyone else out there is a me, as well. You’re being someone else, and when

6
Prepared by: Ms. Sewwandi Dilhara, Lyceum International School, Gampaha.
you return to your own world; you’re going to be slightly changed. Empathy is a tool
for building people into groups, for allowing us to function as more than self-obsessed
individuals. As you read, you’re also finding out something vitally important for making
your way in the world. And it’s this: the world doesn’t have to be like this. Things can be
different.
Literacy is more important than ever it was, in this world of text and email, a world of
written information. We need to read and write; we need global citizens who can read
comfortably, comprehend what they are reading, understand shades of meaning, and
make themselves understood.
Albert Einstein was asked once how we could make our children intelligent. His reply was
both simple and wise. ‘If you want your children to be intelligent,’ he said, ‘read them fairy
tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.’ He understood
the value of reading, and of imagining. I hope we can give our children a world in which
they will read, and be read to, and imagine, and understand.

Explain how the writer persuades the reader that it is important to read.
You should support your answer with close reference to the passage, including
brief quotations.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………

7
Prepared by: Ms. Sewwandi Dilhara, Lyceum International School, Gampaha.