Lesson video

Hi, I'm Mr. Buckingham, and it's so nice to see you here for today's lesson.

Today, we are starting a brand new topic, working towards writing a biography of the famous scientist Charles Darwin.

And today, we're going to be investigating the life of a fascinating living scientist.

I think you're going to really enjoy it, so let's make a start.

Today's lesson is called "Identifying Features of a Biography" in preparation for writing about Darwin from my unit called "Charles Darwin: Biographical Writing." By the end of today's lesson, we'll be able to identify the features of a biography.

So this lesson is our first step towards writing a biography of Charles Darwin.

And if we're going to do that, we need to know what a biography looks like and what it sounds like, and that's what we're going to investigate in this lesson.

Now, you'll find an example biography of the zoologist Jane Goodall in the additional materials for this lesson, and you might want to have that with you as you do the tasks in this lesson.

If you can't access it right now, please don't worry.

I'll be reading it to you during this lesson.

Let's get to work.

Here are our keywords for today's lesson.

My turn, your turn.

Biography.

Formal tone.

Third person.

Fronted adverbial.

And relative clause.

So a biography is a nonfiction text written about someone's life, and a formal tone is the effect created by choosing serious, factual language.

The third person is the he or she or it or they perspective where we talk about another person.

A fronted adverbial is a sentence starter, followed by a comma.

And a relative clause is a type of subordinate clause that starts with relative pronouns such as who, which, or whose.

Here's our lesson outline for today.

We're going to start off by looking at the purpose and structure of a biography and then we'll move on to looking at the linguistic features of a biography.

And we'll do all this by looking at an example biography about the scientist Jane Goodall.

So as we said, a biography is a nonfiction text written about someone's life, and its purpose is to inform the reader about that one person.

Its audience, the people who read it, is anyone who wants to learn about that person.

And the layout of the biography helps the reader to get a clear understanding of the course of the person's life.

And the way it does that usually is that it's written in chronological order, in time order.

So usually it will start with the early life and work towards the later life, but it might not cover the whole of their life as we'll talk about later.

So whose photography would you like to read and why? And what parts of their life would you want to know about? Pause the video and have a chat to the person next to you or have a think on your own.

Lots of great ideas.

I can think of so many fascinating people I'd love to learn more about as well.

So that we can tune in to how a biography should sound, we're now going to read a biography of Jane Goodall, a famous British scientist who is still alive to this day.

So let's explore some key vocabulary from this biography before we read so we really understand more about her life.

First of all, we need this word, a primatologist, because that's what Jane Goodall is.

And a primatologist is a scientist who studies primates and those are animals such as chimpanzees and monkeys.

And in fact, humans are primates too.

A palaeontologist is a scientist who studies fossils to understand the history of life on Earth.

If something is controversial, it causes arguments.

So you might have heard someone say, "Oh, that's a controversial thing to say." That means it's something which might lead to an argument.

If an animal is herbivorous, it eats only plants.

Actually, you can think of some.

If something is unscientific, it's not following the right methods or the usual process.

If you're a scientist, you follow certain processes and methods to make sure you get the right answers.

So if you're unscientific, you're not following those processes.

And termites are insects that consume wood.

So all these words are going to come up in our biography of Jane Goodall.

So are the statements below true or false? Pause the video and decide and correct any that you think are false.

Have a go.

Well done.

Good job.

So A says a biography is focused on a particular event.

Well, that's false.

It is focused on a particular person.

B says saying something controversial cause a discussion.

That's true.

C says primatologists and palaeontologists both study living things.

No, that's false.

Only primatologists study living things.

Palaeontologists study things that were once alive like fossils, for instance.

D says in a biography, we would usually describe childhood before adulthood.

That is true because we would usually write in chronological order.

So let's read the first two paragraphs of the biography of Jane Goodall.

If you have it with you from the additional materials, that's great.

If not, I'm going to read it to you now.

So you've got a title, "Dame Jane Goodall: Her Life and Legacy".

A passion for nature.

Jane Goodall, who is one of the world's leading primatologists, was born on 23rd of April 1934 in London, England.

From an early age, Jane loved animals and she enjoyed exploring gardens, observing the wildlife she found.

During her childhood, her family moved around a lot, but no matter where she lived, she was a happy child who was fascinated by nature.

Even during the Second World War, which forced her to be evacuated from London, Jane collected many pets from snails to guinea pigs.

Soon, she began to dream that one day she might be able to study animals in Africa.

A job in Africa.

After she finished school, Jane worked as a waitress and a secretary, saving all her money to put towards her dream.

When she was in her early twenties, she finally had enough money to achieve her dream of travelling to Africa.

In 1957, at the age of 23, she took an office job in Nairobi, Kenya's capital city, working for a palaeontologist.

During this time, she had the opportunity to research chimpanzees, which she loved, and she decided to extend her stay in Africa.

She was desperate to continue learning about chimp behaviour.

Wow, you can see that even at this early age, Jane's already had a fascinating life.

So what's the answer to each of these questions about Jane's life so far? Pause the video and decide.

Well done.

Good job.

So where was Jane born? Well done, in London, England.

What happened to Jane in World War II? Good, she was evacuated away from London.

And C, what did Jane do to get to Africa? So she had to save up lots of money, didn't she? So she worked hard as a waitress and a secretary, saving all of her money.

And why did Jane decide to stay in Africa? Well done, she wanted to learn more about chimpanzees and in particular about their behaviour, what they did and maybe why they did it.

Really well done.

Good job.

So let's read the final two paragraphs of the biography of Jane Goodall.

The next paragraph has the subheading, "Life among the Chimpanzees." Jane, who had not attended university, had no formal training in animal behaviour.

However, in 1960, she moved from Kenya to Tanzania, a neighbouring country, and began to observe the chimpanzees in Gombe Stream National Park.

Jane's methods were controversial.

Instead of referring to the animals by numbers, she gave them names and observed their unique personalities.

As a result, she was criticised by some scientists, who said that this was unscientific.

It took many months for the chimps to grow to trust Jane; however, she was eventually able to develop a close relationship with them, living as part of their troop for nearly two years.

So she actually lived with the chimpanzees in their troop.

Amazing.

The next paragraph, the final paragraph is called "Ground-breaking Discoveries." Because she lived with the chimpanzees at Gombe Stream so closely, Jane was able to make several important findings about their behaviour.

People had previously thought that chimps could not use tools like humans do.

However, Jane observed a chimp poking grass into a termite hole to catch food.

In addition, she observed that chimps, which had been thought to be herbivorous, did in fact hunt for meat, including monkeys.

Moreover, Jane's observations led to an understanding that chimpanzees, like humans, have distinct personalities, both good and bad.

Goodall has continued to study chimpanzees and promote their conservation for her entire life, earning a worldwide reputation.

Wow, some incredible discoveries she made about chimpanzees there.

She obviously really revolutionised the way that we think about them.

So are the statements below true or false? Again, can you correct any that are false? Pause the video and have a go.

Well done.

Great work.

So A says chimps have some similarities with humans.

That is true.

For instance, Jane worked out that they have distinct personalities just like we do.

B says Jane received lots of training to observe chimps.

That's false.

It says Jane was untrained when she began this work.

Now, she did actually go to university later on, but when she first started observing chimps, she had no formal training and she hadn't been to university at that point.

C says all scientists admired Jane's work.

That's false.

Jane's decision to name the chimps was controversial.

It was almost like she was treating them too much like humans.

That's what some scientists thought.

D says Jane was able to live as part of the chimps' troop.

That is true, so she was able to gain their trust and live with them.

Amazing.

Really good job if you got those.

So let's look at the structure now of the biography as a whole.

We can see it laid out in its entirety now.

So we have a title, don't we? "Dame Jane Goodall: Her Life and Legacy." That tells the audience straight away this is about Dame Jane Goodall.

So if you're not interested in her, you know about her already, you might not want to read this.

If you are interested in her, you might want to.

We've got subheadings as well for each paragraph.

We've got "A Passion for Nature," "A Job in Africa," "Life Among the Chimpanzees." And "Groundbreaking Discoveries." Those help the audience, the reader, to find information they might be looking for.

And they structure the writing, don't they, to give it some structure and some order.

And we've got paragraphs organised around particular themes.

For instance, this paragraph is all about when Jane first moved to Africa, when she got that first job.

And we've got chronological order, haven't we? We start off with Jane's early life in "A Passion for Nature" and we head through her first job in Africa, through to her getting more experience and making discoveries, and talking about all her achievements at the end there.

Now, the biography doesn't tell every single event in Jane's life and it might miss out some later parts of her life as well.

That's okay, a biography often leads just up, for instance, to someone's main achievement.

So it tells us the story of how they reach those main achievements.

It might not tell us about every achievement and it might not tell us about their later life in detail.

So true and false, a biography always tells the whole story of a person's life from birth to death.

Pause the video and decide.

Well done.

You're right, that is false.

Now can you explain why? Which is the best justification for that? Pause the video and decide.

Well done.

You're right, it's B.

B says a biography often focuses on a person's key achievements and tells us the story of how these happened.

So it can't be like A says where we just focus on one key event, but also it won't cover every event and it doesn't necessarily go all the way from birth to death.

In Jane Goodall's case, she is still alive, so her biography cannot reach from birth to death by definition.

So it might just focus on their early life and the events leading up to their main achievements, which is sort of what we saw with Jane Goodall there.

So let's do our first task for this lesson.

Can you complete the table with a note to say what the theme of each paragraph is? That means what's the big idea here? What is it mostly about? So for each of these four paragraphs, can you write a note to say what is its theme? What is it really all about? Pause the video and have a go.

Well done.

Great job.

So that first paragraph, "A Passion for Nature," we could say it's about Jane's early life and childhood and her early interest in nature.

"A Job in Africa" is all about Jane's move to Africa and the start of her interest in chimps.

"Life Among the Chimpanzees" is about Jane's time observing and living with chimpanzees.

And "Groundbreaking Discoveries" is all about Jane's main achievements in studying chimps and the things she found out about them.

So we can see each of those paragraphs has a different theme and that helps to structure our biography.

We can see that it guides our reader through this path from Jane's early life when she was first interested in nature all the way through to her incredible discoveries about chimpanzees.

Really well done if you managed to make some good notes there.

Great job.

So we've now looked at the purpose and structure of biography.

We're now going to think about the linguistic features that it might contain.

So the linguistic features of a biography are ways of using language that we commonly see in a biography.

And biographies are non-fiction texts which contain lots of factual statements, things which are true.

So therefore, they often have a very serious formal tone.

And you might have noticed that already.

So we wouldn't say this.

"Jane Goodall, a really awesome scientist, was born in the delightful city of London, England." We're far too chatty there and we've given a bit too much of our own opinion about London, about Jane being awesome.

That's a bit too chatty, a bit too informal for a biography.

So instead we might say this, "Jane Goodall, one of the world's leading primatologists, was born in London, England." We've given the facts in a serious formal way.

We also use subject-specific vocabulary to add to that formal tone.

So that's words like these: palaeontologists, research, behaviour, observed, findings, conservation, words that relate to this world of science that Jane lives in.

And they give our writing more of a formal tone as well.

Now as you might have noticed, a biography is typically written in the third person.

That's that he, she, it, or they perspective we talked about before.

And that's because we're talking about the person, not to them and not on their behalf.

So we wouldn't say this, we wouldn't say, "I first travelled to Africa in 1957 at the age of 23." That would be if we were talking as Jane Goodall or if Jane Goodall was writing her own autobiography, a biography written by herself.

But we are not doing that.

We're writing about Jane or about Charles Darwin later in this unit.

So we wouldn't use the I first person perspective.

We also wouldn't use you, that would be the second person, as if we're talking to Jane.

So here it says, "You have earned yourself a fantastic reputation." So instead we'd write something like this: "She spent years observing chimpanzees." We've used she because we've used the third person.

We're talking about Jane and about her experiences and about what happened to her.

So that's the right person to use when we're writing about another person.

And because a biography is mostly retelling events from the past, it's also mostly in the past tense.

However, it may include some present tense as well.

These two sentences are both correct.

We've said Jane was able to make several important findings.

That's the past tense.

And we've said Jane Goodall is one of the world's leading primatologists.

We've said that in the present tense because it's still the case.

Jane Goodall is still alive and she's still a respected primatologist, so we can use the present tense to describe her as well.

So we might see changes between past and present tense in our biographies.

So which of these sentences uses appropriate linguistic features for a biography? Thinking about the tense, the person, and the formality that we've described.

Pause the video and see if you can decide.

Well done.

Good job.

So A says she found out some crazy stuff about chimps.

No, that's too informal, isn't it? B says, "I gave her the opportunity to travel to Tanzania." Well, that's using the first person, so that won't work either.

C says she always dreamt of travelling to Africa.

That is appropriate, it's the third person, it's the past tense, it's formal, so that one works.

And D says, "You're going to love chimps once you've read about Jane." Well, that's got lots of informality, you've and you're are contractions, which are quite informal.

And it's also talking to a person.

That'd be the second person, not the third.

So that one won't work in a biography.

Really well done for spotting that correct one.

Now a biography is also likely to include a range of fronted adverbials of time to say when things happened in the person's life.

And these could be words and phrases, for instance, from an early age, soon, during the Second World War, and some of them could be clauses which start with subordinating conjunctions like this, when she was in her early twenties and after she finished school.

All of those ones I've just shown you are fronted adverbials because those are sentence starters that are followed by a comma.

Some are words of phrases and some are clauses.

Remember, a phrase doesn't contain a verb and a clause does.

And we might also see some fronted adverbials of cause.

These show cause and effect, for instance, as a result, due to this, because of this, or here's a clause again, because she lived with chimps so closely.

Again, they're all fronted adverbials because they're sentence starters followed by a comma.

So now let's see if you can have a go.

Can you choose an appropriate fronted adverbial from the list on the right-hand side to fill each gap in these sentences? Pause the video and have a go.

Well done, really good job.

So A says blank, Jane worked hard to save money.

We would say when she finished school, Jane worked hard to save money.

For B, we'd say Jane gave the chimps names.

Due to this, some scientists criticised her.

For C, we could say during the war, she was evacuated out of London.

And for D, in 1957, she got an office job in Nairobi.

So three of those are showing time, aren't they? When she finished school, during the war, and in 1957, are all fronted adverbials of time, and then due to this is a fronted adverbial of cause to show cause and effect.

Really well done if you got those.

A biography is also likely to include a range of formal fronted adverbials to show how ideas connect together.

So we use some of these formal fronted adverbials adding on to the last sentence.

For instance, in addition, as well as this, also, furthermore, moreover, and building on this.

So all of these build on a point from the sentence that comes before.

And we use some formal fronted adverbials to show but to show a contrast with the sentence before a contrasting idea from the previous sentence.

For instance, however, despite this, on the contrary, in contrast to this, or nevertheless.

So we can see that we use formal fronted adverbials to either build on the last sentence or to contrast with it.

So can you match each sentence to the one that would follow it, which starts with a formal fronted adverbial? Pause the video and see if you can match them up.

Well done.

Good job.

So for A, we'd say, Jane found that chimps did in fact eat meat.

In addition, she saw they could be aggressive.

B says Jane had a passion for animals from childhood.

As well as this, she looked after a range of pets.

And for C, Jane initially had no formal training in animal observation.

However, she was able to get very close to the chimps.

So that last one is showing but, isn't it? It's showing a contrast between the two pieces of information in the sentence that comes before and the sentence that starts with the formal fronted adverbial.

Really well done for matching those up correctly.

Another linguistic feature we might see in a biography is parenthesis, and parenthesis with brackets is often used in a biography.

This is extra information that's added into a sentence that can be removed.

For instance, she took an office job in Nairobi, Kenya's capital city, working for a palaeontologist.

We could remove that information in brackets and the sentence would still make sense.

It would say she took an office job in Nairobi working for a palaeontologist.

So this is extra information and we put a bracket on either side.

So this is a great way of combining two pieces of information together.

Let's take two pieces here.

She moved from Kenya to Tanzania and began to observe chimpanzees.

And Tanzania is a neighbouring country to Kenya.

We could combine those together using a piece of parenthesis in brackets.

We could say, She moved from Kenya to Tanzania, a neighbouring country, and began to observe chimpanzees.

So we've made that second piece of information into a piece of parenthesis in brackets with a bracket on either side.

And, of course, it could be removed and the sentence would still make sense.

Now you try.

Which words in each of these sentences are a piece of parenthesis that could be contained in brackets? Pause the video and decide whether brackets could go.

Well done.

Good work.

So for A, we would say, "The national park where Jane worked, Gombe Stream, was found in Tanzania." So we've put the brackets around Gombe Stream and the rest of the sentence would make sense.

For B, we'd put them here.

We could say, "Jane was able to live with the chimps for a long time, nearly two years." And again, if we remove that parenthesis, the sentence would still make sense.

And C, we would put the brackets around insects that eat would and the rest of the sentence would read, "Jane noticed chimps catching termites using a type of tool." It still makes sense.

So each time, the parenthesis in brackets is extra information we've added in.

It could be removed.

Well done for spotting this.

Now, another way we can link two pieces of information together is to use a relative clause in a relative complex sentence.

And we can do that in two different ways.

We could have the relative clause inside the sentence interrupting a main clause.

It could look like this.

She observed that chimps, which had been thought to be herbivorous, did in fact hunt for meat.

Can you say we already had a main clause there? She observed that chimps did in fact hunt for meat, and we've interrupted it with the relative clause after the word chimps, which is what the relative clause is referring to.

It's telling us information about that noun, chimps.

But we could put a relative clause at the end of a sentence instead.

We could say, no matter where she lived, she was a happy child, who was fascinated by nature.

Here, we've got an existing sentence.

No matter where she lived, she was a happy child.

And then we've added on extra information about her being a happy child, with the noun happy child, using this relative clause who was fascinated by nature.

Each time the relative clause follows the noun, it tells us more about it, and it begins with a relative pronoun, who or which in these cases, but it could be whose or where or a few more as well.

And it could be removed and the sentence would still again make sense.

So can you identify the relative clause in each of these sentences? Remember, it will start with a relative pronoun and it could be removed from the sentence.

And again, it follows the noun that it refers to.

Pause the video and see if you can spot them.

Well done.

Great work.

So in A, it is here "who initially had no formal training." In B, it's at the end of a sentence "which is located in Tanzania in Africa." And for C, it would be this long clause at the end of this sentence "which allowed her to save enough money to move abroad." Really well done if you managed to spot those.

Now let's do our final task for this session.

I'd like you to reread the biography of Jane Goodall, this time focusing on the linguistic features that we've just been exploring together.

And I want you to find some examples of the following.

I want you to find two formal fronted adverbials and two fronted adverbials of time, two pieces of parenthesis in brackets and two relative clauses, two groups of words or single words perhaps that help to add to that formal tone, and two examples of the past tense being used.

So pause the video and see if you can gather up all those examples from the Jane Goodall biography.

Have a go.

Well done, fantastic effort.

So here are some of the examples you might have found.

For your formal fronted adverbial, you might have found moreover and however.

Moreover is an And and however is a But formal fronted adverbial.

For fronted adverbials of time, there were lots of choices.

Maybe you chose from an early age or during this time.

For your parenthesis, maybe you spotted Kenya's capital city and including monkeys.

And for the relative clauses, maybe you found "who is one of the world's leading primatologists" and "which she loved".

For your formal words, this is maybe one which is a bit more subjective, you might have different answers for.

I chose these two, distinct personalities and fascinated by nature because you could have said that she really loved nature, but instead we put fascinated by nature, which is much more formal.

You might have got something different and that's fine.

And for the past tense, loads of options, again.

I've said Jane's methods were controversial and Jane was able to make important findings.

I'm sure you might have found some different ones as well.

Really good job on that task.

Great work.

So let's summarise our learning in this lesson.

We've learned that a biography is a non-fiction text that informs the reader about a person's life.

And we've learned that a biography is usually written in chronological order and in the third person, and it's mostly in the past tense.

We've learned that a biography uses a range of linguistic features including fronted adverbials, relative clauses, and parenthesis in brackets.

And we've learned that the text has a formal tone because it makes factual statements about a person's life using serious language.

Really well done for your effort in this lesson.

It's going to really help us when we come to write our own biography using all of these features that we've discussed today.

Great work, and I hope to see you again in a future lesson.

Goodbye.