Welcome to Traction Purple!

Traction Purple will help you improve your English in a number of ways, and it also provides the materials you need to meet the requirements for and succeed in the English 6 course.

The digital material includes everything that you see in this book – and more. With Traction Purple you can work with book, pen and paper, or completely digitally. You can listen to all of the recorded texts (both reading and listening) on your computer, tablet or mobile phone, and you can also practise your English with all the digital exercises, and get instant feedback. Whenever you see a icon, that means there is a digital link that you can follow.

The seven units in Traction Purple all follow the same structure, and cover a wide range of topics and text genres. In every unit there are both longer and shorter texts, ranging from newspaper articles and factual texts to poems, song lyrics and excerpts from novels. There is at least one listening exercise in every unit. Some of these are very long, and you can choose to listen to them in parts if you prefer.

In the English Handbook you will find a guide to working on the productive language skills of writing and speaking, and on the receptive skills of reading and listening. The Handbook is an extra resource to help you when you need support. In it you can learn about the writing process, strategies for reading and listening, a literary timeline and useful literary terms.

In short, Traction Purple covers much of what you need to develop your language skills and complete the English 6 course successfully. We hope that you will find it fun and inspiring to work with.

Best of luck with your studies!

The Traction Purple team

1 RE-DISCOVERY 5

10 Ways Our World is Like the Renaissance 6

To Colonize Space or Not To Colonize 11

Listening: The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet 16

Sonnet 15 When I consider everything that grows 21

2 REASON 27

Introduction to the Age of Enlightenment 28

A Modest Proposal 33

Cancel Me This, Cancel Me That 38

Listening: Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus 42

The Declaration of Independence 46

3 PASSION 51

Introduction to the Romantic Era 52

My Heart Leaps Up 53

Four Reasons We Listen to Sad Music When We’re Sad 55

Nothing Compares 2 U 58

Emily Brontë hits the heights in poll to find greatest love story 61

Listening: Jane Eyre 64

She Walks in Beauty 69

4 EMPIRE 75

Eminent Victorians 76

Oliver Twist 80

Gender roles in the 19th century 85

Listening: The French Lieutenant’s Woman 88

The Steampunk Revolution – For Real! 91

Listening: Sherlock Holmes: The Army of Dr Moreau 92

5 MODERNISTAS 97

What Is Modernist Literature? 98

Introduction to To the Lighthouse 100

Listening: To the Lighthouse 102

What Lips My Lips Have Kissed 106

A Brief History of Dada 108

6 MY RIGHTS 115

Progress 116

Stonewall Inn: Through the Years 117

Listening: Freedom or Death 120

Civil Rights Activism: From Martin Luther King to Black Lives Matter 125

South African Voices 129

Born a Crime 130

Listening: What is Your Life’s Blueprint? 132

7 ONWARDS 139

Listening: Want to Start Reading Sci-Fi and Fantasy? 140

Abaddon’s Gate 144

Listening: The Fifth Season 149

The 14 Main Literary Genres 152

ENGLISH HANDBOOK 156

WORD LISTS 180