Study Stories from Other Cultures

In this activity, you will become more familiar with a story from another culture and answer questions about it.

What is a story from another culture?

A story from another culture is a piece of writing that gives you the opportunity to experience a world outside your own.

It will help you to appreciate a culture different from your own that you may not have realised existed!

For example: 'The Butterfly Lion' by Michael Morpurgo is a story from another culture. It is the story of a boy who rescues a lion cub from the African bush and the two of them become inseparable. Although written by a British author, the setting is South Africa and so the story gives the reader a glimpse of another culture.

Top tips when answering questions about a text:

First of all, read through the text twice.

If you reach a word with a capital letter that you don't understand, it will be the name of something or someone, move on.

If you reach a word you don't know the meaning of, read around the sentence for clues to help you to understand it.

When you are asked to give evidence in an answer, always use words or key phrases from the text to back up your opinion.

You don't have to answer the questions in order, if you find a tricky one, just move on, you can always return to it later!

Remember that reading comprehension is not a memory test, all of the information you need to answer the question will be within the text.

This activity will focus on the story of 'Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves'. This is from one of the most famous collections of stories in the world called 'One Thousand and One Nights'.

This story has origins in India, Iraq and Iran. It's such a famous story that it has been translated into many different languages.

Now it's over to you!