Republic of the Philippines

Department of Education
National Capital Region
Schools Division Office – City of Mandaluyong

PROJECT CLAID (Contextualized and Localized Activities Intended for Distance Learning)

Name: ______________________________ Date: ____________ Score: ________

ENGLISH 7
Quarter 4 – Week – 6
Competency: Discover literature as a tool to assert one‘s unique
identity and to better understand other people
Lesson: Literature as a tool to assert one‘s unique identity and to
better understand other people

Objectives
1. Recognize local color as it was used in the selection.
2. Appreciate how the selection serves as avenue in asserting Filipino identity
3. Explain how local color as part of the setting contributes to the selection.

Concept
LOCAL COLOR- is part of the setting of the story. It focuses on the characters
dialects, customs, topography and other features particular to a specific region. It
lends to the atmosphere of the story and contributes to the overall impact on the
reader, thus helping the reading to understand why the characters speak and act as
they do.

This activity sheet will focus in the “Discovery of literature as a tool to assert
one‘s unique identity and to better understand other people”
(https://www.britannica.com/art/literature)

ACTIVITY NO.1

Getting Started
A. Directions: Read each item carefully and write the letter of the best answer provided
before each number.
a. Fictional narrative e. nonfiction narrative
b. Setting f. theme
c. Characters g. time order
d. Local color h. mood
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Q4 Week No.6 Competency Code: EN7LT-III-g-5
Competency: Discover literature as a tool to assert one‘s unique identity and to better
understand other people
 1. The authors show the time, place and culture in writing the article.
2. It is a narrative taken from the author’s imagination.
3. Writers use words to develop the atmosphere of the narrative.
4. This tells us insights about life through the narrative.
5. It is about events that happened like history or a person’s life.
6. Writers organize their narratives according to time to make it understandable
for the readers.
7. These are the people or any animated objects in the narrative which add life
to it.
8. It is part of the setting in the story. It focuses on the characters dialects,
customs, topography, and other features particular to a specific region.

B. Directions: Name some traits you believe that all Filipinos share by
completing the statement below. Explain why you think this trait is common
to Filipinos.

Filipinos are
______________________________________________
______________________________________________
______________________________________________
______________________________________________

Discussion
Local Color is a style of writing derived from the presentation of the features and
peculiarities of a particular locality and its inhabitants. It is also concerned itself mainly
with depicting the character of a particular regions, concentrating especially upon the
peculiarities of dialect, manners, folklore, and landscape that distinguish the area. The use
of local color is very distinct in literature particularly from its origin which is American
literature and since we are talking about how Philippine literature in English was influenced
by the American colonization. There are traces and features of the local color from the
American writing style in our own Philippine literature in English.
How can we apply local color in Philippine literature? Most of the Philippine literature
reflects the modern life of Filipinos hence the use of local color highlights the regional
cultures in a particular place.

Characteristics of Local Color

a. Setting – the emphasis is on nature and the limitations it imposes; frequently the setting
is remote and inaccessible.

Example:

How Brother Leon Brought Home a Wife

By Manuel E. Arguilla
The sun was in our eyes, for it was dipping into the bright sea. The sky was wide and
deep and very blue above us; but at the saw-tooth rim of the Katayaghan Hills to the
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Q4 Week No.6 Competency Code: EN7LT-III-g-5
Competency: Discover literature as a tool to assert one‘s unique identity and to better
understand other people
southwest flamed huge masses of clouds. Before us, the fields swam in a golden haze through
which floated bug purple and red and yellow bubbles when I looked at the sinking sun.
Labang’s white coat which I washed and brushed under the lamplight and his horns appeared
tipped with fire. He faced the sun and from his mouth issued a call so loud and vibrant that
the Earth seemed to tremble underfoot. And far away in the middle of the fields, a cow lowed
softly in answer.

Explanation: As you can see author of the story describe the setting, by describing the things
that he can see such as the fields and hills that is typical seen in the province.

b. Character – The characters are highlighted by their adherence to the old ways, by
dialect and by personality traits central to the region.

How Brother Leon Brought Home a Wife

By Manuel E. Arguilla
“My brother Leon put down the trunks on the grassy side of the road. He paid Ca Celin
twice the usual fare from the station to the edge of Nagrebcan.”

Explanation: Look at the line of the story entitled “How Brother Leon Brought Home a Wife
by Manuel E. Arguilla” the author of the story used name Ca Celin, Mayang and Leon the
names of characters are Filipino like and it shows local color.

c. Plot – Story with local color may include with lots of storytelling and revolve around the
community and its rituals.

d. Theme – If you encounter a story where in there is a conflict with modern life and
provincial life or the character are rich and simplistic. This are the characteristic of
theme under the writing of local color. Most of the writer of the story with local color tries
to emphasize the beauty of living a simple life in the province or in their local place.

e. Narrator – the narrator in the story is an educated observer or a third person narrator
who are distant with the characters but learns something from them, and he served also
as the mediator between the rural folk of the tale and the urban audience whom the
story is directed. Just like the narrator in How Brother Leon Brought Home a Wife. He
is the brother of Leon who is well informed with the life of his brother and Maria in the
province.

Local Color in Literature by Persi Paras

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oX-zCg79_F4&t=14s

ACTIVITY NO. 2
Getting it Right
There is a popular saying “The Filipino is as pliant as a bamboo.” Bamboo tree found in
different parts in the Philippines. It is known for its flexibility and versality. Let us read the
selection entitled “Pliant like the Bamboo” and know why we are compared to a bamboo tree.

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Q4 Week No.6 Competency Code: EN7LT-III-g-5
Competency: Discover literature as a tool to assert one‘s unique identity and to better
understand other people
 A. Directions: Read the selection and answer the given questions below.

Pliant Like the Bamboo

by. V. Mallari

There is a story in Philippine folklore about a mango tree and a bamboo tree. Not being
able to agree as to which was the stronger of the two, they called upon the wind to make
the decision.

The wind blew hardest. The mango tree stood fast. It would not yield. It knew it was strong
and sturdy. It would not sway. It was too proud. It was too sure of itself. But finally its root
gave way, and it tumbled down.

The bamboo tree was wiser. It knew it was not as robust as the mango tree. And so every
time the wind blew, it bent its head gracefully. It made loud protestations, but let the wind
have its way. When finally
the wind got tired of blowing, the bamboo tree still stood in all its beauty and grace.

The Filipino is like the bamboo tree. He knows that he is not strong enough, to withstand
the onslaught of superior forces. And so he yields. He bends his head gracefully with many
loud protestations.

And he has survived. The Spaniards came and dominated him for more than three hundred
years. And, when the Spaniards left, the Filipinos still stood—only much richer in
experience and culture.

The Americans took place of the Spaniards. They used more subtle means of winning over
the Filipinos to their mode of living and thinking. The Filipinos embraced the American
way of life more readily than the Spaniard‘s vague promises hereafter.

Then the Japanese came like a storm, like a plague of locusts, like a pestilence—rude,
relentless, cruel. The Filipino learned to bow his head low, to ―cooperate‖ with the Japanese
in their ―holy mission of establishing the Co-Prosperity Sphere. The Filipino had only hate
and contempt for the Japanese, but he learned to smile sweetly at them and to thank them
graciously for their ―benevolence and magnanimity‖.

And now that the Americans have come back and driven away the Japanese, those Filipinos
who profited most from cooperating with the Japanese have been loudest in their
protestations of innocence. Everything is as if the Japanese had never been in the
Philippines.

For the Filipino would welcome any kind of life that the gods would offer him. That is why
he is contented and happy and at peace. The sad plight of other people of the world is not
his. To him, as to that ancient Oriental poet, the past is already a dream, and tomorrow is
only a vision; but today, well-lived, makes every yesterday a dream of happiness, and
tomorrow is a vision of hope.

This may give you the idea that the Filipino is a philosopher. Well he is. He has not evolved
a body of philosophical doctrines. Much less has he put them down into a book, like Kant
for example, or Santayana or Confucius. But he does have a philosophical outlook on life.

He has a saying that life is like a wheel. Sometimes it is up, sometimes it is down. The
monsoon season comes, and he has to go undercover. But then the sun comes out again.
The flowers bloom, and the birds sing in the trees. You cut off the branches of a tree, and,
while the marks of the bolo* are still upon it, it begins to shoot forth-new branches—
branches that are the promise of new color, new fragrance, and new life.

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Q4 Week No.6 Competency Code: EN7LT-III-g-5
Competency: Discover literature as a tool to assert one‘s unique identity and to better
understand other people
 Everywhere about him is a lesson in patience and forbearance that he does not have to
learn with difficulty. For the Filipino lives in a country on which the gods lavished their
gifts aplenty. He does not have to worry about the morrow. Tomorrow will be only another
day—no winter of discontent. Of he loses his possessions, there is the land and there is the
sea, with all the riches that one can desire. There is plenty to spar—for friends, for
neighbors and for everyone else.

No wonder that the Filipino can afford to laugh. For the Filipino is endowed with saving
grace of humor. This humor is earthly as befits one who has not indulged in deep
contemplation. But it has enabled the Filipino to shrug his shoulders in times of adversity
and say to himself ―Bahala na*.

The Filipino has often been accused of being indolent and of lacking initiative. And he has
answered back* that no one can help being indolent and lacking in initiative who lives
under the torrid sun which saps the vitality.

This seeming lack of vitality is, however, only one of his means of survival. He does not
allow the world to be too much with him. Like the bamboo tree, he lets the winds of chance
and circumstance blow all about him; and he is unperturbed and serene.

The Filipino, in fact, has a way of escaping from the rigorous problems of life. Most of his
art is escapist in nature. His forefathers wallowed in the *moro-moro, the awit, and the
kurido. They loved to identify themselves as gallant knights battling for the favors of fair
ladies or the possession of hallowed place. And now he himself loves to be lost in the throes
and modern romance and adventure. His gallantry towards women—especially comely
women—is a manifestation of his romantic turn of mind. Consequently, in no other place
in Orient are women so respected, so adulated, and so pampered. For his women have
enabled the Filipinos to look upon the vicissitudes of fortune as the bamboo tree regards
the angry blasts of the blustering wind.

The Filipino is eminently suited to his romantic role. He is slender and wiry. He is nimble
and graceful in his movements, his voice is soft, and h has the gift of language. In what
other place in the world can you find a people who can carry on a fluent conversation in at
least *three languages?

This gift is another means by which the Filipino as managed to survive. There is no
insurmountable barrier between him and any of the people who have come to live with
him—Spanish, American, and Japanese. The foreigners do not have to learn his language.
He easily manages to master theirs.

Verily, the Filipino is like the bamboo tree. In its grace, in its ability to adjust itself to the
peculiar and inexplicable whims of fate, the bamboo tree is his expressive and symbolic
national tree, it will have to be, not the molave or the narra, but the bamboo.

QUESTIONS:
1. What does “Pliant” mean?
2. How does the bamboo show its pliancy?
3. Why are Filipinos compared to a Bamboo?
4. As a grade 7 student will you consider yourself like the bamboo? Why? Why not?
5. I.V Mallari said that “The Filipino has often been accused of being indolent and of
lacking initiative.” Do you agree with the writer’s description of the Filipinos? Why?
Why not?

B. Directions: Aside from Bamboo, what other symbols you can use to describe
Filipinos. Draw objects in the box and write a short explanation for each symbol.
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Q4 Week No.6 Competency Code: EN7LT-III-g-5
Competency: Discover literature as a tool to assert one‘s unique identity and to better
understand other people
 SYMBOL EXPLANATION

Filipino is like bamboo tree, he has the ability to adjust to

peculiar and inexplicable whims of fate.

ACTIVITY NO. 3
Sparking
They said that “The great dream of a Filipino is to travel abroad.” Filipinos are excited
to see beautiful places and taste different cuisine other countries. They can also adopt to
other countries culture and attitude easily by constantly communicating with foreigners. But
despite all of it, Filipino still misses Filipino dishes. Let’s see how the speaker compares
Filipino cuisine with the international cuisine in the reading selection that we are going to
read entitled “Where’s the Patis by Carmen Guerrero Nakpil.”

Where’s the Patis

by Carmen Guerrero Nakpil
Travel has become the great Filipino dream. In the same way that an American dream
of becoming a millionaire or an English boy dreams of going to one of the great universities,
the Filipino dreams of going abroad. His most constant vision is that of himself as a tourist.
To visit Hongkong, Tokyo and other cities of Asia, perchance or to catch a glimpse of
Rome, Paris or London or to go to America (even for only a week in a flyspecked motel in
California) is the sum of all delights.
Yet having left Manila International Airport in a pink cloud of despedidas and sampaguita
garlands and pabilin, the dream turns into a nightmare very quickly. But why? Because
the first bastion of the Filipino spirit is the palate. And in all the palaces and fleshpots and
skyscrapers of that magic world called "abroad" there is no patis to be had.
Consider the Pinoy abroad. He has discarded the barong tagalog or "polo" for a dark,
sleek Western suit. He takes to the hailiments from Hongkong, Brooks Brothers or Savile
Row with the greatest of ease. He has also shed the casual informality of manner that is
characteristically Filipino. He gives himself the airs of a cosmopolite to the creditcard born.
He is extravagantly courteous (especially in a borrowed language) and has taken to hand-
kissing and to planty of American "D'you mind's?"
He hardly misses the heat, the native accents of Tagalog or Ilongo or the company of
his brown- skinned cheerful compatriots. He takes, like duck to water, to the skyscrapers,
the temperate climate, the strange landscape and the fabled refinements of another world.
How nice, after all, to be away from good old R.P. for a change!
But as he sits down to meal, no matter how sumptuous, his heart sinks. His stomach
juices, he discovers, are much less neither as apahap nor lapu-lapu. Tournedos is meat
done in barbarian way, thick and barely cooked with red juices still oozing out. The safest
choice is a steak. If the Pinoy can get it well done enough and sliced thinly enough, it might
remind him of tapa. If the waiter only knew enough about Philippine cuisine, he might
suggest venison which is really something like tapang usa, or escargots which the unstylish
poor on Philippine beaches know as snails. Or even frog' legs which are a Pampango

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Q4 Week No.6 Competency Code: EN7LT-III-g-5
Competency: Discover literature as a tool to assert one‘s unique identity and to better
understand other people
 delight. But this is the crux of the problem, where is the rice? A silver tray offers varieties
of bread: slices of crusty French bread, soft yellow rolls, rye bread, crescents studded with
sesame seeds. There are also potatoes in every conceivable manner, fried, mashed, boiled,
buttered. But no rice.
The Pinoy learns that rice is considered a vegetable in Europe and America. The staff
of life a vegetable! Where is the patis? And when it comes a special order which takes at
least half an hour the grains are large, oval and foreign- looking and what's more, yellow
with butter. And oh horrors!- one must shove it with a fork or pile it with one's knife on
the back of another fork. After a few days of these debacles, the Pinoy, sick with longing,
decides to comb the strange city for a Chinese restaurant, the closest thing to the beloved
gastronomic country. There, in the company of other Asian exiles, he will put his nose
finally in a bowl of rice and find it more fragrant than an English rose garden, more exciting
than a castle on the Rhine and more delicious than pink champagne. To go with the rice
there is siopao (not so rich as at Salazar), pancit guisado reeking with garlic (but never so
good as any that can be had on the sidewalks of Quiapo), fried lumpia with the incorrect
sauce, and even mami (but nothing like the downtown wanton) Better than a Chinese
restaurant is the kitchen of a kababayan. When in a foreign city, a Pinoy searches every
busy sidewalk, theater, restaurant for the well- remembered golden features of a fellow-
pinoy. But make it no mistake.

QUESTIONS:

1. Why do you think Filipinos love to eat rice? Do you think other countries like rice too?
2. Why do you think the speaker choose to eat in Filipino restaurant and not in expensive
restaurant?
3. What specific Filipino trait are presented in the selection that you are proud of? Why?
4. What if you win a free airplane ticket going to Europe in a raffle draw, what are the things
you are going to do? What place are you going to visit?

C. Directions: Accomplish the table based on the selection. List down food on the first
column. Then, write the country from where it came from in the second column and
a Filipino counterpart of it on the last part.

FOOD IN THE SELECTION COUNTRY FILIPINO FOOD

COUNTERPART

WRITTEN OUTPUT:

Directions: Read the following passages from the selection; then determine how local color
is achieved.
PLIGHT LIKE A BAMBOO

The Filipino is like the bamboo

tree. He knows that he is not strong
enough, to withstand the onslaught of
superior forces. And so he yields. He
bends his head gracefully with many loud
protestations.

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Q4 Week No.6 Competency Code: EN7LT-III-g-5
Competency: Discover literature as a tool to assert one‘s unique identity and to better
understand other people
 WHERE’S THE PATIS

The Pinoy learns that rice is

considered a vegetable in Europe and
America. The staff of life a vegetable!
Where is the patis? And when it comes a
special order which takes at least half an
hour the grains are large, oval and
foreign- looking and what's more, yellow
with butter. And oh horrors!- one must
shove it with a fork or pile it with one's
knife on the back of another fork.

REFERENCES

Lesson Exemplar Grade 7 English Quarter 4 pages 7-15

English learning Material 7 pages 322-325

Where’s the Patis by Carmen Guerrero Nakpil retrieved by https://kwf.gov.ph/wp-

content/uploads/2_Wheres_the_Patis.pdf

Local Color retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/art/local-color

Local Color in Literature by Persi Paras https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oX-

zCg79_F4&t=14s

Prepared by:

CYNDRIL B. FORMENTERA
HULO INTEGRATED SCHOOL
SDO Mandaluyong

Editors:

RAMON M. BELARDO JR. EMILY A. NUDALO JOESON E. MEJICA

Content Language Layout

Approved:

RAMON M. BELARDO JR.

Education Program Supervisor, English

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Q4 Week No.6 Competency Code: EN7LT-III-g-5
Competency: Discover literature as a tool to assert one‘s unique identity and to better
understand other people