Lecture2.3 Oral Reading

This Oral Reading Exam should be done on a video presentation
and emailed to your teacher at dorber1000@hotmail.com.
ORAL READING
HISTORY OF JAMAICA

The Taino people arrived from South America in the seventh century
and called the island Xaymaca, "land of wood and water,"; because of
the green dense forest and the hundreds of fast-flowing streams that
once covered the landscape.

Christopher Columbus was the first European to visit Jamaica in 1494
and called it "the fairest island that eyes have beheld." The Taino
people were enslaved and by 1600 were wiped out by disease or harsh
treatment. The Spanish brought in slaves from Africa and ruled the
island until 1655 when the British seized it.

African slaves worked on the sugar plantations and were treated very
cruelly by the owners. By the late 1700s, Jamaica became one of the
largest slave markets for the Western Hemisphere. There were many
slave uprisings and slavery was finally abolished in Jamaica in 1838.
The island became independent in 1962.