Rio

Hi!!! I want to tell you about a lovely film I saw yesterday, “RIO”. This is a great film about a blue parrot, named Blu, which is snatched from the wild by rare-bird exporters before he even knows how to fly. This is quite heartbrokening because he is taken to Minnesota, very far away from his home. Fortunately, he is found by a girl, called Linda, who loves him and cares about him. Some years later a Brazilian scientific, Tulio, appears telling Linda that Blu’s species is on the verge of extinction. They decide to fly to Rio de Janeiro so he can meet the last remaining female, Jewel. In all of a sudden, Blu and Jewel are stolen by smugglers and that´s when the adventure starts! I strongly recommend this film, I promise you will enjoy it!!!!

Mimi

In Praise of the Humble Comma

           I find Pico Iyer's essay quite humorous and full of irony. The author brilliantly approaches the importance of punctuation as it is necessary in our writings to give a natural flow, rhythm and order to express our ideas or statements. Iyer wisely compares a period to a red light when the ending comes whereas commas are like yellow lights which flash asking us to slow down. Besides he states that life without punctuation could be chaotic and to exemplify this idea he makes a connection with Victorian Age strict rules and corsets that later Modernists got rid of.

        In the end, Iyer reinforces his idea of punctuation to say, that in order to achieve important things in life we have to care about the little ones. And taking the time to punctuate where it is necessary, though it may seem a harsh job, it is the way to highlight a text as a whole.

       I would highly recommend reading this essay. As a reader I felt invited to read it from the very first line. But the most enjoyable passages are especially the ones where the author uses imagery, comparisons and personifications as literary resources to state his ideas clearly and humorously.

                 Spoon

From theory to practice

Hello everybody! Last Monday we were present at Amanda and Anahi's special class. In my opinion, it was very useful and it made me think about new ways of creating and using interesting material for tasks in our classrooms. The example of Les Luthiers’ poem was an excellent way to illustrate how we can use the Systemics method in texts for teaching purposes. So, it’s time to think of new ideas, videos, stories, songs and web pages as resources to plan our classes. For example, we can compare Paul McCartney’s song “We all stand together” with High School Musical’s song “We’re all in this together”. Students may judge if both songs have the same message, find differences about the contexts in which they emerged and many other different activities that are much more authentic than fill-in-gaps exercises or grammatical rules.

Asking for students’ opinions on different topics, working with a song they like, or actually with a poem they have never read, will make our lessons more genuine and motivating. Much material is available and ready to be used, decoded and analyzed in our classes. Let’s do it!

Jackie

Hi! On September the 19th, as you know, we had a guest in our class; Amanda Zamuner, our teacher`s friend and also an English teacher. They two together gave us a talk, and the topic was:  Systemics.  To deal with this, they developed a work called: Humor y poesia: anàlisis de las transgreciones a la coherencia  desde una perspective lingüistico cognitiva . They analyzed a Les Luthiers`song called La bella y graciosa moza marchose a lavar la ropa interpreting it by looking at the use of the pronouns. Then we saw Rupert and the frog, a cartoon with songs by Paul Mc Cartney. I really liked this last one. The class was amazing!!! I will try to put all this into practice as soon as possible. Thanks Anahi and Amanda. Your class was inspiring!!!

Zoe

Hi everybody!   Today I·m writing about something that you already know,and perhaps your knowledge about it ,is better than mine,but anyway here it is! Last September 19 th as you know we had a different class with Anahi and a friend of hers, Amanda,both teachers gave us a  speech of Systemic Method.The theme was very interesting; they did an analysis of a poem from Les Luthiers called ,·La bella y graciosa moza marchose a lavar la ropa·. It was amazing how they interpreted the lyrics of the poem,discovering that the significance of the stanzas could suffer from variables in meaning with the use of the pronouns in certain position. I do hope that my interpretation of the speech ,is not far from the one they tried to convey. I realize that I need to do more reading to accomplish a better understanding of the Systemic Method.In other words,the teachers·intention was to show us the importance of putting into practice the theory  that we are learning in the course.

Ambar

Spirits of the Railway

 

“Spirits of the Railway” is a short story that tells us of the first Chinese peasants to leave south China for the New World in the nineteenth century. The Chinese immigrants were mostly men who left their family behind in China.

    In this story, Chu goes to Canada in search of his missing father. Unable to find him, Chu ends up working in a railway construction. Then, the crew and he reach a tunnel that other workers claim is haunted. Finally, he met the “ghost” of his father, who had died while building the railway. His father claims for justice because he cannot rest in peace, his body was thrown into the river, and he did not have a proper burial.

     When the teacher asked us to read the eight collections of “Gold Mountain” about the Chinese people in the nineteenth century, I wondered why we should read that. However, after reading some of them I realized that I came out with a deeper understanding of the Chinese culture and their sufferings. In fact, I consider it a good resource to use in our classes because it could make students aware about universal issues, such as discrimination. We can also discuss different ways of breaking down some prejudices in order to promote peace throughout the world.

    Abby.

The young Victoria (film)

I saw this film many many times and I would like to recomend it for the ones that are attending the subject : language and culture III. It´s  a vivid portrait of queen´s Victoria life, most precicely her youth and how she became queen.  Not all is in pink for her, she had to opposed her mother at the age of eighteen and become the head of a country. What I like most is the way she met prince  Albert and how they felt in love. I highlight this because most of the movies that deal with kings and queens show how they suffer or how they succeed in their political life but this is not the case of this movie, since the director of ¨The young Victoria¨ tries to show us her inside, her feelings.

EMMA

How to make great biscuits!!!

This is a great biscuit recipie that my grandmother gave me some years ago. It was quite good to know about it because it is very easy. First, you have to put in a bowl 3 eggs, 20 spoons of sugar and 20 spoons of sunflower oil. Mix all the ingredients and add flour as necessary to form a soft dough. Use a lightly floured cookie cutter and cut the dough into rounds. Then, place them on a baking pan. Biscuits need to be baked in a hot oven so the dough sets quickly thereby producing a light biscuit with a golden brown top and bottom with white sides. They are done when they are nicely browned (in 7 minutes more or less). I hope you like them, they are delicious!!!!


Mimi

LOVE

I have just  read an article about a clear and definite definition about: what love is? There are  two types of different notions about love these are the Chemical basis and the Psychological basis.

            The first definiton refers  to what Helen Fisher (anthropologist) divides the experience of love into three important  stages: lust, attraction, and attachment.

            In contrast to, the second concept refers to Psychologist Robert Sternberg formulated a triangular theory of love and argued that love has three different components: intimacy, commitment, and passion.

            I always think about  the real meaning of love and these two notions clear my mind.

Graffiti Woman