Friday, July 23, 2004

Your homework for this week

Right. We need more stuff on the class blog to read. So far, I've received a few poems, but I want ALL your poems.

This weekend, please select one of the following writing exercises to do. Either send it to me on email (beingsteve@hotmail.com), or if you're a member of the blog (for membership details, see me) you can post it onto the blog directly yourself.

Writing ideas:

1) Write about a contentious issue you feel strongly about (cf Jeremie's essay on downloading)
2) Post a poem
3) Write about a change in your life that had repercussions for you in the future.
4) Write 'in character' about your experience on Faking It. (Pretend you're either Alex, or one of the other characters.)

Thursday, July 22, 2004

If nothing ever changed, there'd be no butterflies

This week in class, we've been watching a documentary called 'Faking It' about a geeky Chemistry student who goes to London to see if he can pass himself off as a bouncer in the toughest nightclubs of the city. It got me thinking about the notion of change -changing ourselves, changing the world, trying to change other people- and these are some quotes I like, all found on the internet.

“If nothing ever changed, there'd be no butterflies.” Read the quotes below and decide what ARTICLES to use in the spaces provided (a, an, the, or zero article)
 
 
Alfred North Whitehead:
___ art of progress is to preserve ____order amid ____ change and to preserve ____change amid ____order.
 
 
American proverb:
It doesn't work to leap ___ twenty-foot chasm in two ten-foot jumps.
 
 
Anais Nin:
Life is ___ process of becoming, ____combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect ____ state and remain in it. This is ____ kind of death.
 
 
When we blindly adopt ____ religion, ____ political system, ____ literary dogma, we become ____automatons. We cease to grow.
 
 
Epictetus:
It is impossible for ___ man to learn what he thinks he already knows.
 
 
Henry David Thoreau:
___things do not change, we change.
 
 
Heraclitus:
You cannot step twice into ___ same river, for other waters are continually flowing in.
 
 
Heraklietos of Ephesos:
Whosoever wishes to know about ____ world must learn about it in its particular details.
____knowledge is not ____intelligence.
In searching for ___ truth be ready for ___ unexpected.
___ change alone is unchanging.
___ same road goes both up and down.
___ beginning of a circle is also its end.
 
 
Lance Armstrong
___hard work, ____sacrifice and _____focus will never show up in tests.
“If nothing ever changed, there'd be no butterflies.” Read the quotes below and decide what ARTICLES to use in the spaces provided (a, an, the, or zero article)
 
 
Caroline Schoeder
Some people change when they see ___ light, others when they feel ___ heat.
 
 
I. Krishnamurti
The moment you have in your heart this extraordinary thing called ___love and feel ___ depth, ___ delight, ___ ecstacy of it, you will discover that for you ___ world is transformed.
 
 
Thomas Fuller
Nothing is easy to ___ unwilling.
 
 
Heraclitus
There is nothing permanent except ____change.
 
 
James Hillman
If you are still being hurt by ___ event that happened to you at ___twelve, it is ___ thought that is hurting you now.
 
 
Mahatma Gandhi
You must be ____ change you wish to see in ___ world.
 
 
James Baldwin:
For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; ___ earth is always shifting, ___ light is always changing, ___ sea does not cease to grind down ___rock. ___generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are ___ only witnesses they have. ___ sea rises, ___ light fails, ____lovers cling to each other, and ____children cling to us. ___ moment we cease to hold each other, ___ sea engulfs us and ____ light goes out.
 
 
Margaret Mead:
Never doubt that ___ small, group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change ___ world. Indeed, it is ___ only thing that ever has.
 

David SedarisI haven't got the slightest idea how to change ____people, but still I keep ___ long list of ___ prospective candidates just in case I should ever figure it out.

Thursday, July 15, 2004

Thank God For Friday (Tests)

It's Friday!
 
Which means a lovely test of all the groovy stuff we've done this week.
 
Today's test is divided into two sections, and designed to be done with a partner. 
 
SECTION ONE: What areas of your grammar do you still need to work on?
  
Please follow this link and carry out the Online Diagnostic Test with your partner. At the end make a note of the grammar areas which you'd like to focus on next week. 
 

SECTION TWO: Writing/Posting on a blog
 
Work with your partner to create a blog 'post' on Me Talk Pretty One Day just like the one you're reading. Use your arguments discussed in class about your 'ISSUE' to write a short, discursive piece around the topic.
 
Begin the post: 'We believe that...' Make it as contentious as possible. You want people to read it and reply, don't you?
 
Have fun!


Wednesday, July 14, 2004

The G-Spot

I am now the proud owner of a GMail account.

(If you don't know what this is, click here: gmail.com)

Having been a Hotmail Boy for years, I was offered one of these babies by a friend, and after reading a few hyped reviews, thought 'Why The Heck Not'.

The thing is: to have a GMail account at the moment, you need to actually be invited by someone (my friend, in this case) who works for Google. So, for the moment, I am the only person at school, and one of the few people in London with one of these things.

The only problem is, very few people seem:
a) willing to understand the full amazing-ness of what I have as
opposed to what they DON'T have
b) able to give me my due kudos points.

What does a man have to do to get jealousy from his colleagues in this day and age?

Huh!?!?!?!

(I really enjoy doing this skippety-hop, shift-questionmark,
shift-exclamationmark thing on the keyboard. If you do it really fast and in a syncopated fashion, allowing the shift key to spring up between exclamations and questions, one feels vaguely Liberace-like, as if engaged in a rather taxing manoeuvre in the middle of a particularly back-und-forth passage in a Lizst piano sonata.)

Tuesday, July 13, 2004

Dialogus Interruptus

Been thinking off-and-on about the topic of INTERRUPTING today.

Some questions: 1) Do we understand more if interrupt and check/clarify? Or less?
2) Europeans -on the whole- interrupt more than Japanese people. Does
that mean they are better English speakers, or understand more?

Sometimes we’re forced to interrupt other people, we have no choice. If your American/British boss is explaining what he wants you to do, you HAVE TO interrupt if you don’t understand. If you don’t and make a cock-up, you may get fired.

But in the classroom, we have a choice whether to interrupt or not.

In the little class survey I did at the end of the lesson yesterday, I discovered that THREE students don’t interrupt others in class because they’re embarrassed to speak up in front of everyone (this is perfectly understandable). SEVEN students said they didn’t interrupt in class because they think it is impolite (this is understandable too.)

Other reasons for not interrupting (this is what you wrote):
“I have difficulty to understand” (So why not interrupt and clarify?)
“I don’t understand from the beginning of the story, and it’s hard for me to ask the long question” (Does this person here mean ‘wrong’ question? Why don’t they interrupt and ask the speaker to start again? English people do this all the time?)
“I try to understand the whole talk inspite (?) I don’t understand some words. I don’t want to interrupt at every vocabulary (?) I don’t understand.” (I think this is an excellent procedure. But what do you do if you realize that you AREN’T actually understanding the whole talk?)
“It’s impolite. Also, I don’t understand the accent.” (But if you don’t interrupt, that person won’t know that their accent is difficult to understand. In this way, isn’t interrupting, actually a way of HELPING them too?)

From a British/American perspective, I think interrupting (in Business, social life) is actually quite important, and usually something to be encouraged. If someone interrupts me it means that they are interested in what I’m saying, and want to understand me. If I am explaining something in class and you interrupt me to clarify something or ask a question, I am really happy to do so. Shouldn’t we all be aiming for this in and out of class? What’s to stop us? Is this just because in my culture, interruption is –on the whole- a good thing? You tell me.


He Talk Pretty For You

Being a huge fan of Mr Sedaris, was pleased to find all sorts of Dave-related stuff on the internet recently.

You can listen to him reading some of his essays here:

http://www.npr.org/programs/specials/lists/sedaris/

And the lovely folk at Salon.com allow you to download the essay which gave this blog its name (Me Talk Pretty One Day)here:

http://www.salon.com/audio/2000/10/05/sedaris_mepretty/

It's about, among other things, his attempts to learn French in New York and Paris. Well good.