I have a question abbout 12/11.. Then..
Firstly- very briefly- some information about the country project.
Groups and topics
UGANDAN SOCIETY
1. Importance of English in society
Amanda, Erik, Julia B, Ebba
2. Births and marriages- traditions and importance
Melinda, Nora, Madelene, Karl
3. Music, dance and Art in society
Hanna, Frida, Mattias, Julia M
4. Impact of social media
Anna, Hannah, August, Edit
MUSIC GROUP
Music traditions in different English speaking countries
Sabina, Ryder, Anton, Matthias
Emelie, Marcus
Free choice about an English speaking country
Presentations on Friday week 41
All groups 10 minutes EXCEPT Emelie & Marcus= 5 minutes
Our film is connected to the US election.
Here is a very good website with a lot of information about it
http://www.bbc.com/news/election/us2016
Now let's see the film.
Friday, 16 September 2016
Monday, 12 September 2016
American English- an introduction
First off Today a quick ice-breaker.
Find the person by asking a yes/no question
Do you have an uncle....
Then we are going to look at American English.
Can you guess some of the abbreviations for the States on the map below?
I love to be in America
Here is the opening chapter of Bill Bryson's book "Notes from a big country"
COMING HOME I once joked in a book that there are three things you can't do in life. You can't beat the phone company, you can't make a waiter see you until he is ready to see you, and you can't go home again. Since the spring of 1995, I have been quietly, even gamely, reassessing point number three.
In May of that year, after nearly two decades in England, I moved back to the United States with my English wife and four children. We settled in Hanover, New Hampshire, for no other reason than that it seemed an awfully nice place. Founded in 1761, it is a friendly, well-ordered, prettily steepled community with a big central green, an old-fashioned Main Street, and a rich and prestigious university, Dartmouth College, whose benignly dominant presence gives the town a backdrop of graceful buildings, an air of privileged endeavor, and the presence of five thousand students, not one of whom can be trusted to cross a road in safety. With this came other attractions-good schools, an excellent bookstore and library, a venerable movie theater (The Nugget, founded in 1916), a good choice of restaurants, and a convivial bar called Murphy's. Helplessly beguiled, we bought a house near the center of town and moved in.
Coming back to your native land after an absence of many years is a surprisingly unsettling business, a little like waking from a long coma. Time, you discover, has wrought changes that leave you feeling mildly foolish and out of touch. You proffer hopelessly inadequate sums when making small purchases. You puzzle over ATM machines and automated gas pumps and pay phones, and are astounded to discover, by means of a stern grip on your elbow, that gas station road maps are no longer free.
In my case, the problem was intensified by the fact that I had left as a youth and was returning in middle age. All those things that you do as an adult-take out mortgages, have children, accumulate pension plans, take an interest in the state of your guttering-I had only ever done in England. Things like furnaces and storm windows were, in an American context, the preserve of my father. So finding myself suddenly in charge of an old New England house, with its mysterious pipes and thermostats, its temperamental garbage disposal and life-threatening automatic garage door, was both unnerving and rather exhilarating.
It is disconcerting to find yourself so simultaneously in your element and out of it. I can enumerate all manner of minutiae that mark me out as an American-which of the fifty states has a unicameral legislature, what a squeeze play is in baseball, who played Captain Kangaroo on TV. I even know about two-thirds of the words to "The Star-Spangled Banner," which is more than some people know who have sung it publicly.
But send me to the hardware store and even now I am totally lost. For months I had conversations with the clerk at our local True-Value that went something like this:
"Hi. I need some of that goopy stuff you fill nail holes in walls with. My wife's people call it Pollyfilla."
"Ah, you mean spackle."
"Very possibly. And I need some of those little plastic things that you use to hold screws in the wall when you put shelves up. I know them as rawl plugs."
"We call them anchors."
"I shall make a mental note of it."
Really, I could hardly have felt more foreign if I had stood there dressed in lederhosen. All this was a shock to me. Although I was always very happy in Britain, I never stopped thinking of America as home, in the fundamental sense of the term. It was where I came from, what I really understood, the base against which all else was measured.
In a funny way nothing makes you feel more like a native of your own country than to live where nearly everyone is not. For twenty years, being an American was my defining quality. It was how I was identified, differentiated. I even got a job on the strength of it once when, in a moment of youthful audacity, I asserted to a managing editor of the London Times that I would be the only person on his staff who could reliably spell Cincinnati. (And it was so.)
Happily, there is a flipside to this. The many good things about America also took on a bewitching air of novelty. I was as dazzled as any newcomer by the famous ease and convenience of daily life, the giddying abundance of absolutely everything, the boundless friendliness of strangers, the wondrous unfillable vastness of an American basement, the delight of encountering waitresses and other service providers who actually seemed to enjoy their work, the curiously giddy-ing notion that ice is not a luxury item and that rooms can have more than one electrical socket.
As well, there has been the constant, unexpected joy of reencountering all those things I grew up with but had largely forgotten: baseball on the radio, the deeply satisfying whoing-bang slam of a screen door in summer, insects that glow, sudden run-for-your-life thunderstorms, really big snowfalls, Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July, the smell of a skunk from just the distance that you have to sniff the air quizzically and say: "Is that a skunk?", Jell-O with stuff in it, the pleasingly comical sight of oneself in shorts. All that counts for a lot, in a strange way.
So, on balance, I was wrong. You can go home again. Just bring extra money for road maps and remember to ask for spackle.
What areas did Bill have problems with after having lived almost twenty years in the UK?
What aspects of life did he enjoy reliving?
How did he find adapting to American English?
Read and Discuss
Read the section in the book "In the English-speaking World" (pages 10-11).
Then discuss the two questions A & B on page 11.
Turn the page and do the pre-reading exercise about your town (village)
Read and decide which of the following themes are relevant to the text:-
people
shops
cars
animals
buildings
weather
Do the comprehension and vocabulary sections.
Finally on Youtube find some clips that show some differences between UK and US English. Make a note of some of them.
On Friday we will distribute the assignments for the English-speaking project.
Find the person by asking a yes/no question
Do you have an uncle....
Then we are going to look at American English.
Can you guess some of the abbreviations for the States on the map below?
Here is the opening chapter of Bill Bryson's book "Notes from a big country"
COMING HOME I once joked in a book that there are three things you can't do in life. You can't beat the phone company, you can't make a waiter see you until he is ready to see you, and you can't go home again. Since the spring of 1995, I have been quietly, even gamely, reassessing point number three.
In May of that year, after nearly two decades in England, I moved back to the United States with my English wife and four children. We settled in Hanover, New Hampshire, for no other reason than that it seemed an awfully nice place. Founded in 1761, it is a friendly, well-ordered, prettily steepled community with a big central green, an old-fashioned Main Street, and a rich and prestigious university, Dartmouth College, whose benignly dominant presence gives the town a backdrop of graceful buildings, an air of privileged endeavor, and the presence of five thousand students, not one of whom can be trusted to cross a road in safety. With this came other attractions-good schools, an excellent bookstore and library, a venerable movie theater (The Nugget, founded in 1916), a good choice of restaurants, and a convivial bar called Murphy's. Helplessly beguiled, we bought a house near the center of town and moved in.
Coming back to your native land after an absence of many years is a surprisingly unsettling business, a little like waking from a long coma. Time, you discover, has wrought changes that leave you feeling mildly foolish and out of touch. You proffer hopelessly inadequate sums when making small purchases. You puzzle over ATM machines and automated gas pumps and pay phones, and are astounded to discover, by means of a stern grip on your elbow, that gas station road maps are no longer free.
In my case, the problem was intensified by the fact that I had left as a youth and was returning in middle age. All those things that you do as an adult-take out mortgages, have children, accumulate pension plans, take an interest in the state of your guttering-I had only ever done in England. Things like furnaces and storm windows were, in an American context, the preserve of my father. So finding myself suddenly in charge of an old New England house, with its mysterious pipes and thermostats, its temperamental garbage disposal and life-threatening automatic garage door, was both unnerving and rather exhilarating.
It is disconcerting to find yourself so simultaneously in your element and out of it. I can enumerate all manner of minutiae that mark me out as an American-which of the fifty states has a unicameral legislature, what a squeeze play is in baseball, who played Captain Kangaroo on TV. I even know about two-thirds of the words to "The Star-Spangled Banner," which is more than some people know who have sung it publicly.
But send me to the hardware store and even now I am totally lost. For months I had conversations with the clerk at our local True-Value that went something like this:
"Hi. I need some of that goopy stuff you fill nail holes in walls with. My wife's people call it Pollyfilla."
"Ah, you mean spackle."
"Very possibly. And I need some of those little plastic things that you use to hold screws in the wall when you put shelves up. I know them as rawl plugs."
"We call them anchors."
"I shall make a mental note of it."
Really, I could hardly have felt more foreign if I had stood there dressed in lederhosen. All this was a shock to me. Although I was always very happy in Britain, I never stopped thinking of America as home, in the fundamental sense of the term. It was where I came from, what I really understood, the base against which all else was measured.
In a funny way nothing makes you feel more like a native of your own country than to live where nearly everyone is not. For twenty years, being an American was my defining quality. It was how I was identified, differentiated. I even got a job on the strength of it once when, in a moment of youthful audacity, I asserted to a managing editor of the London Times that I would be the only person on his staff who could reliably spell Cincinnati. (And it was so.)
Happily, there is a flipside to this. The many good things about America also took on a bewitching air of novelty. I was as dazzled as any newcomer by the famous ease and convenience of daily life, the giddying abundance of absolutely everything, the boundless friendliness of strangers, the wondrous unfillable vastness of an American basement, the delight of encountering waitresses and other service providers who actually seemed to enjoy their work, the curiously giddy-ing notion that ice is not a luxury item and that rooms can have more than one electrical socket.
As well, there has been the constant, unexpected joy of reencountering all those things I grew up with but had largely forgotten: baseball on the radio, the deeply satisfying whoing-bang slam of a screen door in summer, insects that glow, sudden run-for-your-life thunderstorms, really big snowfalls, Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July, the smell of a skunk from just the distance that you have to sniff the air quizzically and say: "Is that a skunk?", Jell-O with stuff in it, the pleasingly comical sight of oneself in shorts. All that counts for a lot, in a strange way.
So, on balance, I was wrong. You can go home again. Just bring extra money for road maps and remember to ask for spackle.
What areas did Bill have problems with after having lived almost twenty years in the UK?
What aspects of life did he enjoy reliving?
How did he find adapting to American English?
Read and Discuss
Read the section in the book "In the English-speaking World" (pages 10-11).
Then discuss the two questions A & B on page 11.
Turn the page and do the pre-reading exercise about your town (village)Read and decide which of the following themes are relevant to the text:-
people
shops
cars
animals
buildings
weather
Do the comprehension and vocabulary sections.
On Friday we will distribute the assignments for the English-speaking project.
Friday, 9 September 2016
Classic book and an English speaking world
Hi everyone!I want to know where your letters are. Only 10 people sent them to me digitally (at the time of writing- Friday morning 06.50!)
The deadline was today FRIDAY! If I don't have them sent by Sunday evening 6 p.m. then maybe you have chosen the wrong course!!!!
Classic Book
Today we will be beginning the first of three literary works which are part of the course.
We start with a "classic".
The definition of what constitutes a "classic" has always been open to interpretation and discussion. I want you to add your fuel to this discussion.
Here is the document I would like you to download as a basis for your assignment.
If you cannot find anything of interest on our shelves then here is a list of possible authors.
Finally to give some perspective of what was going on in the UK during the nineteenth century (1800's) I have included a time-line of important events.
Your classic book will be discussed individually with me before Christmas.
Our second task for today (and next week) is to look at the English speaking world
The texts in "Lifestyles" (English C) show how different
English can be like in different parts of the world.
The first text about Arthur Cain is from Scotland.
The sound file is available here for the first part so you can
hear what Scottish English can sound like..
b)A completely different accent would be the one used by Bill
Sprockett. You can listen to a little section here. But this is a
reading task and not just listening.
After the break
c) The speaking task is divided into two parts. First of all
with your neighbour discuss this story. How would you
describe Bill Sprockett's lifestyle?
Stereotypes and expectations
What stereotypes of Australia are in this text? What is
"typically" Australian?
Compare with Sweden... What is typically Swedish?
What expectations are placed on you? Studies? Sports? Life
choices?
Finally a reflection about "Expectations" and what is typically Australian and Swedish.
Please send it on Vklass as a message
Secondly do the speaking exercise on page 14/15 in groups of 4
We will start off on Monday with a short ice-breaker and
then go on to look at the superdialect of American English.
I will also present the project task when many of us will be in
Uganda
On Friday we will introduce the US elections and see a
documentary film about one of the people involved.
The deadline was today FRIDAY! If I don't have them sent by Sunday evening 6 p.m. then maybe you have chosen the wrong course!!!!
Classic Book
Today we will be beginning the first of three literary works which are part of the course.
We start with a "classic".
The definition of what constitutes a "classic" has always been open to interpretation and discussion. I want you to add your fuel to this discussion.
Here is the document I would like you to download as a basis for your assignment.
If you cannot find anything of interest on our shelves then here is a list of possible authors.
Finally to give some perspective of what was going on in the UK during the nineteenth century (1800's) I have included a time-line of important events.
Your classic book will be discussed individually with me before Christmas.
Our second task for today (and next week) is to look at the English speaking world
English can be like in different parts of the world.
The first text about Arthur Cain is from Scotland.
The sound file is available here for the first part so you can
hear what Scottish English can sound like..
b)A completely different accent would be the one used by Bill
Sprockett. You can listen to a little section here. But this is a
reading task and not just listening.
After the break
c) The speaking task is divided into two parts. First of all
with your neighbour discuss this story. How would you
describe Bill Sprockett's lifestyle?
Stereotypes and expectations
What stereotypes of Australia are in this text? What is
"typically" Australian?
Compare with Sweden... What is typically Swedish?
What expectations are placed on you? Studies? Sports? Life
choices?
Finally a reflection about "Expectations" and what is typically Australian and Swedish.
Please send it on Vklass as a message
Secondly do the speaking exercise on page 14/15 in groups of 4
We will start off on Monday with a short ice-breaker and
then go on to look at the superdialect of American English.
I will also present the project task when many of us will be in
Uganda
On Friday we will introduce the US elections and see a
documentary film about one of the people involved.
Monday, 5 September 2016
In the beginning ................
The Monday lessons will begin at 8 and go to about 8.50. Thereafter you will have 50 minutes to work on your assignments. If you use this time wisely you will have a good foundation for the rest of the course.
The Friday's lesson will be the full 100 minutes (from 8 a.m. to 9.40 a.m.)
However, today we will use the time at our disposal. The lesson will consist of some administration and a couple of tasks.
Having distributed the books (English C ) we will endeavour to look at the curriculum for the course.
Here it is in digital format.
Get into groups of 3-4 students. Give concrete examples of different activities for the Reception and Production areas.
Send your suggestions as a message on Vklass.
By Friday I shall endeavour to put your observations into some kind of planner for the autumn term.
I have also included a letter to you digital format. I want a reply to this by Friday AT THE LATEST. Here is my letter..
This is intended to get you writing again!
Send your letters as a document to the course page on Vklass
The planner will be affected by the field trip to Uganda with SA14 and 2 students from ES14. During this time you will work with a reading assignment (See below!) and prepare for a spoken presentation about aspects of the English speaking world for week 41
Since the language used in the document is complex I have included a copy in Swedish of the original document. It is here on the right-hand side of the blog.
It is important to see this course as a melting-pot where we will be able to contribute ideas and give input.
Some things are compulsory- writing workshop, presentation of "gymnasiearbete" literature etc.. Others need to be planned and formulated.
Welcome to what, hopefully, will prove to be a stimulating and challenging experience.
I want you to start off by discussing in pairs/threes the issue of gender parity on government boards
http://www.thelocal.se/20160902/sweden-achieves-gender-equality-on-government-boards
Read the article and discuss your views about how important this is. What is your opinion?
On Friday morning you will get a chance to borrow a classic book and be given your first assignment. As well as this we will work on a text in the English C book- Bill Sprockett's Land
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)