Classic authors´ extracts and notes

CLASSIC AUTHORS

·         MARK TWAIN

·         CHARLES DICKENS

·         LEWIS CARROLL

·         ROALD DAHL

·         OSCAR WILDE

·         ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

·         KATHERINE MANSFIELD

__________________________________________

Commonwealth authors´ extracts and notes

 COMMONWEALTH AUTHORS

• GRACE NICHOLS

·         ETHEL SYBIL TURNER

·         SUSANNA MOODIE´

Grace Nichols

Grace Nichols was born in Georgetown, Guyana, and lived in a small village on the country's coast until her family moved to the city when she was eight years old.She took a Diploma in Communications from the University of Guyana, and subsequently worked as a teacher (1967–70), as a journalist and in government information services, before she emigrated to the UK in 1977.Much of her poetry is characterised by Caribbean rhythms and culture, and influenced by Guyanese and Amerindian folklore.

Her first collection of poetry, I is a Long-Memoried Woman won the 1983 Commonwealth Poetry Prize. She has written several further books of poetry and a novel for adults, Whole of a Morning Sky, 1986. Her books for children include collections of short stories and poetry anthologies. Her latest work, of new and selected poems, is Startling the Flying Fish, 2006. Her poetry is featured in the AQA, WJEC (Welsh Joint Education Committee), and Edexcel English/English Literature GCSE anthologies - meaning that many GCSE students in the UK have studied her work. Her religion is Christianity after she was influenced by the UK's many religions and multi-cultural society.

She lives in Lewes, East Sussex, with her partner, the Guyanese poet John Agard.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• I is a Long-Memoried Woman, London: Karnak House, 1983
• The Fat Black Woman's Poems, London: Virago Press, 1984
• A Dangerous Knowing: Four Black Women Poets (Barbara Burford, Gabriela Pearse, Grace Nichols, Jackie Kay), London: Sheba, 1985
• Whole of a Morning Sky (novel), London: Virago, 1986
• Over the River, 1986
• Hurricane Hits England, 1987
• Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Woman (poems), 1989
• Sunris (poems), London: Virago, 1996
• Startling the Flying Fish, 2006
• Picasso, I Want My Face Back, Bloodaxe Books, 2009
• I Have Crossed an Ocean: Selected Poems, Bloodaxe, 2010

For children

• Trust You, Wriggly, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1981
• Baby Fish and Other Stories from Village to Rain Forest, London: Nanny Books, 1983
• A Wilful Daughter, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1983
• Leslyn in London, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1984
• The Discovery, London: Macmillan Education, 1986
• Come On Into My Tropical Garden: Poems for Children, London: A. & C. Black, 1988
• Can I Buy a Slice of Sky?: Poems from Black, Asian and American Indian Cultures (editor), Knight Books
• Poetry Jump Up: An Anthology of Black Poetry, Harmondsworth: Puffin Books, 1989
• For Forest

NORMAN ALFRED WILLIAM LINDSAY

Birth: 22 February 1879 

Death: 21 November 1969 

Literacy work: Lindsay wrote the children's classic The Magic Pudding published in 1918 and created a scandal when his novel Redheap (supposedly based on his hometown, Creswick) was banned due to censorship laws. Many of his novels have a frankness and vitality that matches his art.

Contemporary authors´extracts and notes

CONTEMPORARY AUTHORS

• E.L.Konigsburg

Judy Blume

• Lois Lowry

·         FARAH GHUZNAVI

·         STEPHENIE MEYER

•  ARAVIND ADIGA´

E. L. Konigsburg

Elaine Lobl Konigsburg (February 10, 1930 – April 19, 2013) was an American writer and illustrator of children's books and young adult fiction. She is one of five writers to win two Newbery Medals.

·        Books

She wrote these novels:

-          Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth (1967), illus. ELK — 1968 UK title, Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, and Me

-          From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (1967), illus. ELK

-          About the B'nai Bagels (1969), illus. ELK

-          George (1970), illus. ELK — 1974 UK title, Benjamin Dickenson Carr and His (George)

-          Altogether, One at a Time (1971), short story collection^[8]

-          A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver (1973), illus. ELK, historical novel featuring Eleanor of Aquitaine^[8]

-          The Dragon in the Ghetto Caper (1974), illus. ELK

-          The Second Mrs. Giaconda (1975), historical novel featuring Leonardo da Vinci — also published as The Second Mrs. Gioconda

-          Father's Arcane Daughter (1976) — later published as My Father's Daughter^{[citation needed]}

-          Throwing Shadows (1979), short story collection

-          Journey to an 800 Number (1982) — 1983 UK title, Journey by First Class Camel

-          Up from Jericho Tel (1986)

-          Samuel Todd's Book of Great Colors (1990), picture book, illus. ELK

-          Samuel Todd's Book of Great Inventions (1991), picture book, illus. ELK

-          Amy Elizabeth Explores Bloomingdale's (1992), picture book, illus. ELK

-          T-Backs, T-Shirts, COAT, and Suit (1993)

-          TalkTalk: A Children's Book Author Speaks to Grown-ups (1998), nine lectures and speeches^[6]

-          The View from Saturday (1996)

-          Silent to the Bone (2000)

-          The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place (2004)

-          The Mysterious Edge of the Heroic World (2007)

The View from Saturday

The View from Saturday is a children's novel by E. L. Konigsburg, published by Atheneum Books for Young Readers in 1996. It won the 1997 Newbery Medal for excellence in American children's literature, the author's second Medal.

·         Books summary:

Eva Marie Olinski returned after her accident left her paraplegic. She chooses four of her sixth-grade students(Ethan, Noah, Nadia,&Julian), who form a group they call "The Souls," to represent her class in The academic bowl competition. They defeat the other sixth-grade teams, then the seventh- and eighth-grade champions at Epiphany, and so on until they become New York state middle school champions. The children help the teacher live a happier life after her win. A child named Ham makes fun and makes life harder for her. Later the Souls stick out their arms and legs when Mrs. Olinski Stands up for herself when Ham and his follower Jared Lord harass the class. They stick out their limbs to show that she can stand up for herself.

Between chapters that feature the progress of the competition, each of the four students narrates one chapter related both to the development of The Souls and to a question in the state championship final. Noah Gershom recounts learning calligraphy and being best man for his grandfather's friend at Century Village in Florida. Nadia Diamondstein describes working to conserve sea turtles and meeting Ethan, also at Century Village. Ethan Potter tells of meeting Julian, a new boy in town, and attending his tea parties, where the four Souls became friends. Julian Singh explains being new at school and tells of handling a chance for revenge against one of the bullies — remarkably grounded in the part played by Nadia's dog in the school musical "Annie".

·         Extract summary:

The extract talk about when the teacher was asked how she had selected the team for the competition. Main reason until the Bowl Day.

The students for the competition would call themselves ‘The Souls’.

·         Conclusion:

I would recommend book because it talks about education. I must say, I love this topic.

On the other hand, I wouldn’t recommend it for Primary School students because the vocabulary is difficult to understand. I would prefer an adaption version. 

JUDY BLUME

BIOGRAPHY

Judy Blume was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, in 1938. She spent her childhood there, making up stories inside her head. She has spent her adult years in many places doing the same thing, only now she writes her stories down on paper. She has received many prizes and recognitions for her books.

Written communication: Lesson notes

25/11/2013

WRITTEN COMMUNICATION

  …/…

-Reading what is it?

-Acquiring/learning to read.

-General and specific advantages of reading.

-A good and bad reader.

-Reading aloud is it reading?

-Communicative language activities of reading.

-Assessing reading evaluating and monitoring.

-Post- reading tasks: reading projects.

-Methods in teaching reading in L2.

How do we learn or “acquire” to read?

-Cognitive stage (psycholinguistic) related to listening and speaking: grapho-phonological relationships (it makes difficult to distinguish cognitive-strategies in the process of learning to read)

Written communication: Reading activities

Reading: active – mental skill that configurate one of our media to get information (it is a visual channel)

“Acquiring – learning reading” from a pshycolinguistic point of view reading is more a learning process (effect) than acquiring (cause). But from a practical point of view (because of the age our students start) we take advantage of the most benefits we can get from an early age. Even if it is a learning process we use many acquiring advantages.

How do we learn to read?

By definition reading is a mental-cognitive-active skill or ability. The cognitive stage of reading is very relevant and we have to be really careful to how to teach how to read to our kids. We have to make emphasis on the fact about how do we have to break down the paralization of the L1 strategies going to L2.

Request Strategies Across Languages

Request Strategies Across Languages

By making a request, the speaker infringes on the recipient’s freedom from imposition. The recipient may feel that the request is an intrusion on his/her freedom of action or even a power play. As for the requester, s/he may hesitate to make requests for fear of exposing a need or out of fear of possibly making the recipient lose face (Blum-Kulka et al., 1989, p. 11). In this sense, requests are face-threatening to both the requester and the recipient. Since requests have the potential to be intrusive and demanding, there is a need for the requester to minimize the imposition involved in the request

TEACHING SPOT: ¿Cómo enseñar a los niños a escribir con el teclado?

1. Comenzar por el ratón

2. Escribir letras y palabras sueltas

3. Escribir oraciones y párrafos dictados

4. Redactar textos de manera libre con una temática dada

Para seguir practicando de manera divertida se pueden utilizar estos juegos interactivos:

Aprende a manejar el ratón y el teclado

Lesson Notes (8th - 26th November)

8^th November 2013

Index:

–                    Segmental Units.

–                    …/...

–                    Suprasegmental units.

–                    Pitch/ stress.

–                    Entonation

–                    Rhythm.

–                    Reading phonetics/ phonology.

Speech Act Theory

Speech Act Theory

by Joanna Jaworowska

· What is a Speech Act?

§ Speech Acts and Meaning

§ Classification of Speech Acts

· Speech Act Theory

§ Are Speech Acts Universal or Culture and Language - Specific?

· Why should ESL Students Learn to Perform Speech Acts?

§ How to Teach Speech Acts?

· Refusal Studies

· Refusals in the Workplace as a Speech Event

· References

Análisis

The Edimburg Festival

Late summer is the only period in the calendar when the cultural festival of Great Britain really shifts away for London to Scotland. For those four weeks, television crews normally based in London send their reasearches for searching frantically for stories and celebrities in Edinburg.

What draws the attention of the international arts world is the extraordinary cultural mix that is the Edinburg festival.

1. Accented or non-accented:
- Accented: 24---> 45.8 %
- Non-acceted: 27---> 54.1 %

2. Vowels & consonants:
- Vowels: 93---> 38.9 %
- Consonats: 145---> 65 %
- Consonants (d t l s z n): 64---> 47.4 %

3. Schaw (ә): 34---> 39.5 %

Lesson notes 11th November: Communicative writing activities

According to the CEFRLs there are 3 types of communicative writing activities:

The level of writing practice goes from lexis to sentences and paragraph, and the expectation goes from accuracy to fluency.

·         Production: The child makes his own text.

-          Write the words (drawings) + spelling + crosswords + soup words.

-          Complete the sentences (close text)

-          Look and write sentences.

-          Complete the table (personal)

Lesson notes written communication (4th - 13th November)

4^th  November 2013

- Written communication:

            - What is it?

            - Differences with oral communication.

            - Skills in use.

-Acquiring/Learning to write:

            - Cognitive.

            - Practice.

            - Free-r production.

What is Commonwealth Literature?

LITERATURE: What is Commonwealth Literature?

- Commonwealth Literature, Post-Colonial Literature in English, New Literature in English, World Writing in English – these are just some of the terms being used to describe the writings of ‘members’ of the former British Empire.
The (British) Commonwealth of Nations, to give it its original name, is an association of states comprising Britain and its former colonies, along with their dependencies.

Ritmo - Gradiation

The term gradation and the concept that was used as a synonym for ablaut (denoting the variation of a root vowel to indicate a morphological change). Gradiation is plainly evident in a few cases where words exit on

their own and at the same time form part of compounds.

Type of clusters

1^st Type:

A consonant cluster (sometimes known as a consonant blend) is a group of consonants that appear together in a word without any vowels between them.

• bl-
  - black
  - blood
• -st
  - best
  - first

2^nd Type

A second type  consonant cluster is a group of consonants that appear together in a word with vowels between them. These clusters are phonic and have no direct correlation written. Generally ә between them. Example:

• -rily---> /rәli/
  - Voluntarily---> -rәli/
  - Primary---> -rәli/
  - Secondary---> rәli/
• -able--->/әbl/

- confortable---> /k nfә.t.әbl/

Se comienza a trabajar los clusters de final de palabra a principio(de izquierda a derecha). Esto hace para no permitir al cerebro que busque significado semántico.

TEACHING SPOT: Catenative verbs

CATENATIVE VERBS

Catenative verbs are verbs followed directly by another verb in the infinitive, present participle, or base form. The adjective catenative from the verb catenate means "to connect, to link, to string together" and refers to the connecting of one verb to another.

1. -ING FORM:

• Verbs followed by -ING.
• After PHRASAL VERBS.
• After PREPOSITIONS.

2. TO FORM:

• Verbs followed by TO.
• After ADJECTIVES.

3. Verbs followed by BARE INFINITIVE (infinitive WITHOUT to):

• Verbs followed by BARE INFINITIVE.
• MODAL VERBS.
• AUXILIARY VERBS.

4. Verbs followed by -ING and TO (with NO DIFFERENCE of meaning):
 

5. Verbs followed by -ING and TO (with DIFFERENT meanings):

WORDSHEET

http://esl-kids.com/index.php?page=worksheets