mandag 23. mai 2011

Task about "New Englishes"

    Task 1 - answer both a) and b)
  1.  
  2. You didn't see him, is it?
  3. When you would like to go?
  4. That man he is tall.
  5. Her jewelleries were stolen.
  6. I am understanding it now.
  7. They two very good friends.
  8. Sushila is extremely a lazy girl .
  9. When you leaving?
  10. Rewritten sentences:
  11. You didin't see him, did you?
  12. When would you like to go?
  13. That man is tall.
  14. Her jewellery were stolen.
  15. I understand it now.
  16. They two are very good friends.
  17. Sushila is an extremely lazy girl.
  18. When are you leaving?
  19.  
  20. When looking at sentence number 4 we can see that jewellery is written jewelleries. The word jewellery is a term that can be used both in single and plural and doesn't need to be inflected to suite the sentence. The way I would write it: Her jewellery were stolen.
  21. In sentence number 6 the verb is missing before the explaining part of the sentence. I would write the sentence: They two are very good friends. However I believe I would actually remove the word "two" and write: "They are very good friends", since that makes more sense.
  22. Sentence number 7:"Sushila is extremely a lazy girl ". The indefinite article is misplaced.  The correct way of saying it would be: "Sushila is an extremely lazy girl. "
  23. Also in sentence number 8, we can se that the verb is missing before the object in the sentence. Correct way: "When are you leaving?".

onsdag 4. mai 2011

Lesotho and Moliehi Sekese

This week, in class we have been visited by Moliehi Sekese, a reward winning teacher from Lesotho, a small country with little over 1.9 million inhabitants, surrounded by South Africa. The country is, despite its size, very beautiful, complete with great mountains like the peak of "Thabana Ntlenyana" which is 3'482 meters above sea level. All though the country has a lot of mountains the really interesting part is the overall altitude of the country. The lowest point in Lesotho is at 1400 meters making it the only country where all of the land is above 1000 meters. As I mentioned, Lesotho is surrounded by South Africa. In other words it is an enclave, a country situated within another state, but because of Lesotho's height the climate and the country in general is much different from the rest of South Africa. The temperatures are much lower and the summers are shorter, some places they have snow parts of the year, and in the mountains they have snow all year around. 

As well as being a beautiful and tiny country it is also one of the poorest countries in the world, giving the people of Lesotho inexcusable school conditions as an example. Despite the fact that Moliehi's school has few resources she has been dedicated to her work all the time and has managed to provide her school with several computers. Moliehi Sekese is a teacher at Mamoeketsi Primary School in Lesotho. When she first started using technology in class she borrowed two laptops from a friend. Her school however didn't get electricity before 2010, which meant she had to charge the computers at home and then bring it to class at school. Even though the school has few technological resources Moliehi managed to win one of Microsoft’s technology competitions. Winning the competition gave her the opportunity to visit other countries like Britain, Brazil, Sweden and Norway on conferences.

Moliehi's dedication towards the school is something we should all learn from and I believe we should think about how lucky we are to be born in Norway. We should really us the opportunity for education we've been given, and use the access of technology to our advantage. 



Double entry journal!

I have recently finished my book of choice in International English which was Illusions by the famous author Richard Bach. He has also written "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" which became a success. This is his second book and I must say I enjoyed it almost just as much as his first book. The two books are kind of similar in the way they are written and because of the double meaning that they both have. Even so I must say Illusions was even more difficult to read than the first one, because the language was more advanced and the story was harder to follow. In this blog entry I have written a double entry journal where I have taken an extract from the book and described a bit about it afterwards.




From the book: Illusions - by Richard Bach
Your own reflections
1.       Relationship
The book only consists of two main people. Therefore the relationship between Donald Shimoda and Richard.

"For half a minute I watched him,too, looking at the mystery of his calm. I wouldn't have been so cool just to sit there and watch another plane land in a field with me and park ten yards away. I nodded, liking him without knowing why."
Page 26



My example is taken from the beginning of the book, just before Donald and Richard meet each other for the first time, and we see already here that they have some kind of a bond with one another. The relationship between Donald Shimoda and Richard is what characterizes the book from the start. Donald is what Richard thinks of as a perfect human being or a Messiah in this case. He looks up to Don and becomes almost an apprentice following and learning from him at all times. A typical example from the book would be that Donald comes with statements or questions that he wants Richard to reflect upon and answer as good as he possible can. The relationship between the two of them can be quite complicated at times, but I believe it symbolizes how many normal friendships might be. Despite the fact that Donald and Richard spends almost every day together after they meet and have a pretty intense friendship in my perspective, I think a lot of people look up to their friends maybe as a role model and takes after them to become just as "good" as they believe their friends are. The dedication towards their friends doesn't necessarily have to be as strong as we see in "Illusions", but in a similar way as in a smaller scale.
2.       Self realization
Richards self realization:

"As always. Richard, you are going to lose ninety percent of your audience unless you learn to keep it short!" "Well, what's wrong with losing ninety percent of my audience?" I shot back at him. "What's wrong with losing ALL my audience? I know what I know and I talk what I talk! And if that's wrong then that's just too bad. The airplane rides are three dollars, cash!" You know what?" Shimoda stood up, brushing the hay off his blue jeans. "What?" I said petulantly. "You just graduated. How does it feel to be a Master?"
Page 120

My second example, I picked out from one of the last parts of the book. This is where Richard starts to get really skilled at what he has learned from Don and this part is also where he achieves self realization, something he strives for throughout the book.
I believe the main theme of this book lies in the name; "Illusions". From the start we see Richard meeting his ultimate messiah, Donald Shimoda. He teaches him about life in a way he never taught existed and opened his mined so he could see his own life and every one else’s in a whole new perspective. Both Don and Richard do what they like the most, flying, and this is also how they meet the first time. Throughout their friendship Richard becomes more and more aware of what life really implies. Don makes him see that every aspect of the world, surrounding them, are all just illusions, that they can decide for themselves what is right and what they want to believe in and how they want to live. They don't necessarily have to depend on the rest of the world, but the world depends on what they want it to be. Also he makes him believe that every person lives in a world of their own creating their way of life, which is different from everyone else’s. At first I thought the book was just confusing and full of boring speculations and digressions about life, but after reading for a while and when I started to really get the story I felt that a lot of what was written was a little bit genius. Also when I finished the book I realized that it wasn’t just a book about life, but also a well thought of way of writing a story and that's actually what I like about Richard Bach; he writes both in "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" and "Illusions" a story with a double meaning which makes the book appealing. It makes it appealing, I believe, because there's so many ways of interpreting his stories. I don't think you should ponder to much about what he writes, he's only an author, but everyone can have their opinion of what the underlying story is really about and that's what I like about it and also makes the book fun to talk about with other who's also read it.