Style

TASK A: Write your poem about STYLE, after having seen the clip below.

TASK B

What does the title of this poem give to the poem, do you think? What is the Genius of the Crowd?

https://genius.com/Charles-bukowski-the-genius-of-the-crowd-annotated

Continue the story

Write the next chapter, or at least half a page. Try to keep the tone and style consistent with what you have read.

Jeff Winston was on the phone with his wife when he died. ”We need—” she’d said, and he never heard her say just what it was they needed, because something heavy seemed to slam against his chest, crushing the breath out of him. The phone fell from his hand and cracked the glass paperweight on his desk. Just the week before, she’d said something similar, had said, ”Do you know what we need, Jeff?” and there’d been a pause—not infinite, not final, like this mortal pause, but a palpable interim nonetheless. He’d been sitting at the kitchen table, in what Linda liked to call the ”breakfast nook,” although it wasn’t really a separate space at all, just a little formica table with two chairs placed awkwardly between the left side of the refrigerator and the front of the clothes drier. Linda had been chopping onions at the counter when she said it, and maybe the tears at the corner of her eyes were what had set him thinking, had lent her question more import than she’d intended. ”Do you know what we need, Jeff?” And he was supposed to say, ”What’s that, hon?” was supposed to say it distractedly and without interest as he read Hugh Sidey’s column about the presidency in Time.

 

Grammar

  1. Check all instances of I. They should be with capital I and nothing else.
  2. Check all national words. They should have capital letters: English, Englishman.
  3. Check all instances of a and an. A before consonant sound, an before vowel sound. (A European agreement, an honest proposal).
  4. Check all verbs in the text.
    • Present tense: He/she/it speaks
    • Agreement: John jumps, Ted and Bill jump; John was late. Bill and Ted were late; John has diabetes. Wolves and dogs have fur; Samuel is sick. John and Bill are funny.
  5. Check all Where and were. Where is used for placement: Where is the car? The city where I grew up. Were is used as a verb. We were late for class.
  6. Genitive. When somebody owns something an apostrophe and an s is added to indicate ownership, as in: This is Daniel’s car. It is John’s wife.

 

NOTICE 1: Charles’ car.

NOTICE 2: It is = It’s. It’s a plane, not superman: The car is blue, but it has lost one of its wheels.

 

  1. Then and than. Then is used in all comparisons when they deal with time. Than is used in all other cases. I first came to Newark and then I went to New York. I am taller than you.
  2. Who’s and whose. Who’s the new teacher? That’s the guy whose bike I stole.
  3. Who or Whom. Who wrote the letter? He wrote the letter. Therefore, who is correct.

For whom should I vote? Should I vote for him? Therefore, whom is correct.

 

  1. Which and Who and That. Which is used when dealing with things. Who is used when dealing with people. That is as which but is only used in restrictive clauses.

 

Gems that sparkle make me happy. Diamonds, which are expensive, often make girls happy. This is John who I met last week in Paris. John is on the team that won first place. The editorial claiming racial differences in intelligence, which appeared in the Sunday newspaper, upset me.

 

Lies, lies, lies

As we talked about when we worked with Gasland it is a course aim that you should be able to find information and be able to question the credibility and reliability of different sources. I just wanted to return to this topic again and at the same time let you have a look at two important historical events in the United States. Both events really makes you question to which extent you can trust what politicians say.

History is filled with lies and deceit. Falsehoods are often a necessary ingredient in the world of politics, it seems.

The first event is the Tonkin Bay Incident, which started the Vietnam War. The initial story about what happened at Tonkin Bay was later questioned and some said that the politicians lied to further their own ends.

The Tonkin Bay incident resulted in the Tonkin Bay resolution, which gave the president (Lyndon Baines Johnson power to go to war in Vietnam.)

The US Naval institute’s version

Historynet’s version of the events

The second event is the Iraq War and the whole controversy surrounding the so-called ”smoking gun”. UN’s weapons inspectors had not found any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but Colin Powell claimed they had a thick intelligence file that showed that the Iraqis had weapons of mass destruction (WMD). His argument in the UN made most people think that the US was in the right: that Iraq still had WMDs.

Task 1

Here is his speech at the UN. Do you get the impression that the US had proof of WMDs? Why? Post as a comment.

(The different perspectives on the issues is presented and mixed into one in the wiki about this subject. Also former vice-prime minister of Sweden Per Ahlmark wrote in the Wall Street Journal that the head of the weapons inspectors (a Swede called Hans Blix) was incompetent and weak. [Per Ahlmark’s criticism of UN’s weapons inspector Hans Blix.]

 

Task 2

What do you think you can do to avoid being deceived in a world where both companies and politicians can lie? Post as a comment.

Task 3

The Second World War started with a false flag operation. What is a false flag operation? (How did the war start?). Post as a comment.

Task 4

The Vietnam War is often described as a US defeat. Noam Chomsky who was one of its earliest critics has a completely different take on it. Read: https://chomsky.info/unclesam07/

What does he say? Do you think he is right?

Feedback on News desk

Team 1
1. stand up
2. improve bridges
3. rehearse reading (remove difficult words)

Wojcek, Dystyr, Simon

Team 2

1. no Swedish words
2. freer from text
3.

öresundsbron, ö Linkinresund bridge
facket, union

freer from text

Atheer’s team
1. Presentation and bridges
2. Snappy

Ossian’s team
1. Presentation and bridges
Welcome to COMA NEWS
The headlines are ACCIDENT ON THE HIGHWAY, GOOGLE GETS A BILLION DOLLAR FINE, SOCCER MATCHES IN EUROPE and Spring Comes Early, isnt that right, Sean?

2. Snappier

Marcus’s team

1. BODY LANGUAGE

2. PREP MORE

Dennis’s team

1. Soundbyte

Wojceck, Eddvin and Johan

Use spellchecker

Ronnie, Dystyr, Simon

Use the same computer

News desk

Instruction

On a newspaper or on a TV-channel they have journalists and editors that work with different issues. A regular newspaper like The Guardian has a news desk for current news, another one for politics, another one for foreign affairs, another one for sports, etc.

Your assignment is to form a news desk and make news broadcasts in the classroom.

Each news desk should consist of three people.

Each news desk should focus on one area. If you are on the Science program, your field is science. If you are on the Social program focusing on economics, your field is finance and economy, etc. You could also choose some other field, just check with me.

General guidelines

Your presentation should last for 10 minutes.
Not mere reading aloud from a script.

Difficult words. Your audience should be able to understand your vocabulary. If you have any unusual or infrequent vocabulary, write them on the white board before you start and explain them briefly, or give their Swedish translation.

You should stand up during your presentation

Process
On Thursdays the news desk has its weekly meeting and each student brings at least two pieces of news (or equivalent) for the newsdesk to prepare. The news desks prepares a script for the broadcast and rehearses.

On Fridays the news desks are given 5-10 minutes to prepare their broadcast. At this point each news desk then proceeds to broadcast their news to the class.

You get brownie points for

  • Jingle and visual backdrop
  • Good bridges between reporters
  • Written scripts/notes

Book report

After having read the book you should write a book report. A text about what you thought and felt when you read the book. The book report should be at least one page long.

Title: My thoughts after reading No Country for Old Men

If you want to make an even better report you can write one more page or possibly two. You can then consider the following questions.

  • In what way is this book a Western? In what ways is it not a traditional western? Why does it deviate from the western genre?
  • What does the title of the book mean? What do you think of Bell’s look on life?
  • Who is Anton Chigurh? What is he like? How do you see the the coin-toss scene?
  • The story is about chance, uncertainty, but also about what is determined and unchangeable. In what way? What do you think about life – in what sense is it uncertain? In what way determined? What does that tell you?
  • The book is also to some degree about money. What does it have to say about it? What do you think about that?
  • In what way are men and women portrayed in the book, what do you think about that?
  • Also: list any new words you looked up and learned.

 

Clips from the film that can help you in your report.

Deadline: 14th of March

Idag TE17

Engelska

Read http://www.authorama.com/old-greek-stories-5.html

Task

Summarize the basic story of Prometheus and post a link to an example of use of symbols or satire in modern culture (language or image). Explain your choice.

Post as a comment.

SVENSKA

Läs:

https://www.svt.se/opinion/sverige-maste-uppdatera-sin-syn-pa-internationell-adoption

Är adoption att leka gud? Var går gränsen mellan god och ond adoption? Hur kan man se adoption som kolonialism?

Hur vet man vad som är bra och dåligt i livet? Vad innebär det att vara fri? Vad får du ut av berättelsen?

Posta som en kommentar

Write me a tweet

 

Last year president Donald Trump issued an executive order that made it harder to finance planned parenthood and put limits to organizations who work with women in need of an abortion.

An executive order is one of the powers of the president. The first famous executive order was the Emancipation Proclamation by President Abraham Lincoln, abolishing slavery.

Task 1

Read one or both of the texts.

Write a tweet about the text you read. 😉 Or, very short summary. Trump likes writing tweets perhaps you can even imitate his style?

Present 3-5 new words from the text and explain them.

Symbol, satire, caricature

A symbol of knowledge is light as we discussed in Swedish. Others are an apple and seed, and of course fire or flame as in the ancient Greek story about Prometheus.

The apple is not only used in the story of Adam and Eve, but also famously about how Isaac Newton came up with his theory of gravity. What’s the myth? (What’s Newtons visual explanation of gravity, what is Einstein’s?)

Satire and caricature

The Enlightenment saw the first newspapers, like The Tatler. Political satire, as in A Modest Proposal, where Swift suggests the eating of Irish children as a solution to poverty, became popular. But also caricature like in the famous work of Hogarth, an Enlightenment artist (Google his name and have a look at his art if you like, example below)


This, next one, by James Gilray, from the 1800s,  shows what?


Who are the guys in the caricature? What are they up to?

Task

Summarize the basic story of Prometheus and post a link to an example of use of symbols or satire in modern culture (language or image). Explain your choice.

Post as a comment.