Spot Checks ..

Spot Check p. 266:

a) What are the three main genres of literature?
 Fiction, Drama and Poetry

 b) Are fictional stories always untrue?
Most fiction consist of made-up stories, but the relationship between fiction and factual reality is often a complicated one, and the fact that a story is partly true does not disqualify it from belonging to the fiction genre.

c) What are the differences in the way fiction and drama relate to stories?
In fiction you write the story, but in drama you show the story.

d) What is meant by "prose"?
Prose writing is writing that follows the patterns of ordinary speech, without regular rhythm or rhyme.

e) What is meant by "free verse"?
"Free verse" is poetry lacking regular metre or rhyme.

f) How does literature differ from a user manual?
Literature can be fun, witty, entertaining, personal, philosophical etc. When you write   a user manual, you have to be as clear as possible, so a manual that is open to interpretation is useless. That is why most manuals are usually very boring.

g) How is interpreting literature different from interpreting real life?
To interpret literature we have to use our knowledge of the world and human nature.

Spot Check p. 281:

 a) What are the four main types of point of view?
Third-person objective point of view, third-person limited point of view, third-person omniscient point of view and first-person point of view.

b) Explain in your own words the difference between the third-person limited and the third-person omniscient point of view: In the limited point of view you only get to know one person, and in the omniscient point of view you get to know many characters.

c) What is meant by a "reliable" narrator?
A "reliable" narrator is often the third-person point of view, and specially the omniscient point of view, and then you have access to a lot of thoughts and opinions.

Spot Check p. 296:

a) What is the difference between direct and indirect characterisation?
Direct characterisation is when the author tells us diretly what the character is like. For example: "Charlie Richardson was a boy of 17 with a face full of freckles.  Indirect characterisation is when the author shows what traits characters have through the way they act and through the things they say. For example: "No problem at all," cried Charlie, drawing back a mop of ginger hair from his freckled face.

b) What is required for a character to be experienced as "round"?
A round character is closer to the complexity of real life than a flat character. ¨

c) Why is a "flat" character usually also static?
A flat character is usually also static because they rarely change. They do not have the ability to change.

d) Why can only a dynamic character experience an epiphany?
A flat, dynamic character can not change or develop, and when you experience and epiphany you realise life has to change.

Spot Check p.288:

a) Where is Jerome at the beginning of the story, and how old is he then?
He was nine years old and he was at school.

b) Describe the school he attends:
His school is a rather expensive preporatory school.

c) Why does he not live at home?
His father travels a lot because of his job.

d) What kind of pictures does Jerome have of his father?
He has different postcards with pictures of his father around the world.

e) What difficulties does the housemaster have when telling Jerome what has happened to his father?
He has difficulties not to laugh when he tells what has happened.

f) What is told in the story about the father? For example, his professions, Jerome's attitude to him etc: It says that he travelled a lot and that Jerome did not know what he did, and that he worshiped his father.

g) What happens when Jerome tells his best friend in public school about the accident?
Jerome realizes how the stories affect others, because his friend probably started laughing (even though it does not say so in the text).

h) Why does Jerome not want to talk to his fiancè about his fathers death?
He is afraid that she will laugh like the others.

Written task literature: Global Challenges

“In your course you have studied global challenges through English-language literature and films. Write a text in which you reflect on how effective a literary text and a film have been in raising your awareness about one or two global challenges. Use examples from each work.”

When we are watching films and reading books, in addition to enjoy ourselves we also learn things. A lot of the films and books today is based on global challenges, and although we may not think about it while we are reading or watching films, this definitely raises our awareness about global challenges in the world.  There are several books and films that have raised my awareness, but some made a bigger impression than others.

Last year we watched a film called "12 years a slave ". 12 years a slave is a drama film based on a memoir from 1953 by Solomon Northup, a free African-American man who was kidnapped in Washington D.C in 1841, and sold into slavery. Northup worked on plantations in the state of Louisiana for twelve years before his release in 1853.

In the film, Solomon works as a violinist in New York, and he lives with his wife and their two children. He gets a two-week job offer from to men called Brown and Hamilton, to be a musician, but only if he travels to D.C with them. When they get there, they drug him and deliver him to a slave pen owned by James Burch. He then gets shipped to New Orleans and a slave trader gives him the identity of “Platt”, a runaway slave from Georgia.  Later on, we learn about all the conflicts, problems and all the horrible things he has to see and go through the 12 next years. In the end, Solomon is released and is reunited with his family.

    From the film. Salomon number third from the left.

Before I watched this film I did not give much thought to the problem slavery, and I thought that this was something that did not exist anymore. However, after watching it, I was curios and I did a little research on the internet, only to find out that an estimate of 21-36 million people are in slavery today. This means that there is more people in slavery today than at any other time in human history. Slavery is one of the biggest global challenges in the world, and it is very important that people’s awareness is raised. Movies like 12 years a slave is a very effective way of doing this, and my awareness was definitely raised after watching this movie. It made me interested in the problem, and made me find out more about it.

In addition to the film Twelve years a slave, there is also a book who has made a bigger impression than others have, and raised my awareness about another global challenge: The book "Secret Daughter" is written by Shilpi Somaya Gowda. It is the story of two families from India and the USA who has a big connection they do not know about. The book starts with a woman named Kavita giving birth to her first child, a girl. But Kavita is from a culture which favours sons, and right after the birth her husband takes her and she is gone forever. Her next child is also a girl, and she knows that the only way to save her newborn daughter’s life is to give her away. This decision haunts her for the rest of her life, even after her son is born.

The baby girl who she gave away was adopted to a family in the USA, a doctor named Somer and her husband Krishnan. The story follows Kavita and Somer, and the child that binds both of their destinies.

I have always known that there are some cultures where it is “normal” to get rid of the newborn baby if it is a girl, because they would rather have boys and they can not afford to have a girl. However, this book describes it so well; the mothers desperation for her second child who turns out to be a girl too, and that you in the end of the book realise that the father has struggled just as much with this ever since it happened, even though he does not show it and it does not seem like it. The book made me think about this challenge, and it is definitively a global challenge, because this happens in many cultures.  

Both the film and the book has raised my awareness about different global challenges. They have made me interested and made me want to know more about them. This is very important if someday in the future these global challenges can be solved. People’s awareness’s has to be raised, and they have to want to do something to change it, to make it better. Films and books can raise awareness, and by raising awareness people begin to think, and when they begin to think they might act, so I definitively think films and literature can help in solving global challenges.

Sources: 

Secret Daughter: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6905012-secret-daughter

12 years a slave: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12_Years_a_Slave_%28film%29

Slavery: https://www.freetheslaves.net/page.aspx?pid=301

Pictures: 

12 years a slave poster: http://www.artwithimpact.org/sites/default/files/12-years-a-slave.jpg

12 years a slave movie snapshot: http://i.newsarama.com/images/i/000/124/338/original/12-Years-a-Slave-Shot-2.jpg?1393368275

Secret Daughter bookcover: http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1347708559l/6905012.jpg

Task 8c p. 169

Find the article "Where did all the money go?" on our website. Write a summary of the main points of the article.

"Where did all the money go?"

The article is about the economic crisis in the world, with mainly focus in the world. The global free market consumer economy in the United States and the United Kingdom has been in big trouble recently. Many years of big economic growth has suddenly been replaced by a gigantic economic downfall. There are a lot more unemployed people, and fewer people to pay the taxes that the government needs.

Some people even speak of the beginning of a new Great Depression. Considering this: Poverty has increased. Consumers are nervous. There is less production, less trade and less investment... and so on, in a long downward spiral.

A lot of people are blaming the things that Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan did when they were prime ministers in the US. and UK. in  the 1980s. They were firm believers in the free market. They meant that many of the government regulations that had been put in place after the Great Depression and after the Second World War were standing in way of economic growth, so they started an era of deregulation. This lead to that some people got very rich, and less successful people struggled.

The 21.century: Banks and financial investment houses on Wall Street started to make money by "leveraging" it (using them to borrow money to make a big profit). By 2007 financial actors all over the world had invested hundreds of billions - perhaps trillions - of dollars in American mortgages.

Sources: http://access-socialstudies.cappelendamm.no/binfil/download.php?did=68773 (13.01.15)

Page 169 in Access  (13.01.15)

What we did Wednesday 5th of November

We had an English Subject day, and we spent half the day studying local businesses from Kvam. We were divided into different groups and had or presentation. Later that day we watched the movie "Wolf of Wall Street", which lasted for about three hours. The movie was really good, but a little long I think. We ended the day with a discussion about the movie.

Fjellstrand

5th of November, we had a English subject day and we had presentations about large local businesses, with focus on their use of English with international contacts and between the employees too. Me, Simon and Øyvind had Fjellstrand, a business in  Oma, Kvam. We talked about the Boss and Main Office, the factory itself, the employees and production, and their use of English.  

This is some of the information we found:

The managing director of Fjellstrand is Ivar Gaute Kolltveit. The factory is situated in Omstrand. Fjellstrand has about 100 employees. They mostly consist of Subcontractors such as engineers, welders and other like electricians. Their production mostly consist of advanced engineering constructions, such as ferrys and boats, however, they also do service of privately owned vessels.

Sources: Fjellstrand.no

No. 2 p.178 TAKING ACTION

No 2. Look back on the list at page 175 ("Seven Ways to be Heard") Which of these methods does Malin use in her role as Amnesty activist?

Malin uses method number 2, using social media and method  number 5, making petitions in her role as Amnesty activist, but she has also used method 7, influence the authorities.
  Just recently because of an Ethiopian woman who was unpopular with the government because she refused to give in to political pressure. She was one of a number of Ethiopian activists, and was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2005. She was released because of Amnesty after 18 months, on the terms that she apologized for her crimes, but she refused and was rearrested. Malin was one of many Amnesty activists who sent letters to the Ethiopian authorities, demanding her release. They released her in 2010.

Source: A case of injustice

Poems on Monday the 27th of October

Global Village and The Right Word

We started by reading a poem by a Nigerian author called Yusuf M. Adamu, and his poem was called "Global Village".  First we discussed what the poem was about, and we agreed on that is was about the fact that people are different, and that people should take care of their culture. We read the poem to ourselves, and then we walked around the classroom reading the poem out loud, and in the end we were split in to groups and read different stanzas each.

The next poem we read is called "The right word" by a British/Pakistanis writer named Imtiaz Dharker, this poem was about terrorism, and asking about who the terrorists really are. Some of us read the poem, and the others made a play while we read it out loud.

Sources: p.170 and p.184 in Access

     
Imtiaz Dharker.

   
Yusuf M. Adamu