Poem Analysis

Analysis

Paraphrase:

First stanza: The speaker is crying while looking at the fields remembering the past.

Second stanza: The speaker is watching at the fields from the dawn to the sunset, still thinking in the past.

Third stanza: Reveals the speaker is watching from a house, hearing the birds in the morning.

Fourth stanza: Thinks in the one he olved, who have probably died.

Title:

 The title seems totalk about his tears which by reading the poem we will know that are because of having lost a loved one. By saying the tears are idle we can know that is a pain that will not leave, because the tears will stay there as she is dead.

By Nikos Mac Millan and Jeremy Ryan

My favourite day in Europe

My favourite day in Europe was the 16th of september in London, because the teachers gave us the day free so we did whatever we wanted to. In my case I went to the Madame Tussauds wax museum, which was an amazing experience, standing side by side with famous actors, politicians, sportsmen's, etc. is really something I will never forget. And as I had some more free time,  I went to the Emirates Stadium, where Arsenal F.C plays, and it was also something incredible, a Huge and beautiful stadium, thinking that one of our national players, Alexis Sanchez, plays there, also gave the tour a special feeling, going to the dressing room, the conference room, touching the pitch, all that was awesome and even more doing it with my friends.

Narrative techniques

http://www.educreations.com/lesson/view/narrative-technique/23043358/?s=clADT3&ref=app

Andrew Barroilhet
Nikos Mac Millan

Task 2

http://www.educreations.com/lesson/view/task-2-by-nikos-mac-millan/22705854/?ref=app

Writing Task

Good morning to all the alumni, it's a pleasure to be here at harvard, my name is Nikos Mac Millan and today I will speak about money, ambition and friendship.

We all live in a world in which money is a crucial resource, without money we can't survive, and we all have grown up with the idea that we have to study to get a good job and earn the biggest amount of money possible, so we tend to see people who earns a lot of money as successful or with a great life.

But money brings ambition and ambition is not always good as it may overcome your values, your personal life and even your long life friendships. Which brings to the question: Is it worth it to lose your friends for more money?

To answer this I would like to tell you an story, this story began right here in Harvard were a young student Mark Zuckerberg had a very ambitious idea, creating a unique social network, and with the help of his one and only best friend Eduardo Saverin, they started building it.

At first, all was happiness, they were making money, they had a nice audience and they became well known in the university, but after a while they started to became more ambitious, and began spreading the network to different places.

Then, they understood they couldn't continue without the help of a big company and as Eduardo tried hard to get one to support them, he couldn't, so Mark decided to add a third party by himself.

After the project got bigger, more people joined it, but as Mark was so ambitious, he started to cut off his best friend part but without changing his, so the new investors could have a nice share of the company. But this wasn't a tiny cut, it was a cut from having about 35% of the company to 0,35% and he even tried to trick Eduardo by telling him they were just some papers that he wouldn't need to read.

At the end, the results were not as Mark expected, as his ex-best friend sued him and after a long time of fighting, trials, tense momentes, Mark received a millinonaire debt and the friendship was completely broken.

So, this just show us the level the obsession, the ambition, can get up to, and even more. The question is, what is most important, your one and only best friend or more money? or family against business?

That's why I am telling you this story, you as a future businessmen and engineers must understand that both sides are important, your personal life and relationships, and your ambitous goal, but is up to you to define the perfect balance between them as if you don't do it, you will lose one. You can't let your dream go away completely for a relationship, unless you really think it's worh it, and also you can't let your whole life relationship for more money, and even also betray your friends.

This is something all of you will encounter when you go out there to the real world, you can't always be aside of this problems, one day or another you will have to face them, so are you prepared?
Remember to always think twice, be cool, be prepared, as the choices you take may change your whole future.

Take in count this story, as it involves people who studied here, people like you. And when the time comes that you have to choose between one or another, remember this speech.

Thank you for listening, have a nice day.

Oral Activity & Letter

Oral activity

Here is the link of my presentation with Joaquín Alarcón about the oral activity:

http://www.glogster.com/grupomjv/oral-activity/g-6k1ofdsls6vpabk32ig32q6

Letter to Jamie Shea

Mr Shea,

I am writing you because after watching your interview for NATO review, I can't handle anymore seeing you manipulate the truth, adjusting it to make the war appear look as something minor, but people are dyeing, they get tortured, they lose their houses, how can these things be positive at all? Because of this, I sincerely would love to see you quitting your job, you would just make a great favor to the society, I am pretty sure you can use your qualities as a spokesman in another industry, but you can't no longer continue with this unethical job, as because of you people are not seeing what's behind this horrible situations, all of the euphemism you use, really cover the grim reality that war brings.

Also, keep in mind that with great power comes a great responsibility, that's why with your great communicating abilities, by suppressing and distorting the truth, you are affecting all the people and they loose the north about what is good and what's wrong. Just remember that war victims and its instruments are individual human beings so it isn't too late to change your mind and help stop this.

Hoping you understand,
Aldous Houxley.

Comparing Two Letters of application

Tip 1: Avoiding long clauses at the beginning of the sentences.

In this case the correction was to cut out some needless phrases to short the sentences and also joining them to get a fluid paragraph instead of the original one that had many pauses. For instance, the new version doesn't have in it the words "Over, as soon, I am so, see take on" that the original version had and put together other words to make it fluid, as instead of " Over the past six years, each morning," as soon as my students walk in the door ... I am so happy to see them again and see my classroom take on life again" the corrected version says the same with less punctuation marks and easier to read : "Each morning of the past six years, I have been happy to see my students walk through the classroom door".

Tip 2: Avoiding "It" or dummy subjects in sentences.


This tip claims that the use of "It" as the subject of sentences makes them weaker, this can be seen in the text in the sentences "It feels so natural to me to be a primary school teacher."  which give emphasis in the feeling, but in the corrected version, "Being a primary school teacher comes so naturally to me." the emphasys is on the job.

Tip 3: Using the right verb tense.

Using the right tense is a must on any text as if you use it wrong it may be difficult for the readers to understand. In this case "Yet for the past few months I am longing for and thinking about"d was changed to "have been".

Tip 4: Use relative clauses.

This tip is useful as relative clauses makes it easier to expand or further ideas. On the corrected version, the relative clause added was "where".

Tip 5: Watch out for wordy sentences

Its very important to follow this tip as wordy sentences can be a pain to all readers, so because of this, it's a must to summarize and check the punctuation of your sentences. On the texts, the change is notorious as a 4 line paragraph turns into a 2 line one, without losing it sense.

Tip 6: Never start a sentence with "but"

This is a very simple tip, just never use but at the beginning of a sentence. As seen in the original version of the letter, there is a sentence which start with "but", "But in view of my university education",. which lately was corrected on the new version just saying "In view of my university education".

Tip 7: Use parallelisms.

Tip 7 refers to the use of an equal or same structure in different sentences as it makes the text more efficient and trustworthy. For instance, on the original version the sentences goes like this: "I am an open minded person with excellent social skills. I tolerate pressure easily."  which differs in structure on the different sentences, but, the corrected version follows the same structure in all the sentences: "As a colleague you will find that I have an open mind, good social skills and an ability to handle pressure easily.".

Tip 8: Use active verbs.

Using active verbs is an important tip as this verbs are more stronger than passive ones so they get captivate more the reader's attention as they make the sentence more significant. Instead of "value would be added to your organisation". the final version says: "I would add value to your organisation."

Essay

Fatelessness has a message and it is something that Imre Kertesz did thought or considered when he was writing this novel as in the text we can see the criticism, the opinion behind the words that the author gives, reflected in the experience of Gyuri

The message that novel gives us is that all atrocities, the breaking of the human rights, the harm, the pain, etc., that is summarized in the Holocaust, must not happen again, we must learn from our mistakes. Imre when writing this novel, tried to clarify this message and make it effective by the use of examples of how people and families got affected by this (Gyuri and his family plus all the people that died in the story in the concentration camps), how unmoral humans beings can be as they keep harming people who were dying from thirst, hunger, diseases, or making kids work like animals.

2.-

The understanding of the points of view expressed in fatelessness may be hard or easy depending on many factors like the age of the readers, the level of knowledge of the readers about the theme, but mainly, it depends on the readers cultural background.

In terms of age, this affects a lot the understanding as the maturity of the readers may impact on their reasoning, for example a 10 year old kid would not get the real importance of the points of views expressed, he may not understand how difficult and tragic would be to live in a concentration camp as his mind is not prepared yet.

3.- Fatelessness has different narrative techniques that seduce and affect our minds, this can be seen in terms of the use of certain characters, strong words, etc. to impact the readers.

The use of certain characters like a child as the main character or protagonist, makes the whole story more tragic as its more painful for the readers to read how a child is suffering rather than to reading about how a man is suffering, all of these things including some important situations that happens in the story like how their father had to go to a labor camp and left the family alone, how he was forced to work and because of that he got captured, how he became even more alone as his friend with the glasses took another direction, also the infection he had in his knee and how he was bitten by the bugs; helps to seduce and affect our minds.


4.- The context is a key factor in the creation process of a story as the Holocaust and its atrocities have helped us understand Fatelessness much more.

Context, is one of the most important factors as it is like a "guide" for the authors when they write, because the context helps to define many things that are part in the stories, for example: the setting, the environment, the perspective, etc.

This can be seen in most of literature classes, as when we analyse some stories, one of the first aspects we search and look for is the historical background, as for example: Frankenstein is written in Victorian Times, because of that the use of gothic elements which we can easily understand if we know the background, the context.

Fatelessness Book Trailer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj9pkYdjj1k

Listening Activity

1. Before the interview, the presenter visits a monument to the Holocaust created by the American artist Peter Eiserman. Considering the shapes, architecture and general design, in what ways do you think he represents the reality in the concentration camps?

- He represents the reality in the concentration camps with the monument as these many and big stone blocks represent how alone and tiny were the jews (in terms of power, rights,etc) compared with the germans.

2. Which is the paradox the presenter mentions regarding Imre Kertész and the place where he lives?

- The paradox the presenter mentions, is that Imre Kertész now lives in Germany, the country who tried to kill him years ago.

3. Refer to antisemitism before and after Auschwitz according to Kertész.

-Antisemitism after Auschwitz according to Kertész refers to the desire to recreate what happened years ago, the Holocaust, the concentration camps, etc. But before Auschwitz it was something smaller, an idea only.

4. In what way do reminders of the past in historical books make us “much richer”?

-The reminders of the past in historical books make us "much richer" as they teach us the problems that they had in the past and how they solved them and the consequences of them so we can learn of they mistakes and don't commit them again or know how to handle them if we commit them.

5. Which metaphor does Imre use to exemplify the effect of FATELESSNESS on its readers?

 - Imre uses the following metaphor: "I continued to worry our souls, and now it knocks from inside the cabinet where we thought we had locked it up." With this metaphor he exemplifies the effect of FATELESSNESS on its reads as it shows that the problems, and all the horrible things that happened are not gone, they are still in our memory and can be remembered with the book.

My Classmate Letter

What language (specific words) did your classmate did you classmate use to appeal the audience? If there is no language appealing the audience, suggest some words.

My classmate used a lot of specific words to appeal the audience, like: "The desire of seeing you again", "physical and mental pain", "suicide has crossed my mind", "A light of hope", between others. These words are very strong and have an important emotive effect on the audience.

How moving is the letter ? Do you think that your classmate's style is effective?

The letter is very moving as it focus the pain the father is suffering but also how strong he can be just to see one more time his son, because of these and many other elements my classmate gather the audience attention, to finally say that his style is very effective.

Explain to what extent the letter includes elements of contexts and time.

The letter includes elements of contexts and time as some words like "labor camp" or even directly referring to the Holocaust by saying: "we will see each other again and live like a happy family that survived the Holocaust!". Thanks to these phrases and the global theme of the letter, we can understand that the context is the II World War, specifically the Holocaust. 

Writing Task

Exchanging Letters 

Dear Father,

It had been a rough and long time without you, I have been waiting for this chance to talk with you about what is going on here. A bit after you left us, I was captured by the nazis and now I have been taken to Auschwitz Birkenau, a concentration camp. This time here has been the worst experience I ever had, the treatment here is awful, we eat and drink almost nothing, we use some ugly clothes that don't help us to keep warm, we are always dirty... I have seen many people die because of different reasons : hunger, thirst, coldness, diseases and even asassination, all of these terrible things without any significant reasons, and even if the nazis had reasons, I shouldn't be here, i am only a child and I haven't done anything to harm them. But they don't understand... I don't find a viable way to get out of here alive, I tried my best to stay awake, I have a friend who is also from Budapest who has been helping me but even with his help I can't keep any longer, this is my last effort to survive, I NEED YOU.

I hope you read this father,
Gyuri

Fatelessness Language Analysis

Pages 90 and 91

Theme: Innocence

"I realized: the fact that I saw no sing of movement, of life, around them. But then it occured to me that this must be only natural". We can see that Gyurka doesn't really understand what is happening and has an innocence explanation for everything, in this case he thought it was "working hour".

"It was al very clean, tidy and pretty" In this case he also dind't knew what was going on, he thought it was a good place.

"The latter was very squad of jovial appearance, and exceesingly fat, his belly beggining at his neck." By last, as said before, Gyurka is very innocent, he doesn't know the harsh time he will had by now.


Pages 180-185

Theme: Hopelessness

Explanation: Hopelessness can be seen in these pages in many ocassions, is the case of the use of words like "gray sky", "perpetual", "furry hoarfroast", "hopeless struggle", "I gave up". All of these phrases, help us understad the harsh life of Gyurka, he was starting to lose hope, he became depressed.

Even when he saw the bus eating his wound, he described the following: "the gluttony", "the teeming", "the voracity", "the appetite", "were vaguely familiar", which really meant what he was feeling from inside. Also as he was so alone and sad, he started to like the presence of the bugs, as if they were his friends.

Pages 138 and 139

Theme: Interaction

Explanation: "Bandi Citrom promptly warned me away from them: 'You lose any will to live just looking at them'". In this case we can see that Gyurka tries to interact with the muslims but he was warned to better keep aside as they where "dangerous".

"Their first question was 'Rayds di Yeddish?' when I told them that not... I became a nonperson, they looked at me as if I were this air".

On this ocassion, the hungarian tried to interact with the muslims but as the hungarian are different and don't speak Yiddish, the muslims dind't care about them and so the muslims did not accept to interact with the hungarian.

The Curious Incident and Gyuri's Mind.

The Curious Incident

1.- It tells us that Christopher's mind receive and collect a lot of information, he haves a very good memory, but he doesn't know or have the ability to decide wherever if the information he receives is important or not to remember.

2.- People choose to describe what is important or significant to them because it have a meaning for them.

3.- Both, some people are lazy as they don't want to receive information and also people select in a different way what they receive because of the different significances and meaning people give to different things.

4.- We should select in a different way that Christopher and reduce what we see because if we select like him, we would be full of meaningless information that will overpass our limit and finally make us stressed.

5.- What governs they way we select what we perceive is our ability to detect what is important or not for us.

6.- The part that language plays in the way we select our perceptions, is that it helps us describe and understand what we see as we can explain our perspective.

7.- It tells us that Christopher's is an untrained one because he doesn't have the ability to detect what is important or not and because of that he is stressed as he is over passed by information. Our one's are trained by many years of school, analyzing different information so we can define what is important or not.

Gyuri's Mind.

1.- This tell us that Gyuri's mind works like a child one, as his thoughts were very innocent, for him everything was good, as his mind couldn't let him realize the horrific things that would come next.

2.- Most 13-year-old children choose to describe what they want for their future, their accomplishments, what they need, and how successful will they be on their lives. Usually in Chile we see all of these in terms of football, most of the 13-year- old children want to be professional football players, some of them say they will play for Colo Colo, Universidad de Chile, etc. and they say they will be very successful and they even compare with some of the greatest football players.

3.- Language plays an interesting part in the way Gyuri selects his perceptions as he uses the language to express his feelings, all mostly positive as his childish and innocent mind just let him look at good things he is living, or turn the bad things into good things.

4.- Based on the whole novel, this passage is not reliable in relation to the rest of the story, as this was just the beginning of a "nightmare", which would finally change his way to see things, so at this time he had not experienced what really matters to the rest of the story.

Summary Fatelessness

Summary Fatelessness Chapter 1-5

This history tooks place in Budapets, Hungary where the mood was very tragic and sad in terms of the jews because of the conflict with germans, the context is previous "Holocaust". The main character belongs to a jewish family and they start doing the preparations to confront the situation of the father leaving for "Labor Service". After a big and sad family reunion were Gyuri had an amazing experience with his uncle praying for his father, which made him change his thoughts, more mature, Gyuri the main character assumes the role of "the man" of the family. Because of that he had to get a job to afford all the costs of the family, on his way to his job, the bus on which he was got intercepted by a german officer and all the jewish inside were taken to some kind of a jail. After some time

Fatelessness Reading Task

Fatelessness Chapter 1 Analysis

1)What characters are introduced this chapter?

In this chapter, many characters were introduced: Mr Suto, Gyuri, Gyuri's Father, Gyuri's Mother and Stepmother, also his Grandfather and Grandmother, the shopkeeper and his wife, the baker, Uncle Willie, etc.

2) Choose two characters and select a quote to describe them physically or psychologically.

Grandmother: "Even wearing spectacles with bottle-thick lenses she is blind as a bat and just as deaf to boot".


Uncle Willie: "His head is pear-shaped, broad, bulging, and bald on top, but narowing ate the cheeks and toward the chin", "His views are listened to with respect in the family".


3) What narrative technique? Provide evidence.

In terms of narrative technique, the first one to notice is the First Person narration, as the main character narrates the story on his point of view. This can be seen on the text when Gyuri, the narrator says: "I didn`t head home." Also the story is narrated in past tense as shown in the following quote: "I also handed him" and also in the past quote.


4) Describe the setting of this chapter

This chapter took place in Budapets, Hungary, where the main character, Gyuri, and his Jewish family are having a bad time because of his Father going to war. The context is previous of the "Holocaust", at the begining of the II World War on which Jews were seen like a "plague". On this chapter whe can see this very detailed as how the family went to different places and the treat to Jewish was very bad (Ex: They received half of bread), and also that the Jewish family shared some place. All of this makes a sad mood and prepares the readers to what should come next.

Analysis

Important info: How communism twist the reality, killing jews, identity, fate.
audience: people who wants to know what really happened in the concentration camps, or in that era, social studies interested people, historians, etc.
inform, explain by his point of view, persuade the people of how some politicians or countries twist the reality, ommit information, entertain, compare, etc.

Essay 2.0

“Some third culture kids have nothing beyond their passports to connect them with their home country. TCKs lose and gain from the fact that they grow up outside their passport country."

We can affirm this because TCK's have many cultures in one, by that they don't feel completely part of any, because of this we can say that they have nothing beyond their passports to connect them with their home country as their beliefs, education, etc. are given from a different culture.

In terms of gain and loses from the fact they grow up outside their passport country, we can say that they gain an open-minded view of the world, they learn to be more comprehensive with other cultures and ideals, they are good to realize the social problems in the society they are part, they can compare between the different lifestyles, etc. Because of this, usually TCKs have an important role or position in political structures on differents countries, as they can realize and help the society with their problems. One example of this is Barack Obama which is the president of United States and also he is  TCK.

About the lose, we can say that they are very lonely as they don't feel part of any culture, they don't know much about they "passport country", also usually as they don't feel part of the society, they tend to became friends of another TCK's.

To conclude, we can say that TCK don't connect much with they country of origin, they don't know about it, they also don't learn much there or maybe they didn't even live there, and maybe they aren't interested on their origin country, because of this they called it "passport country". Because of they they have some gain and loses which really affects who they are.

Number of words: 269

Travel Writing

Visit to Maycomb in the 30´s

 

I came back to Maycomb, Alabama, in the 30`s,  and I saw what It used to be, "Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town". Firstly, I was amazed because of the architecture as I didn't remembered it, the typical house look, shared by everyone, this included: gable dormers, eave dentils, doric pilasters, the porch, etc. but with different orientations, or size, made me feel like I was back in home. As I kept walking in the town, I start to sense a patron in all of the people, they were all wearing bad looking clothes, wrinkled, they all seemed very poor which made feel very bad, as I had forgotten how harsh was life in that time, but suddenly I heard the sound of an a amazing car coming by the street and as it came closer I figured out it was my favorite car, the Cadillac Twelve, but that made me feel the incredible difference between economic and social strata. Anyways, after a while I asked the owner if I can go for a ride, and inside the car, while driving, I saw an incredible look of the town, people were very happy even with the finance problems, kids were playing in the streets, life seemed to be beautiful, but all this changed as I was coming back, I saw all the neighborhood screaming and throwing things towards an Afro-American woman, this discrimination to the black lady was a shock for me as It was very hard to tolerate. Finally, after I came back to my house, I felt the emotions of all the day, the nostalgia was running throught my mind, I wanted to get back to Maycomb, but the idea of discrimination made me angry. Anyways I had a really good time and I am wishing to come back.
 
Numbers of words: 307

Link to My Scientific language presentation

My Scientific language presentation can be seen here:


https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B7uhd2LgGf5QaWMtbF9hVGxzcms/edit?usp=sharing