Week 16

Dear Readers:

This is my last entry, we only had 2 sessions. During our fisrt session we presented our Final Projects, my team and I presented a webpage about the cultural diversity in English speaking countries, we chose 3 countries for each continent and we wrote how english emerged in that country, population, religion, festivities, traditions, traditional food, music and sports. Most of the webpages were really well done and they were really interesting, most of them linked the information of their webpage to the book we read during the first and second partial, «English as a Global Language» by David Crystal.

During the last session, we answered a questionnaire about what we learnt in the class and how we felt during the course. I really liked this course and I will recommend it with my friends, I really learnt a lot about the English language and the globalization of it. Also, I improved my language skills. I’m really happy with the results…

Thanks for reading this blog and I must say that this is a farewell…

Regards,

Karla

Week 15

Dear Readers:

During week 15 we did the final activities of the course. On Monday, our first session, we presented a very short presentation about three short American stories. «Cat in the Rain» by Ernest Hemingway was published during the 1920’s and was about a couple that were on vacation in Italy, the husband was uninterested in most of the things and the American wife was selfish and wanted many material things, she told to him that if she won’t have many of that things at least she wanted a cat. The padrone, hotel keeper, was in love with her and in the end the hotel’s maid brought her the cat she previously saw in the rain. «A Buddhist’s Tale» was a about a man in Thailand that learnt from a monk about life. The last one was about a man who wanted to serve to his country in Virginia during the Civil War.

On Wednesday, we presented another short presentation, this was about «A Christmas Carol» by Charles Dickens and most of the presentations were excellent and similar.

On Thursday,  we focused on the Final Project, my team and I finished some details and organized the webpage.

Thanks for reading and I’ll post the last entry during this day.

Regards,

Karla

Week 14

Dear Readers:

During week 14 we watched a movie named «The power of one», it was about the apartheid in South Africa and its consequences. At the beginning a boy named P.K was introduced, all of his family have died except for his uncle or grandfather, I don’t remember very well. Then, he was sent to a Afrikaneer boarding school, where they bullied him because of his British kin. They made cruel things to him and then they started calling him «Piss Kop», specially his main Bully, Botha. Years passed and he went with his uncle or grandfather, but he didn’t know how to take care of P.K. So a friend, Doc, took care of hm even when he was prisioned, Doc taught him about cactus, basic and advanced education, he also taught him to play piano. Then, a man named Giel Piet taught him how to box. P.K. made possible the peaceful cohabitation of all the African tribes during a singing performance. Geel Piet died because a cop killed him during the performance, P.K. went to high school and he was expecting to apply to Oxford, he met a Afrikaneer girl and showed her the real world. P.k. confronted Duma and he won, this proved that he was the Rainmaker. He taught English and other subjects to the black Afircans until they got discovered. Maria, the Afrikaneer girl, escaped from her house and met P.K in an abandoned church. The cops discovered them and then, they killed Maria. At the end P.k confronts Botha, now as a cop, and his past, he decides to keep teaching black Africans.

On Thursday, our last session, we did a test about the movie. It was a little bit long but not that hard.

Thanks for reading, I’ll post the next 2 weeks entries.

Regards,

Karla

Week 13

Dear Readers:

During this week’s first session, we solved a quiz about the presentations from last week, it was a little bit complicates because I couldn’t remember some details about them but some of them were really easy. However, I got a 94 and it was better than I expected.

On Wednesday, we read some articles about plagiarism and how to avoid it, quote and cite properly, then we wrote, individually, a paragraph about how we will avoid it in our Final project, then post it in the forum. Finally we commented on 2 of our classmates’ reflections. I must say that I agreed with the reflections of the two people’s work I commented.

In our last session of the week, we read 3 stories that were from different countries and they were really different. There was one about an aboriginal who enjoyed silence, anothe one about the Afrikaneers and how they felt different and superior to black Africans and the last one was about an ugly man with a beautiful wife. We did a task about them and I really liked all of them.

 

Thank you for reading and I’ll post the next 2 weeks entries.

Regards,

Karla

 

Week 12

Dear Readers:

During week 12, we presented our presentations about the country we chose…

On Monday, our first session we continued making our presentations, my team and I chose the Philippines and most of the presentation and research were already done, we just made some corrections to it, added sources and images. We assured that everyone contributed the same effort during this presentation.

On Wednesday, our second session, we presented information about the culture, economy, language, population, sports and history of The Philippines. I was really nervous as always but I think I  might have improved a little. Then, other countries presented such as Jamaica, New Zealand, Ireland and Singapore. On Thursday, our last session, team continued their presentations such as South Africa and India. The presentations were really interesting because when they explained how the English language emerged in those countries, I never expected all that fusion between their original mother languages and English.

Thanks for reading and I’ll post the next 3 weeks entries.

 

Regards,

Karla.

Week 11

Dear Readers:

During this week after vacations, we did in our fisrt session a webquest about a poem and a painting, the painting was called «The fall of Iccarus», we tried to figure the meaning of both and how they were linked, we thought (my team and I) that the poem and the painting tried to show the lack of attention from people, how only people get interested in something if it affected or benefited them.

On Wednesday, we watched a movie from New Zealand called «Boy», I think it was a funny and interesting way o represent the reality of an indegenious boy with family problems.

On Thursday, our last session, my video team and I planned our final project, we will make a webpage that will display information of the culture of English speaking countries.

I’ll post a new entry next week, thanks for reading!

Regards,

Karla

Week 10

Dear Readers:

In our first session, on Monday, we read «Homage» by Nadine Gordimer, that was about an anonymous person that supposedly killed the Prime Minister of Sweden, the poem or text, blames the fact that this person did it because he was only looking for a better chance to survive, he didn’t know the reason for the murder. We did a webquest explaining the meaning of the poem and some words written on t.

On Wednesday, we did a quiz about all the chapters of «English as a Global Language» by David Crystal.

On Thursday, our last session, we chose a English speaking country and we had to make a presentation of it. My team chose Philippines.

Thanks for reading!

Regards,

Karla

Week 9

Dear Readers:

On Monday, our first session, we did a little test, it was a translation of a poem written by Juan Rulfo. It was about, a group of boys that were walking to find a town.

On Wednesday, we did an investigation of English. Old English appeared during the 5th AD century and it changed when the Normans conquered in 1606 the English Throne. New words in Norman French, low German and Latin emerged in what is well known as Middle English. The Early Form of Modern English appeared in 1500’s and most of Shakespeare’s plays are written in this form.

On Thursday, our last session, we explained among our classmates the presentations we did a week or 2 weeks about «English as a Global Language» by David Crystal.

Thanks for reading and I’ll post a new entry until next week, as always.

Regards,

Karla

Translation Activity (Week 8)

On February 22nd, 1991. The Automobile Museum was opened and made true the dream of many collectors that love cars, which for many years have been fantasising with an exhibit place for them and share the beauty of their automobiles with the public.

Nowadays, several automobile associations and clubs from Mexico City, participate in the museum. The purpose is to join all the amateur fanatics that love those cars, which deserve the title of “historic pieces”.

It is a permanent exhibition, however, every 3 months, approximately 30 automobiles are changed for new ones to give an opportunity to new collectors and also variety to the museum.

The cost of the museum ticket helps the museum’s maintenance. It offers some of the following services: Parking, Gift Shop, Car Boutique and Car Rent for special events.

The museum’s aim is to show the advances of the automobile industry; also the maintenance and conservation of the historic cars. At the moment, they have been showing cars from 1904 to 1970. Mostly, they include famous brands such as Alfa Romeo, Packard, Pierce Arrow, Rolls Royce and more.

 

Conclusion

Based on both texts, we found out that we have many problems with punctuation marks, and that´s about it. We know that the English language is short, less is better, so our text is simple and to the point, and when compared to the translation (which is long and very bad written) we did a very good job. With the English language, each one of us have a very different way of writing, which affects the interpretation of all. That’s why we noticed some mistakes in the original text, even when the text was written in Spanish. Also, we noticed that in our language there are many synonyms, but in the English language this changes and a lot, many of those synonyms don’t exist and we can’t do a literal translation. We tried to do our best, but there will always be a mistake. We also had problems in the organization, because we think different and English was taught different in everyone.

8th Week

Dear Readers:

On Monday, we did an activity about ethics at work. Nairet and me chose 3 articles about this theme, we had to sumarize them and write a conclusion. It was a little bit difficult to sumarize them in 4 sentences because they were large articles. We linked this activity with the one of Jerry Mcguire.

On Wednesday, my team and I did a summary about David Crystal’s «English as a Global Language». We summarized from pages 164 to 191.

On Thursday, our last session, we translated a text about The Automobile Museum and compared it to the original one. I think we can relate this activity with the one about the book, because all of us adopted English as a second language. David Crystal stated that once we learnt a language, we can play with it.

Thanks for reading and I’ll post a new week entry next week.

 

Regards,

Karla