女儿随Cathy老师初探文学

hlp525

下面贴的是测试题，老师用它了解孩子的一般情况和英文程度。（注：黑体是原始题目，蓝色的是女儿的答案，红色的是Cathy老师的批注。） 以后贴的作业都是这个模式。


Before you read, please let us know about you.
Name:
Alice
Age: 15

How long have you learned English?
For 10 years.
Do you read English books? What books did you read?
Yes. I have read Giver, Number the stars, Mockingbird, and The Great Blue Yonder…

A good reading list! By ‘Mockingbird’ I assume you mean ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ by Harper Lee? If not – that would be an excellent read for you. You may also be ready for ‘Lord of the Flies’ by William Golding.English first language students read it at around your age. Be warned, however, that, like this poem and ‘to Kill a Mockingbird’, it discusses the side of human nature that we don’t always like to face.

**********************************************************************

WORKSHEET – From Not Him:

• Poetry is the most compressed form of literature.
• Poetry is composed of carefully chosen words expressing great depth of meaning.

From Not Him
(Wopkko Jensma)
(1939 - )

he forbids us to dance
he always leads the church service
he has a stable job
he is always on time for work
he never gets drunk
he has respect for most people
everybody respects him
we love our daddy
but sometimes I notice
when a kwela * blasts from the radio
he wiggles his toes
(*kwela – loud, lively black township music in South Africa, featuring the penny-whistle and made famous in recent years by local jazz musicians)

Close reading:

1.
Are there any words which are unfamiliar to you? Have you used your thesaurus or dictionary?
No.

2.
Who is the author?
Wopkko Jensma.

3.
Who is/are the speaker(s) of the poem?Remember the speaker – is the created narrative voice of the poem (i.e. the person the reader is supposed to imagine is talking).
His children.

4.
Who is the audience?(for example:is it you, the reader;another character in the poem;someone for whom the poem is written (sometimes love poems are written for a special person); or someone who is alive or dead?)
Everyone.

Think about a child /children speaking about their father in this way.
Who are they likely to be talking to?

5.
What is the setting of the poem? (Where the poem takes place)
In the society.

6.
What is the poem about?

It’s about a person that is always doing the things the society thinks he should do, but deep inside his heart, there’s a place where he can find his old self.

Yes indeed,and the question is – how

7.
What is the speaker’s relationship to ‘he’? How do you know?

The speaker is his child. I learned from “We love our daddy”.

True, the speaker is his child but could also be speaking for ‘he’s’ other children – for example – in the first line ‘he forbids us to dance’, and the eighth line ‘we love our daddy’.
These offer clues that there is more than one child and the speaker includes himself in the group by using first person plural ‘we’.

8.
Can you find some interesting words to describe the personality of ‘he’ , i.e. what ‘he’ is like? Use your thesaurus – not your Chinese-English dictionary!!

Conservative, strict, respectful, and lively.

Very perceptive and an apt description Alice, well done!

10.What effect does the constant repetition of the word ‘he’ have on you, the reader? What does it tell you about ‘he’? What does it reveal about how the speaker (s) feels about ‘he’?

The constant repetition of the word ‘he’ makes me wonder who the ‘he’ is and why the title is From Not Him while the poem is talking about the ‘he’ all the time.

Then I understood---I think that it tells us that the ‘he’ in the poem is not the real ‘he’; it’s just the ‘he’ wearing a mask and acting on the stage of society. The speaker wants him to be more like himself, not wearing a mask all the time. It also makes the poem full of rhythms.

Another perceptive comment Alice ! I would be interested to hear what you think the speaker feels about his father. I wonder if you have understood the fear that is being implied by the rhythm and repetition of ‘he’, almost as if the speaker does not want to do anything wrong and is repeating what ‘he’ has told them to do to ensure they don’t forget.

11. What does the line ‘he has respect for most people’, tell you about ‘he’? Compare that line with the 2 lines that follow:
‘everybody respects him/ we love our daddy’. What do they expose about ‘he’?

The line ‘he has respect for most people’ told me that he is conservative; doing what he should do all the time. The 2 lines that follow told me that the author of the poem lives in a time that everybody is ‘acting on stage’. You respect someone only because he has a stable job and obey the rules at that time. No one is their real self. They are all not free.

12.What is the significance of the last 3 lines in the context of the poem (this means: why are these 3 lines important when you read the whole poem)?

Because if they don’t exist, the readers won’t know what the poem is really talking about—not a peaceful time when people respect each other, but a fake and conservative time when people do ‘what they should do’ at that time. From the last three lines, we can learn that the ‘he’ actually likes dancing. It’s the only place in the poem that shows the readers what ‘he’ is like deep inside his heart—A true, free ‘he’. That is the real him, not the fake one forbidding his children to dance. Then why does he forbid his children to dance? Only because the society thinks it’s the right thing to do.

Excellent insight Alice

13.
Do you believe that ‘he’ has always been the way he is described in the poem?
(please note the use of the present perfect tense – this tense shows that he always did these things and those actions are complete, but also shows that he still does).Explain your answer.

No. I think it’s after he finds a stable job, a high place in the world that he starts to forbid his children to dance; starts to act very important. But there is still a little bit of his old self deep in his heart.

Interesting comment – what kind of person would he be without a stable job? What would be the reason for not having a stable job? Would he perhaps be tempted to get drunk, Would he respect people ….?

14.
Do you know anyone like this person?
How do you respond to this person or how would you respond to someone like this?

A lot of leaders and governments are like this person. I will still respect them, but I will also help them to find more of their old selves back again—ask them to listen to music; to dace more, and to do the things they like.

They would be fortunate to have you offer them this opportunity!

An important point to bear in mind is that the line ‘he has respect for most people’ means that there are certainly some people that ‘he’ does NOT have respect for. (this is important in the context of the poem because we wonder who and why?)‘Most’ in the context of this poem, is unlike the comparative terms we use in English (more and most) for example – she is the most intelligent – which means that there is nobody in the current comparison that is more intelligent than she is.
Can you see the distinction?



15.
What do you think the title means?Give the poem your own title.

Although there is aconstant repetition of the word ‘he’, the ‘he’ the author wrote about in the poem is not the real ‘he’, it’s just an empty skeleton without a soul. From Not Him shows us that the real ‘he’ is a man who likes to dance to the music, while the other ‘he’ forbids his children to dance.

And this is the crux of the poem. Why DOES he forbid his children to dance the way he used to? Is it because he fears they will not succeed, fears they may get drunk and be a burden on society – perhaps the way he was before? Is it possible to have fun and be yourself as well as hold down a stable job and do everything society requires you to do?

I think my title for the poem would be, “Wiggle your toes”. Because that will show my hopes for all the people like this person in the poem—Dance to the music! Do the things you like! Be your self!

(I answered the questions above myself.)

An excellent, positive analysis Alice! I have offered a few additional questions for you to contemplate on your own. These are questions that have emerged as other people have read and thought about this poem. Remember, no two people will see a poem in the same way. The reason your analysis is so strong is that you have justified your point of view to a large extent. Well done!




[ 本帖最后由 hlp525 于 2012-11-5 13:46 编辑 ]

mumu9897

跟着来学习，孩子在外面看小乌龟，我坚持再坚持，每每要放弃，看看元妈您的贴子，就又恢复了力量！

wishuhappy

看看这个帖子， 就知道努力的方向了。 谢谢老虫给大家带来这么好的课程。

hlp525

下面贴的是女儿第一次课的作业。Wings，多好的主题啊！希望女儿的wings一直伴随着她，更希望Cathy老师的文学课帮孩子们插上更多的wings：想像的wings、思维的wings、心灵的wings。。。

Wings                                           Malika Ndlovu

At five years old I knew I had wings

Children have right to such things

I could fly to places I’d never seen

Believe in the magic of flying

At five I knew I had wings

I knew and I flew

Flying high

I dropped my wings at sixteen

Seventeen or eighteen

When there was no more room for flying

I began to doubt that I ever did

That I ever could

Fly

I lost my wings at twenty-one

When I was supposed to be an adult

Supposed to be achieving

Delivering

Proving

And everyone and everything

Was about judging

When I was supposed to be

Supposed to be

Supposed to

Be

At thirty two

I wasn’t even thinking of wings

I was drowning in thoughts of a million other things

I was thinking of drowning

Drowning

Watching the water rising up over my head

Days when I couldn’t get out of bed

I think I gave up on my wings

I forgot that once

I flew

By forty five I was still alive

But cynical and critical

I had definitely lost faith in flying

Maybe I was too busy thinking about dying

Wings then seemed ridiculous

Childhood things

And I couldn’t remember

The feeling of wings

At sixty-eight

When most people think it’s too late

I began to dream of flying

I thought of how much time I’d lost

And how little I’d lived

How easily I’d given up on my wings

Maybe

Maybe if I went back

To when I was thirty-two

Eighteen

Seventeen

Sixteen

Or five

Maybe if I went to those places

When I knew I had wings

I would begin to remember

The magic

The innocence

Of wings and such things

Maybe then I would remember

And forget about dying

And maybe then

Once again

I could fly

Fly

CLOSE READING:

·
Read the poem aloud 3 times.

·
From which grammatical person (1st, 2nd, 3rd person singular or plural) is the poem written?
First person singular.

·
Why did the poet choose this perspective? Because it made the poem more realistic. When using this perspective, the author can tell us what his real feeling is, but if he chose the other two perspectives, he can only tell us what the person in the poem is doing instead of what he is feeling.

A smart answer Alice!Well deduced!

·
Is it effective?
Why? Yes, it’s very effective. Real feelings are always effective. Because when telling a true story about yourself, it’s easy to express your feelings and put them into the lines of the poem. So the poem will be full of emotions and can touch people’s hearts if it’s written from this perspective.
I like this answer.I’d like you now to start thinking about how the poem is effective in revealing the feelings.What are the devices used by the poet to guide the reader to understanding these feelings?

·
Who is the speaker of the poem?
Why do you say so? I think the speaker is an old man. Firstly, I noticed the phrase “At sixty-eight”. A person that is older than sixty-eight is likely to say that he is “At sixty-eight”. Secondly, I think the reason he wrote this poem is because the old man wanted to tell us not to follow the path he had taken, according to his experience, and never forget about our wings -- our imagination and creativity.
Sound logic, aptly supported!

Who is the audience?
How do you know? I think the audience is the teenagers. Because children are too young to understand what the poem is talking about, and adults are already too old. Their “wings” are already lost. But as for teenagers, there is still a lot they can do to save their “wings”. They still have imagination. But at this age, they began to think that imagination is just “ridiculous, childhood things.” And they have so much homework to do that they have no more room for “flying”. So the author tried to tell the teenagers not to forget about their imagination.
Excellent answer!Sad though, isn’t it?

Does this poem have rhythm and rhyme?
Justify your answer. Yes. A lot of words at the end of each line rhyme. Such as “wings” and “things”, “sixteen” and “eighteen”, “eight” and “late”, “Five” and “alive” and so on…

Why is it called Wings? It’s because wings symbolizes imagination. If a person has wings, he would be able to fly to anywhere in the world. Imagination can take you to those places too. Also, if you don’t have imagination, you won’t believe you can fly.

·
What is the literal (exact and factual), and figurative
(symbolic, metaphorical, abstract) meaning of
‘wings’
in the context of the poem? The literal meaning of wings is: things that can let you fly. The figurative meaning is: imagination, creativity. Yes!

·
How does the speaker feel about the impact of
age on her/his ability to fly? Children have a lot of imagination, so they can fly high, and they can fly to anywhere they want. But as years go by, they will start to think flying is a ridiculous thing. Finally, as adults, they will lose their ability to fly. At an old age, they will once again wish that they could be young again and soar in the sky of imagination.

·
What diction (a poet’s use of words) is used to evoke the feeling of flying?
(find a few words and say how they evoke the feeling of flying….. The word “magic” evoked the author’s memories of his youth, when he still has the ability to fly high.
The word “innocence” tells us when he is flying, he turned five again, no more work and things to do, just an innocent child happily flying in his own world of imagination.

What connotations do these words have for you personally? When a poet chooses a word – he/she does so in order to create a specific effect, some of which will be unintended – for example – you and I will have a different feeling and understanding of the word ‘innocence’!

·
Does the tone (atmosphere, feeling, ambience, mood) of the poem change?
If yes, describe the tone and how it changes.
If no, say what you think the tone is and why you think it does not change. Yes. In the First stanza, when the writer can fly, he is delighted and happy. The stanzas that followed gave me a more heavy feeling; it made me feel sorry for the writer. Then, in the last two stanzas, the sad and regretful feeling has reached the top.
Was there perhaps a feeling of hope at the end? There is a saying – ‘It’s not over till the fat lady sings…’

·
Do you think any significant ages and stages have been omitted from the poem? If so, which ages?
If not – why not? No, I think all the significant ages have been written. Sometimes, you don’t have to write every single age. You only have to write about a few important stages in life—child, teenager, adult, and old person. That’ll summarize all the different stages of development. And this poem has them all.
At a level I agree with you. However, does everyone go through the same stages? Are they all likely to lose their wings at the same time? What could cause some people to lose their wings earlier, or later? Do you think some people never lose their wings? Can you think of examples?

·
Do you agree with the sentiments (opinions, feelings) expressed in the poem?
Do people forget about their wings?
Why do they?
Yes. People do forget about their wings because they are too busy thinking about other things or under too much pressure. So, they don’t have time and space for flying. If they don’t use their wings in a long period of time, they’ll slowly forget that they still have wings.
Sad isn’t it?

·
How can you ensure that you never forget about your wings?

I will not put myself under too much pressure. I would go to concerts often, because music can purify the soul. I won’t watch too much TV, because it will make my imagination slowly fade away, instead, I will read more books. Books would send me into a magic land of “wings”. Without the picture, I can imagine things into whatever I like, and I’ll be able to soar in the sky of imagination.
I sincerely hope you never forget about your wings Alice. Sometimes just sitting somewhere quietly and reflecting is also a way of ensuring you remain aware of your wings. Being conscious is paramount!

Well done Alice!You read the poem closely and answered well.We are working towards how poems achieve the effects on the reader that they do and you have made an excellent start. Always keep in the front of your mind, that a (good) poet chooses every single word with extreme care.

Alice, Sunny, Wendy
–
I was not initially going to present you with a writing activity in the first week, but your responses today have persuaded me to offer you the following activity
to try:

Writing:

Either:

Write an additional stanza (paragraph) for this poem from the perspective of any age you choose.

[ 本帖最后由 hlp525 于 2012-11-5 12:36 编辑 ]

hlp525

下面帖的是第二次课的作业。这次作业难度大，女儿用维基百科查了很长时间的资料，也不完全理解这首诗的意思。从这次作业以后，她一有不明白的就查维基。

最后面的诗，Colors，是女儿为补写上次作业而写的，女儿看完Cathy老师对这首诗的反馈后非常开心。

本次作业，老师修改了女儿不少语法错识，因为不好标识,我也就没用颜色标识出来。

Education for Leisure

Today I am going to kill something. Anything.

I have had enough of being ignored and today

I am going to play God. It is an ordinary day,

a sort of grey with boredom stirring in the streets

I squash a fly against the window with my thumb.

We did that at school. Shakespeare. It was in

another language and now the fly is in another language.

I breathe out talent on the glass to write my name.

I am a genius. I could be anything at all, with half

the chance. But today I am going to change the world.

Something's world. The cat avoids me. The cat

knows I am a genius, and has hidden itself.

I pour the goldfish down the bog. I pull the chain.

I see that it is good. The budgie is panicking.

Once a fortnight, I walk the two miles into town

For signing on. They don't appreciate my autograph.

There is nothing left to kill. I dial the radio

and tell the man he's talking to a superstar.

He cuts me off. I get our bread-knife and go out.

The pavements glitter suddenly. I touch your arm.

Carol Ann Duffy

Notes:

Carole Ann Duffy, wrote this poem during the 1980’s after spending time at a school in the East End of London. Margarat Thatcher was the prime minister of Britain and it was a time of riots, The Falklands war, and cuts in budgets for health and education. Margarat Thatcher was credited with saying ‘there is no society’ and strongly encouraged the individual pursuit of wealth. This left many of the underprivileged sectors of society in a vulnerable state. Many people (including the speaker of the poem) regularly collected ‘the dole’( ‘I walk the two miles into town for signing on’ (15-16)) The dole is a sum of money which unemployed people can claim. The title of the poem is significant in that many unemployed people had no jobs, but had been educated.

Bog – a slang word for toilet (WC) I see that it is good – a reference to the first Chapter of the Bible, Genesis, where God created the world, looked at it and saw that ‘it was good’.

CLOSE READING AND INTERPRETATION:

·
What do you think
the title ‘Education For Leisure’ means? Leisure means: time that is spent doing what you enjoy when you’re not working or studying. So I think the writer wants to tell us that the education at that time was not good—the kids that have an education can do insane things when they are bored. That means the education was all about scores at that time (and now too probably!) instead of communication and human contact. A lot of people that have studied at school don’t have a job, and they just have more leisure wondering at home and doing nothing. That’s partly because the country was at war, and due to the cuts in budgets for health and education. The writer wants to let the people realize the importance of having a good education. This title is expressing a strong thought—people, stop fighting and start learning!

A good answer Alice.You generally stayed with your topic and you are showing signs of developing your arguments.Good!

Is there perhaps something ironic about getting an education, and then finding it is being used (or not used) for leisure because there is huge unemployment and no jobs! Its often difficult to realize the distinction between the writer and the speaker. Remember the title will come from the speaker so there may be a bitter sarcasm in his/her feeling that he’s been educated (for what it’s worth) and now has all this time on his hands.

When you read the poem, do you find the tone: disturbing, funny, dramatic, unemotional …. (or any other adjective you can think of)? How does the poet create that tone?
(supporting evidence please.. look at diction, length of sentences etc!) Creepy, bored, insane, foolish, proud. Creepy means causing an unpleasant feeling of fear. That’s how I feel when I read the sentence “Today I am going to kill something. Anything.” And “The pavements glitter suddenly. I touch your arm.” The word “your” made me feel like I was the one he’s murdering.Excellent observations! It also leads to the feeling of insane (do you mean insanity? And do you mean it creates a feeling of insanity in you or that you observe it in the speaker?. How can a bored person with nothing to do murder a person in the end? He must be feeling pretty bored and extremely undervalued to commit such a gory crime. “It is an ordinary day, a sort of grey with boredom stirring in the streets” directly expressed the speaker’s feeling of bored. The speaker continues to talk about how great he thinks he is. “I am a genius” “I dial the radio and tell the man he’s talking to a superstar.” That shows how foolish and proud he is, and that the education is not so good.
Yes, Good supporting evidence here Alice.Can you think of some other words to use instead of ‘bored’? Clearly the speaker has created an ambience of a grey, dull, lifeless, colourless existence in the phrases you quote and which you have aptly described. Well done! It is, however, useful to remind yourself when working with English literature, that writing about it requires as much attention to detail as writing your own glorious creations! Try to vary your use of words, for example – you used ‘bored’ too often.

·
Describe the character and circumstances of the speaker of the poem. The speaker of the poem feels good (try to find another few words that describes how he feels - defiant maybe?)about himself, and he is tired of being ignored. He didn’t learn to communicate with others very well and he still hadn’t found a stable job. Yes. He’s becoming increasingly, bleak and depressed. And it finally leads him to commit a murder.

What does the phrase ‘I am going to play God’ (2) mean? It means that he’s going to do whatever he likes and he’s going to take over and control this world just like God. Excellent – you noticed the metaphor! “Play” is an interesting word. How can a person use “play” with “God”? So I think the speaker doesn’t believe in God. That again is a result to bad education.
What I like here Alice, is that you are interrogating the poem (i.e. asking questions). By engaging the work of respected (and inferior) authors, you continually expose yourself to a process and methodology which you will use in your own creative writing and whenever your are required to present your views in writing. Good job!

The poem is written in the form of a dramatic monologue. What do you think this means? Do you think this form works for this poem when you consider the events unfolding?
(Think about the insights you get from looking into the speaker’s mind…) It means he was thinking to himself all the time, not talking aloud. Maybe he is the kind of person that’s not good at expressing feelings to other people. Good intuition Alice! And all of these tell the reader that the education at that time was inferior. This form of work can express the true feeling of the speaker strongly and it also makes you wonder when you’re reading the poem—what is he doing? Why does he want to “kill” something? A strong analysis here Alice! I have replaced ‘not good indeed’ with inferior as a clue to how I am expecting you to challenge yourself in your writing.
You are capable of replacing slightly awkward, simple phrases with succinct words which say precisely what they mean! Use your thesaurus whenever the words: good, nice, said, get and got emerge in your writing. Also – avoid overusing the same adjective in a sentence (or even a paragraph as your writing skills develop)!

·
How does the phrase- ‘I breathe out talent on the glass to write my name’ (8)
relate to both the title: Education for Leisure and to ‘Shakespeare. It was in another language’ (6 -7 ). I think this relates to the title because it shows that the speaker is very proud—He breathes out “talent”. It also shows he has a lot of free time and that he’s very bored. And that’s what the Education for Leisure has done to people. “To write my name” and “talent” show that although the speaker himself thinks he’s talented, his educational background is actually not solid. And because of that, he can’t understand Shakespeare. So he thinks Shakespeare is in another language. Well done.Keep to the present and present perfect tense when writing about literature.

·
Although Carole Ann Duffy is a highly esteemed poet in Britain, this poem was banned for discussion in high schools for a while, as its content was considered potentially disruptive.
Why would this be? Please write a paragraph on what the arguments for and against the banning of this poem would be.

I don’t think this poem should be banned at school. The reason they banned it is because they think it’s all about violence and the poem is encouraging students to fight. But I think this poem is a plea for better education rather than violence. It’s talking a bout a person that has got a bad education—the kind of education for answering difficult math problems rather than communicating with people. This kind of education has lost its real meaning. As a result, the person sees himself as god and doesn’t really understand Shakespeare. He feels himself becoming progressively more undervalued and depressed, finally leading him to commit murder. So Duffy wants everybody to know what kind of state they’re in and encourages us to learn. She also expresses her feeling of dissatisfaction to the government about education.

Generally strongly presented answers with a few areas that I’ve mentioned need attention. Its useful to remind yourself that writing about literature is tantamount to writing about yourself!  Remember I said in class that every time a new reader engages with a poem, a new artistic creation is born? Approach every literature assignment with this in mind and you will continue to develop your undoubted potential!

·
This is last week's homework of "wings”. (My poem is a little bit long though...:0)
Notes below!

·
Write a short poem with a similar theme from the perspective of any age you choose.

Colors

She stared up at the world with eyes of a girl
And saw so many colors flow and swirl
Burning, glowing, passionate red
Singing, smiling, shinny yellow
And streaming, caroling --the color of green
With the floating, sparkling aquamarine
That was when
She was ten

She stared down at her piles of work
Concentrating on tiny black words
Her mind full of important test papers
No time to think of those silly colors
What her parents concerned was the score
That thought made her arms felt sore
Tiredly she rubbed her eyes
Rubbing away colors so bright
That had been
When she was fifteen

She was cleaning her room when spotting
A pile of her old colored paintings
Of dancing daffodils
And gently rolling hills
She carelessly glanced at it
Then quietly laughed to herself—
How embarrassing! How childish it seemed!
She threw them into the dustbin without one glance
Throwing colors away—not giving them one last chance
That was the day
She turned twenty-eight

She came out of the pitch dark hall
Of smoke and song and alcohol
She covered her eyes
She hated colors so bright
Colors in her eyes started fading away
Leaving her with images of grey
Dripping, wandering, whimpering grey
She didn’t mind
Even if her world was black and white
That was the night
She turned forty-five

She was lying on bed, groaning and moaning
When she heard a tiny voice calling
“Miss, I’ve brought you some flowers,
You’ve been lying here for hours
Why not enjoy the sunshine outside
The colors there are surely bright!”
Then she saw the little girl
With mud and dirt on hands and nose
A single tear came to her eyes
Wasn’t that her own self when she was young?

Taking the hand of the little girl,
She took a step to the outside world
She saw the stream in the sunlight—
Of laughing, flowing, glimmering golden
She saw the dragonflies flying high--
Of fluttering, smiling, dancing silver
All the memories
All the colors
Came floating back to her like a running river
How old was she?
Fifty-three

My goodness Alice! This has far exceeded my expectations! You are truly extraordinary in the way you have constructed this beautiful poem. I loved your colour metaphor and you have captured the different times of life so effectively using both free and rhyming verse! I reveled in the way you used bleak colours for those difficult years. You demonstrated great technique in using a half-rhyme between ‘hall’ and ‘alchohol’ (30 – 31) – is that something you have been taught or is it instinctive? We’ll be working with rhyme and rhythm in the coming weeks and perhaps you can learn a few new tricks. An absolutely marvelous job! I’m tempted to send this to the original author of ‘Wings’ whom I know. How would that be?

There is a book you should read by Fay Weldon ‘Letters To Alice On First Reading Jane Austen’. It is a series of letters written by the aunt of a budding writer whose just joined the English department of a university.  I may do a few excerpts from it in a few weeks but it’s a marvelous, if fairly demanding read. Entertaining though!

[ 本帖最后由 hlp525 于 2012-11-5 15:00 编辑 ]

hlp525

贴了三篇带老师反馈的孩子作业，累死我了！

每贴一篇，格式、颜色都要重新调整，编辑文档时儿教的网络也不配合，要等，要等。。。。。。

仅这些技术活就让我觉得累了，想想老师一字一句地看孩子生涩的长篇大论，然后批注，寄语。。。，感谢老师！

hlp525

Cathy 老师给孩子们的书目：

Book list for discussion:

Ken Kesey – One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest  -set in a mental institution and addresses societal issues of ‘who is normal?’ amongst others, interesting  concepts for reflection, intriguing story, fair amount of swearing.

The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini – a classic, well drawn characters, themes include human failings, unusual story about childhood friendships and betrayal

A Thousand Splendid Suns – Khaled Hosseini – a ‘must-read’, brilliant writing, set in Afghanistan, many women’s issues presented and reflected, some disturbing images.

The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas – John Boyne – setting during the second world war – specifically  relating to the Holocaust.  A most unusual perspective (sometimes called Martian) on the Holocaust as viewed by a 9 year old German boy who befriends a Jewish boy in Auschwitz.  A quick, but spell-binding read with enormous potential for serious reflection on innocence, friendship and man’s inhumanity to man.

Lord of the Flies – William Golding – disturbing but well-written novel of a group of boys who survived an aeroplane crash and live on an island with no adults present.  Reflection on what makes us human,  or animal…

To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee – classic American novel outlining racial prejudice and its response.  Again – tracking the innocence of children and relating it to the perceptions and prejudices of adults.

Unreliable Memoirs – Clive James – hilarious and well-written, autobiographical novel by this Australian former Journalist.  A quick, easy, highly entertaining (and probably grossly exaggerated) account of his formative years.

女儿最近在听 To Kill a Mockingbird 这部英文小说。

[ 本帖最后由 hlp525 于 2012-11-8 22:25 编辑 ]

dawnch

搞截图就好了！
我偷懒，我喜欢用截图。

小荷听雨

WENDY 先看A Thousand Splendid Suns ，电纸书里这本书排头，就选了它。
没想到的是孩子看得很入迷，令我多少有了点信心。原来她多是喜欢奇幻和happy ending的书，曾经听过仙境之桥的音频后怎么说都不肯再看纸书

Wendy 这次能跟着读完CATHY老师要求的书并跟紧老师的课，相当于一次人文催熟哦

金凤凰

楼上的孩子都太棒了，牛妈牛孩儿呀！