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script-a-world · 5 years

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Do you have any suggestions for how to treat the setting like a character? I’ve heard that advice a few times, and I have a hunch that that might be what my current project needs in order to maintain a cohesive sense of place, but I’m a little unsure how to do it.

Constablewrites: It’s possible to have a [setting that is an actual character], but I don’t think that’s what the advice is generally about. Rather, it’s about giving your setting some of the qualities that characters have, rather than treating it as static set dressing.

Characters interact. One of my favorite quick-and-dirty tricks for building mood in a story is the weather. Not in the “it was raining” sense--someone enjoying a pleasant spring rain or hunched against freezing wind and sleet. Even a seemingly neutral partly cloudy day can affect a person, especially when there are fluctuations like the sun going behind a cloud or the wind picking up. Beyond weather, other elements of your world can be actively complicating a character’s life, like its traffic patterns or its legal system (even if embodied in a character, this is still tied to setting).

Characters do stuff when they’re not on screen. Settings start to feel small and inorganic when every element of them is tied to something the characters are doing. Even in a tiny town, there are going to be all sorts of things that keep it running that your characters never see or think about. This is why a lot of world building exercises include questions like “Who gets rid of the trash?” and “Where is the food grown?” It’s not that you need to have this stuff on the page, but understanding it as the writer will inform other choices you make (like the level of technology you’d need to fully automate those things, or the social implications of having people do that work).

Characters are shaped by their pasts. If a character is terrified of ostriches or snappish with everyone except small children, there’s probably some sort of story there. Like with your trash pickup, it might not be something that ever needs to get laid out on the page, but understanding that background as an author helps you paint a more rounded, nuanced portrait of that character.

Ultimately, this last one is a lot of the work we do here at script-a-world: it’s not just about “can you have this cool thing in your setting” but “what is it about your setting that allows this cool thing to be possible?” It’s about thinking through the way various systems interconnect, the way that people think and act and want, the unforeseen ripple effects of small changes.

@scriptstructure might be able to weigh in more on specific methods for getting this onto the page, but one thing you can do is pay attention to the things that make you aware of the world around you: sounds, sensations, events, etc. Then look for ways for your characters to do the same thing.

Brainstormed: This is a good question, and not the easiest one to answer. I’d say look at the masters, like Tolkien (of course) and Terry Pratchett, both of whom created very distinct, personality filled worlds with very different tones. Let’s look at them for a minute.

First, their writing styles. Tolkien, in writing Middle-earth, used high flowery fantasy language that’s become a staple of every vaguely medieval story written since. It recalls the eddas and epics of older civilizations like Beowulf or the story of Ragnarok, which Tolkien actually used as inspiration. The way people speak and the way things are described gets the reader into a very firm mindset about how this world is. Pratchett, on the other hand, denotes Discworld with about as much respect as he had for a normal use of the English language, that is, very little! His way with words is almost nonsensical at points, but vivid, and charming, and just a bit left of weird and straight into magical. The comic tone of the series is encapsulated perfectly by the very words used to build the world, and the serious undertones are brought out in starker contrast when they appear. So think about your world’s personality and your own writing style. If your world could speak, would it do so in the way that you do? Would it use your vocabulary? Would it follow proper grammar or throw around run-on sentences and contractions like no tomorrow? Treat your descriptions of the world in the same way you should be treating a character’s manner of speech: ensure it has a deliberate flair that communicates a personality simply in the writing style used.

Second, their breadth, or scope. This one is a little more difficult to pin down, and you need to figure out where your limit is, unless you don’t mind driving yourself into the ground with a bunch of details that won’t ever show up in your story. Middle-earth is probably the biggest example of this, with its multiple complete languages with their own histories and migrations, with dozens of kingdoms living and dying long before The Lord of the Rings takes place, with its genealogies and appendices and timelines and cosmology! Tolkien went whole ham. But the Discworld series, meandering about with no set first or last book, skipping across characters and settings for the fun of it, accomplishes similar scope with none of the structure. The looseness of the worldbuilding is in fact one of the things that contributes to the worldbuilding. You ought to have a general idea of your world’s entirety, I think, but that should only serve to provide context and richness to the more specific setting your story takes place in. If personality is flavor, then a five star chef laboring over a professional meal will give one taste, a homecooked comfort food with simple ingredients will give another, and they are equally tasty, but very different meals.

Third, the tiny details, perhaps what you’d find if you took the second point and held it up to a magnifying glass. Tolkien barely even bothered to tell us what many of his main characters looked like! He does give us some details, like how the hobbits have an informal speaking style, even when talking to royalty, which led many people to believe they were royalty themselves. That ties in to his language worldbuilding, but it also gives us a sense of how this world works, which lends it a personality. Pratchett finagles such descriptions of small habits and quirks, in both characters and world, that I feel as if I’ve been there already. The ridiculousness found throughout his world is presented so normally that the idiosyncrasies in Discworld give it delightful character instead of confusing the reader. If there’s small details about your world that give it a certain personality, find a way to finagle those in! Make a Pinterest board or an aesthetic folder of some sort, to save the bits and bobs that you know you want your readers to visualize, and try to work backwards from there. The little things will sell it.

#pylons #setting #nikkilbook

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ieltsxpresscom · 4 years

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IELTS Practice Cambridge Book 7 Academic Reading Test 3 C7T3

Attitudes to Language It is not easy to be systematic and objective about language study. Popular linguistic debate regularly deteriorates into invective and polemic. Language belongs to everyone, so most people feel they have a right to hold an opinion about it. And when opinions differ, emotions can run high. Arguments can start as easily over minor points of usage as over major policies of linguistic education. Language, moreover, is a very public behaviour, so it is easy for different usages to be noted and criticised. No part of society or social behaviour is exempt: linguistic factors influence how we judge personality, intelligence, social status, educational standards, job aptitude, and many other areas of identity and social survival. As a result, it is easy to hurt, and to be hurt, when language use is unfeelingly attacked. In its most general sense, prescriptivism is the view that one variety of language has an inherently higher value than others, and that this ought to be imposed on the whole of the speech community. The view is propounded especially in relation to grammar and vocabulary, and frequently with reference to pronunciation. The variety which is favoured, in this account, is usually a version of the ‘standard’ written language, especially as encountered in literature, or in the formal spoken language which most closely reflects this style. Adherents to this variety are said to speak or write ‘correctly’; deviations from it are said to be ‘incorrect! All the main languages have been studied prescriptively, especially in the 18th century approach to the writing of grammars and dictionaries. The aims of these early grammarians were threefold: (a) they wanted to codify the principles of their languages, to show that there was a system beneath the apparent chaos of usage, (b) they wanted a means of settling disputes over usage, and (c) they wanted to point out what they felt to be common errors, in order to ‘improve’ the language. The authoritarian nature of the approach is best characterised by its reliance on ‘rules’ of grammar. Some usages are ‘prescribed,’ to be learnt and followed accurately; others are ‘proscribed,’ to be avoided. In this early period, there were no half-measures: usage was either right or wrong, and it was the task of the grammarian not simply to record alternatives, but to pronounce judgement upon them. These attitudes are still with us, and they motivate a widespread concern that linguistic standards should be maintained. Nevertheless, there is an alternative point of view that is concerned less with standards than with the facts of linguistic usage. This approach is summarised in the statement that it is the task of the grammarian to describe, not prescribe to record the facts of linguistic diversity, and not to attempt the impossible tasks of evaluating language variation or halting language change. In the second half of the 18th century, we already find advocates of this view, such as Joseph Priestley, whose Rudiments of English Grammar (1761) insists that ‘the custom of speaking is the original and only just standard of any language! Linguistic issues, it is argued, cannot be solved by logic and legislation. And this view has become the tenet of the modern linguistic approach to grammatical analysis. In our own time, the opposition between ‘descriptivists’ and ‘prescriptivists’ has often become extreme, with both sides painting unreal pictures of the other. Descriptive grammarians have been presented as people who do not care about standards, because of the way they see all forms of usage as equally valid. Prescriptive grammarians have been presented as blind adherents to a historical tradition. The opposition has even been presented in quasi-political terms – of radical liberalism vs elitist conservatism. Questions 1-8 Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 1? In boxes 1-8 in your answer sheet, write: YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer NO if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this 1 There are understandable reasons why arguments occur about language. 2 People feel more strongly about language education than about small differences in language usage. 3 Our assessment of a person’s intelligence is affected by the way he or she uses language. 4 Prescriptive grammar books cost a lot of money to buy in the 18th century. 5 Prescriptivism still exists today. 6 According to descriptivists it is pointless to try to stop language change. 7 Descriptivism only appeared after the 18th century. 8 Both descriptivists and prescriptivists have been misrepresented. Questions 9-12 Complete the summary using the list of words, A-l, below. The language debate According to (9) …………. there is only one correct form of language. Linguists who take this approach to language place great importance on grammatical (10) ……………………. Conversely, the view of (11) ………….., such as Joseph Priestley, is that grammar should be based on (12) …………………. A descriptivists B language expert C popular speech D formal language E evaluation F rules G modern linguists H prescriptivists I change Question 13 Choose the correct letter A. B, C or D. What is the writer’s purpose in Reading Passage? A to argue in favour of a particular approach to writing dictionaries and grammar books B to present a historical account of differing views of language C to describe the differences between spoken and written language D to show how a certain view of language has been discredited Tidal Power A Operating on the same principle as wind turbines, the power in sea turbines comes from tidal currents which turn blades similar to ships’ propellers, but, unlike wind, the tides are predictable and the power input is constant. The technology raises the prospect of Britain becoming self-sufficient in renewable energy and drastically reducing its carbon dioxide emissions. If tide, wind and wave power are all developed, Britain would be able to close gas, coal and nuclear power plants and export renewable power to other parts of Europe. Unlike wind power, which Britain originally developed and then abandoned for 20 years allowing the Dutch to make it a major industry, undersea turbines could become a big export earner to island nations such as Japan and New Zealand. B Tidal sites have already been identified that will produce one sixth or more of the UK’s power – and at prices competitive with modern gas turbines and undercutting those of the already ailing nuclear industry. One site alone, the Pentland Firth, between Orkney and mainland Scotland, could produce 10% of the country’s electricity with banks of turbines under the sea, and another at Alderney in the Channel Islands three times the 1,200 megawatts of Britain’s largest and newest nuclear plant, Sizewell B, in Suffolk. Other sites identified include the Bristol Channel and the west coast of Scotland, particularly the channel between Campbeltown and Northern Ireland. C Work on designs for the new turbine blades and sites are well advanced at the University of Southampton’s sustainable energy research group. The first station is expected to be installed off Lynmouth in Devon shortly to test the technology in a venture jointly funded by the department of Trade and Industry and the European Union. AbuBakr Bahaj, in charge of the Southampton research, said: The prospects for energy from tidal currents are far better than from wind because the flows of water are predictable and constant. The technology for dealing with the hostile saline environment under the sea has been developed in the North Sea oil industry and much is already known about turbine blade design, because of wind power and ship propellers. There are a few technical difficulties, but I believe in the next five to ten years we will be installing commercial marine turbine farms.’ Southampton has been awarded £215,000 over three years to develop the turbines and is working with Marine Current Turbines, a subsidiary of IT power, on the Lynmouth project. EU research has now identified 106 potential sites for tidal power, 80% round the coasts of Britain. The best sites are between islands or around heavily indented coasts where there are strong tidal currents. D A marine turbine blade needs to be only one third of the size of a wind generator to produce three times as much power. The blades will be about 20 metres in diameter, so around 30 metres of water is required. Unlike wind power, there are unlikely to be environmental objections. Fish and other creatures are thought unlikely to be at risk from the relatively slow-turning blades. Each turbine will be mounted on a tower which will connect to the national power supply grid via underwater cables. The towers will stick out of the water and be lit, to warn shipping, and also be designed to be lifted out of the water for maintenance and to clean seaweed from the blades. E Dr Bahaj has done most work on the Alderney site, where there are powerful currents. The single undersea turbine farm would produce far more power than needed for the Channel Islands and most would be fed into the French Grid and be re-imported into Britain via the cable under the Channel. F One technical difficulty is cavitation, where low pressure behind a turning blade causes air bubbles. These can cause vibration and damage the blades of the turbines. Dr Bahaj said: ‘We have to test a number of blade types to avoid this happening or at least make sure it does not damage the turbines or reduce performance. Another slight concern is submerged debris floating into the blades. So far we do not know how much of a problem it might be. We will have to make the turbines robust because the sea is a hostile environment, but all the signs that we can do it are good.’ Questions 14-17 Reading Passage 2 has six paragraphs, A-F. Which paragraph contains the following information? NB You may use any letter more than once. 14 the location of the first test site 15 a way of bringing the power produced on one site back into Britain 16 a reference to a previous attempt by Britain to find an alternative source of energy 17 mention of the possibility of applying technology from another industry Questions 18-22 Choose FIVE Letters A-J Which FIVE of the following claims about tidal power are made by the writer? A It is a more reliable source of energy than wind power. B It would replace all other forms of energy in Britain. C Its introduction has come as a result of public pressure. D It would cut down on air pollution. E It could contribute to the closure of many existing power stations ln Britain. F It could be a means of increasing national income. G It could face a lot of resistance from other fuel industries. H It could be sold more cheaply than any other type of fuel. I It could compensate for the shortage of inland sites for energy production. J It is best produced in the vicinity of coastlines with particular features. Questions 23-26 Label the diagram below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer. An Undersea Turbine

Download All Cambridge IELTS Books Pdf + Audio For Free Cambridge 1-14 (Free Download) Information Theory – The Big Idea A In April 2002 an event took place which demonstrated one of the many applications of information theory. The space probe, Voyager I, launched in 1977, had sent back spectacular images of Jupiter and Saturn and then soared out of the Solar System on a one-way mission to the stars. After 25 years of exposure to the freezing temperatures of deep space, the probe was beginning to show its age. Sensors and circuits were on the brink of failing and NASA experts realised that they had to do something or lose contact with their probe forever. The solution was to get a message to Voyager I to instruct it to use spares to change the failing parts. With the probe 12 billion kilometres from Earth, this was not an easy task. By means of a radio dish belonging to NASA’s Deep Space Network, the message was sent out into the depths of space. Even travelling at the speed of light, it took over 11 hours to reach its target, far beyond the orbit of Pluto. Yet, incredibly, the little probe managed to hear the faint call from its home planet, and successfully made the switchover. B It was the longest-distance repair job in history, and a triumph for the NASA engineers. But it also highlighted the astonishing power of the techniques developed by American communications engineer Claude Shannon, who had died just a year earlier. Born in 1916 in Petoskey, Michigan, Shannon showed an early talent for maths and for building gadgets, and made breakthroughs in the foundations of computer technology when still a student. While at Bell Laboratories, Shannon developed information theory, but shunned the resulting acclaim. In the 1940s, he single-handedly created an entire science of communication which has since inveigled its way into a host of applications, from DVDs to satellite communications to bar codes – any area, in short, where data has to be conveyed rapidly yet accurately. C This all seems light years away from the down-to-earth uses Shannon originally had for his work, which began when he was a 22-year-old graduate engineering student at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1939. He set out with an apparently simple aim: to pin down the precise meaning of the concept of ‘information’. The most basic form of information, Shannon argued, is whether something is true or false – which can be captured in the binary unit, or ‘bit’, of the form 1 or 0. Having identified this fundamental unit, Shannon set about defining otherwise vague ideas about information and how to transmit it from place to place. In the process he discovered something surprising: it is always possible to guarantee information will get through random interference – ‘noise’ – intact. D Noise usually means unwanted sounds which interfere with genuine information. Information theory generalises this idea via theorems that capture the effects of noise with mathematical precision. In particular, Shannon showed that noise sets a limit on the rate at which information can pass along communication channels while remaining error-free. This rate depends on the relative strengths of the signal and noise travelling down the communication channel, and on its capacity (its ‘bandwidth’). The resulting limit, given in units of bits per second, is the absolute maximum rate of error-free communication given signal strength and noise level. The trick, Shannon showed, is to find ways of packaging up – ‘coding’ – information to cope with the ravages of noise, while staying within the information-carrying capacity – ‘bandwidth’ – of the communication system being used. E Over the years scientists have devised many such coding methods, and they have proved crucial in many technological feats. The Voyager spacecraft transmitted data using codes which added one extra bit for every single bit of information; the result was an error rate of just one bit in 10,000 – and stunningly clear pictures of the planets. Other codes have become part of everyday life – such as the Universal Product Code, or bar code, which uses a simple error-detecting system that ensures supermarket check-out lasers can read the price even on, say, a crumpled bag of crisps. As recently as 1993, engineers made a major breakthrough by discovering so-called turbo codes – which come very close to Shannon’s ultimate limit for the maximum rate that data can be transmitted reliably, and now play a key role in the mobile videophone revolution. F Shannon also laid the foundations of more efficient ways of storing information, by stripping out superfluous (‘redundant’) bits from data which contributed little real information. As mobile phone text messages like ‘I CN C U’ show, it is often possible to leave out a lot of data without losing much meaning. As with error correction, however, there’s a limit beyond which messages become too ambiguous. Shannon showed how to calculate this limit, opening the way to the design of compression methods that cram maximum information into the minimum space. Questions 27-32 Reading Passage 3 has six paragraphs, A-F. Which paragraph contains the following information? 27 an explanation of the factors affecting the transmission of information 28 an example of how unnecessary information can be omitted 29 a reference to Shannon`s attitude to fame 30 details of a machine capable of interpreting incomplete information 31 a detailed account of an incident involving information theory 32 a reference to what Shannon initially intended to achieve in his research Questions 33-37 Complete the notes below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer The Voyager l Space Probe The probe transmitted pictures of both (33) ……………….,and ……………. , then left the (34) ……………. The freezing temperatures were found to have a negative effect on parts of the space probe. Scientists feared that both the (35)……………….. and ………………… were about to stop working. The only hope was to tell the probe to replace them with (36)…………………….. – but distance made communication with the probe difficult. A (37)………………….. was used to transmit the message at the speed of light. The message was picked up by the probe and the switchover took place. Questions 38-40 Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3? In boxes 38-40 on your answer sheet write TRUE if the statement agrees with the information FALSE if the statement contradicts the information NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this 38. The concept of describing something as true or false was the starting point for Shannon in his attempts to send messages over distances. 39. The amount of information that can be sent in a given time period is determined with reference to the signal strength and noise level. 40. Products have now been developed which can convey more information than Shannon had anticipated as possible. Show Answers 1. yes 2. no 3. yes 4. not given 5. yes 6. yes 7. no 8. yes 9. H 10. F 11. A 12. C 13. B 14. C 15. E 16. A 17. C 18. A 19. D 20. E 21. F 22. J 23. maintenance 24. slow (turning) 25. low pressure 26. cavitation 27. D 28. F 29. B 30. E 31. A 32. C 33. jupiter and saturn 34. solar system 35. sensors and circuits 36. spares 37. radio dish 38. true 39. true 40. false Read the full article

#academicreading #c7t3 #cambridge7 #cambridgeacademicreading7 #ielts7 #ielts7reading3 #ieltsacademicreading #reading

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tefltraininginstitute · 4 years

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Student Centered Vocabulary Teaching (with Mario Rinvolucri)

For our last podcast of the year (and the decade!) we interview prolific TEFL author Mario Rinvolucri. “Most of the vocabulary teaching that gets done is based on texts, written, audio, or video. The problem with this kind of text-based teaching is that everything is external to the learner: the text hits him or her from outside. It makes much better motivational sense to have the new words rise from a situation that is internal to the students, where they create the situation that ushers in the need for new words.” Today we explore this idea with Mario Rinvolucri, author of “Vocabulary” and “Humanizing Your Coursebook”, how teachers can make vocabulary teaching more student-centered.

Student Centered Vocabulary Teaching (with Mario Rinvolucri) - Transcription

Ross Thorburn: Hi, everyone. This week our guest is Mario Rinvolucri. We're going to be asking Mario about humanistic vocabulary teaching. All this comes from an article that Mario wrote, I think way back in the early 1980s about some of the problems in vocabulary teaching.

Here's a little quote. Mario says, "In my experience, most of the vocabulary teaching that gets done is based on texts, be they written, audio, or video. The problem with this kind of text‑based teaching is that everything is external to the learner. The text hits him or her from the outside."

He goes on to say, "It makes much better motivational sense to have new words rise from a situation that is internal to the students, where they create a situation that ushers in the need for new words." In this episode, I ask Mario about how to do that in class, how to make vocabulary teaching internal to the student.

Mario, if you're not familiar with him, is a teacher and a teacher trainer at Pilgrims in Canterbury in the UK. He's also an author of dozens and dozens of wonderful teachers' books like "Grammar Games Once Upon a Time, Using Stories in the Language Classroom," "Humanising Your Course Book and Vocabulary." I can think of few people better placed to talk about this subject than Mario. I hope you enjoy the interview.

Mario Rinvolucri: Hello, Ross.

Ross: Hi, Mario. Thanks for joining us.

Mario: OK.

Ross: Mario, how do you want to start today?

Mario: I'd like to start off with a little exercise which I would do if I was working with a group and do it with you. Can you see these utensils?

Ross: Yes, I can.

Mario: Spoon and a fork. Which would you prefer to be?

Ross: I'll be the spoon, please, Mario. [laughs]

Mario: You prefer to be a spoon. OK.

Ross: Yeah.

Mario: In a group, of course, different people would make their different decisions and then would pair off with other people. We're a forced pair. I'm going to be a fork. Yes, as a fork, I think of you as a bit passive. I actually hold the meat in place, which my owner can use his left hand holding. Then he can cut, and cut, and cut, etc., etc.

Ross: I suppose this is true but I think as a spoon we're more flexible than forks, aren't we, in that you can use us with soup.

Mario: That's true. I do think of myself as being overly choleric and aggressive as a fork. I realize that that can be a good thing, as I suggested at the beginning. It can also be a defect. You are inevitably condemned to a fairly aggressive, angry role, while a spoon is quite different. The other thing I think about you guys is that you spoons are completely universal.

Ross: I wouldn't say completely universal. We definitely exist, at least in my experience, in Asia, as well as Europe, and in North America. Don't beat yourself up too bad about being aggressive. At least you're not a knife, are you? That would be the most aggressive role, wouldn't it?

Mario: Yes, of course. I didn't choose a knife for that reason. It's automatically aggressive. Therefore, there's no such choice for people to do the role‑play. I wanted to start off with that exercise which comes from the work of Bernard Dufeu, the creator of "Linguistic Psychodramaturgy." I'm sorry for that horrible, long title that he gives it in French.

It uses drama methods but with the aim of teaching language and not with the aim of making you a better personal or less lunatic. This exercise, if it works reasonably well and takes off, ought to allow you sitting in the middle of a room of which there will be maybe 10, to reach five or six different interlocutors and see yourself and the other people from different angles.

What I wanted to do is to introduce at the very beginning the idea of imaginative role‑play. Hopefully, it may be something which is new to you. It has freshness. One of the problems of second‑language teaching is that we have to do again what we've already mastered brilliantly in one language, our mother tongue.

Ross: You're saying there, Mario, that you don't always want what students do in the L2 to be what they can already do in their L1.

Mario: Absolutely not. Also, to do what they already do in their first language but also to have a fresh aspect to the learning, fresh in terms of content and feeling.

Ross: As I mentioned at the beginning of the show, obviously, one of the points of an exercise like this is that the students have a need for vocabulary. As a teacher, then, what are you doing while the students are doing this activity? Are you going around and correcting errors? Are you writing useful words on the board? How are you using this as an opportunity to help the students develop their vocabulary?

Mario: Obviously, they need all sorts of vocabulary they don't have. This is a marvelous time for trying to teach them that. What I do do in those situations is I ask them to put a little piece of paper on the table in front of them. It either says, "Piss off," or it says, "Come when I call you," or it says, "You are free to look over my shoulder."

It's very interesting when you do that with a class you would teach on a permanent basis. It's not always the same people who say, "Piss off." It depends on mood. It depends on the task.

It's saying, especially, to teenage students, "Listen, guys, you know what you need. I'm not God. I can't see into your head and whether you want to be helped this morning or not. So, just tell me." If they, halfway through, decide to change what's on the label, that's fine too.

Ross: Mario, that previous exercise you mentioned was from Bernard Dufeu. Do you have any other examples in a similar vein that you think help with students' vocabulary development?

Mario: An exercise that he does a lot at the beginning of, especially, working with a big group, is what he calls a group mirroring exercise. I can try to do this with you. Est‑ce‑que vous parlez français?

Ross: Je ne comprends pas.

Mario: Je vais vous parler d'une rose. I'm going to talk to you about a rose. You, all the big group of you who are sitting there at the other side of the world, I would like you to simply follow my voice and say the same things.

Ross: OK. If you're listening, you can join in.

Mario: Une rose.

Ross: Une rose.

Mario: Une rose.

Ross: Une rose.

Mario: Oh, une belle rose.

Ross: Oh, une belle rose.

Mario: Ah, cette rose est merveilleuse.

Ross: Ah, cette rose une belveilleuse.

Mario: [indecipherable 07:00] épatante.

Ross: Epatante.

Mario: Ah, quelle belle rose.

Ross: Quelle belle rose.

Mario: Quelle belle rose.

Ross: Quelle belle rose.

Mario: Je veux la cueillir. Cueillir means to pick. Je veux la cueillir.

Ross: Je veux la cueillir.

Mario: Ay!

Ross: Ay! [laughs]

Mario: Ça me fait mal!

Ross: Je me fais mal!

Mario: Ça me fait mal! It's hurting me. Ça me fait très mal!

Ross: Très mal.

Mario: Du sang!

Ross: Du sang.

Mario: Du sang.

Ross: Du sang.

Mario: Etc., OK?

Ross: [laughs]

Mario: We could go on. It's a bit artificial with just one very bright human being. It's much easier to do with a whole group. What I'm doing here is difficult. I'm concentrating on you and the difficulties you have or don't have. I'm also concentrating on the rose.

Ross: For people who can't see you, you're demonstrating the meaning through the actions here, aren't you?

Mario: Of course. Through the action, I want you to know what you're doing. I want you to feel my pain in my finger. Otherwise, it doesn't work linguistically. It has to work imaginatively before it works linguistically.

If it had been fully convincing to you, you would have disappeared into that dream of getting it pretty right. You already were getting it pretty right. Had you had people around you getting it righter, you know which people in your group have good pronunciation as a student.

Ross: I guess the students are learning from each other as well as from the monologue the teacher's giving.

Mario: Absolutely, yes. You can make a monologue into a dialogue if you so want. You can go one side and then the other.

Ross: Mario, I wanted to ask you, how do you think teachers can combine some of these humanistic ideas for teaching vocabulary with using a coursebook, where a lot of the language is already set for the teachers by the person that wrote the book?

Mario: I thought I might need to refresh my own memory of things. I brought along a book which is called "Humanizing Your Course Book." The concept came to me when I was wandering through a northern Italian town with a colleague, an Italian teacher. She said, "Mario, I've got a problem. I'm teaching the [indecipherable 09:16] book and I know that the listenings are good for my students.

I know that sometimes, they're not making mistakes I make because of listening to proper English. So, I'm totally in favor of the coursebook I'm using. But, listen, I've been through this book four times now and I know the teacher's book better probably than the authors and I'm bored. What can I do?"

I said, "Well, I don't know what you can do because you obviously respect the texts. You respect the presentation of grammar. You respect the phonological part. You're happy when it's for them but for them, it's first time except for the ones who have to do the year again, who are a minority."

I then said, "Well, would it help if a methodology person had a look at what the authors of the coursebook have presented to you and offered alternative ways of working that course material?" She said, "That would be really helpful."

Backed by her enthusiasm, I went to [indecipherable 10:26] and said, "Would you like me to write an alternative teacher's guide being very careful to acknowledge that you must use this book as the authors proposed first?" If you come to the third time through, how about looking at [indecipherable 10:43] your coursebook, which is what then was the substantiation of that idea. [indecipherable 10:49] told me to piss off in definite terms.

I then was asked to do exactly that by a German publisher called Klett. There, I had Green Line, which is their coursebook. I simply went through and thought, "Well, what humanistic ideas could be floated through without being too shocking for teachers?"

As [indecipherable 11:11] in Germany are pretty conservative. If you're not very careful, exercises like Spoon and Fork will be dismissed as [non‑English] , which means utter rubbish. Can I look through to the section on reading and simply read you...?

Ross: Of course.

Mario: They're very short these rubrics. This is called "Collective Picture." "Preparation, select a set of concrete nouns and verbs from the first three units of the coursebook." Going back to revise, not last week's work but six month ago's work, because a revision can't only be of yesterday's stuff. "Write about 30 of these words on slips of paper. Hand out one slip of paper to each student."

I'm thinking a class of 30 here, OK? "Explain that you are going to ask the class to draw a collective picture on the board. Ask each student to come to the board and draw the word from their slip of paper. The idea is to get all the items into a coherent picture. The picture for a verb will be the picture for the verb happening. Do the exercise without speaking.

Don't intervene. Let the students produce the collective picture they want. Then ask the class to name all the things in the picture and their parts." So, roots, for example, or leaves, or whatever. "Get students to write the words in. Individually, the students copy the drawing and the words."

Ross: So good to hear of an exercise that lets students review what they've already done but not just maybe from last week but maybe from the last two or three units of the book. I guess, also, you could do the opposite, as well and look forward to things that are going to happen in future chapters of the book.

So often we get obsessed with meeting the aim of this lesson rather than helping students consolidate and move things into their long‑term memory that they've already covered in class.

Mario: You want to visit a country. The coursebook is the country. If it's six weeks ago you went to Edinburgh, then it's quite reasonable to ask you to go back to Edinburgh in your head and be in that area of the country.

A lot of teachers think about now in the coursebook work, tomorrow in the coursebook work, and yesterday in the coursebook work. No, why don't you do an exercise which foresees something which will come up later? Who told you you have to use them in order?

#interview

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garden-ghoul · 7 years

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appendix blog part last

“listen to ghoul get angry about linguistic diversity”

So the next appendix is E: WRITING AND SPELLING, and idk how much I am going to care about this. I kept accidentally reading the part saying that ‘Bolger’ has a soft G in it, so my instinct is to not read any of this. I NEVER use J sounds if I can help it, even going so far as to mispronounce proper names by reading it as either Y or H. Therefore, I’m not reading this section. But I really do appreciate the subheading ‘S T R E S S’

A sort of interesting thing about Tengwar is that it’s supposed to be not so much an alphabet as a set of signs you can map to whatever sounds you are feeling. They wanted it to be really widely applicable, although it seems like this would be really confusing if the language just, didn’t work at all like Quenya. Also there are 24 letters arranged as a matrix of 4 series vs 6 grades. Series are where the sound is (labial, dental, et c) and grades are what you are doing (aspirating, stopping, et c). Extremely tidy, just as I would expect of a language system made by Feanaro Finwion. However, also as you would expect of, well, Quendi in general, every single letter has a dumb fanciful name that probably has some deep metaphorical significance.

Can I just say, it’s frankly astonishing that you all wanted to read me blogging about this.

APPENDIX F: LANGUAGES AND PEOPLES

Westron has become the native language of nearly everyone who lives in Arnor/Gondor. Okay, why though? Is it just because Numenoreans Were Here First? They weren’t, there were even plenty of Edain during the second age. Numenoreans just declared themselves rulers and everyone was like “yeah you have good technology and seem to be pretty good at murders” I guess. I dunno it just seems like Tolkien is sacrificing linguistic diversity for convenience within the story and his own weird elitism.

...No, wait a minute, it might be because the total population of Gondorians and former Arnorians is just way bigger than every other population. Not the Rohirrim, who still do have their own native language, but I get the sense that everyone in the north used to be subjects of Arnor and had to learn Westron. Even elves learned it, possibly because Numenoreans were the only humans they cared enough about to talk to. Now it’s a trade language.

The Elves far back in the Elder Days became divided into two main branches: the West-elves (Eldar) and the East-elves. Of the latter kind were most of the elven-folk of Mirkwood and Lórien; but their languages do not appear in this history, in which all the Elvish names and words are of Eldarin form.

Fuck you. No um I’m sure he just had too many languages on his plate already. But!! I hate this weird thing where languages Tolkien personally thinks are superior end up dominating populations, even when it doesn’t make much sense for them to do so! Same thing with Dunedain deciding Sindarin is better than their native language because they are gay for the abstract concept of elves. Nobody does that!! Tolkien paints it as tragic that Gondorians lose Sindarin as a native language! He does not value linguistic diversity for its own sake what kind of linguist is he!!!

Hobbits historically have had the tendency to adopt whatever language the humans nearby are speaking, which is curious given their reputation for being extremely hard for humans to find. Why would they need to use human languages if they are hiding from humans? I think there ought to be hobbit languages is all. Anyway apparently the last language they used before coming to Arnor was Rohirrin(?)-adjacent; their name, hobbit, comes from the same root as holbytla, hole-builder. Cute!

Says here the ents are so long-winded even Eldar didn’t bother to try to write anything in entish or learn it. Ents talked freely, secure in the knowledge that Eru’s children just didn’t have the patience to snoop. Whereas ents love learning other languages, so they get to snoop on everyone.

The strange words and names that the Hobbits record as used by Treebeard and other Ents are thus Elvish, or fragments of Elf-speech strung together in Ent-fashion. Some are Quenya: as Taurelilómëa-tumbalemorna Tumbaletaerëa Lómëanor, which may be rendered 'Forestmanyshadowed-deepvalleyblack Deepvalleyforested Gloomyland', and by which Treebeard meant, more or less: 'there is a black shadow in the deep dales of the forest'.

This is a fascinating insight into entish grammar. I love the idea of a language whose grammar is “mash some concepts together to create a Feeling about what you are trying to say.” That’s very me. That is how I talk sometimes when I am not very verbal.

The word uruk of the Black Speech was applied as a rule only to the great soldier-orcs that at this time issued from Mordor and Isengard. The lesser kinds were called, especially by the Uruk-hai, snaga 'slave'.

Oh shit I thought Snaga was his name. I feel terrible for him now. Or, like, it was his name and it was the worst name ever.

Next is a note on translation. The best part of the whole appendices is the bit where it says Pippin was addressing Denethor as “thee” the whole time so everyone thought he had a rank equal to the Steward. This is especially silly because presumably he noticed that humans use formal pronouns but just didn’t bother to try to fit in--this implies that he didn’t understand the significance of “you” and just thought it was more or less a direct synonym. I wish Tolkien had written the hobbits using “thou” in the book, although it wouldn’t have had the same connotations to modern audiences I suppose.

The more learned and able among the Hobbits had some knowledge of 'book-language', as it was termed in the Shire; and they were quick to note and adopt the style of those whom they met. It was in any case natural for much-travelled folk to speak more or less after the manner of those among whom they found themselves...

Oho! It’s because he doesn’t study enough and is incautious and carefree. What a lad. Talks then about the Anglicization of Adunaic names to give a feeling of Englishness--archaic English usages, different name endings being masculine of feminine, et c.

In some old families such as the Tooks and the Bolgers, it was the custom to give high-sounding first-names. Since most of these seem to have been drawn from legends of the past, and many while now meaningless to Hobbits closely resembled the names of Men in the Vale of Anduin, or in Dale, or in the Mark, I have turned them into those old names, largely of Frankish and Gothic origin, that are still used by us or are met in our histories. I have thus at any rate preserved the often comic contrast between the first-names and surnames, of which the Hobbits themselves were well aware.

As VV pointed out... It’s Good. I like to imagine Bolgers trying to come up with the sillest given name that just doesn’t go with Bolger at all. Isengrim would have been a good one, I can’t remember what family he was from.

Meriadoc was chosen to fit the fact that this character's shortened name. Kali, meant in the Westron 'jolly, gay', though it was actually an abbreviation of the now unmeaning Buckland name Kalimac.

Yes!! I’m so glad I finally hear what Kali means. I wonder if Tolkien came up with the English name or the Adunaic name first? I’m guessing English, that seems like how he rolls in this series. Aww Sam’s name means “he’s kinda dumb,” in archaic Adunaic. Leave him alone.

Last, here’s the explanation of ‘Brandywine,’ which I like very much in its complicated series of interwoven puns.

The hobbit-names of this river were alterations of the Elvish Baranduin, derived from baran 'golden brown' and duin '(large) river'. Brandywine seemed a natural corruption in modern times. Actually the older hobbit-name was Branda-nîn 'border-water', which would have been more closely rendered by Marchbourn; but by a jest that had become habitual, referring again to its colour, at this time the river was usually called Bralda-hîm 'heady ale'.

#AND THAT'S IT THAT'S ALL THE APPENDICES #next up is the hobbit. good gracious.#blog of the rings

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webstory7-blog · 7 years

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