Paper 1- Text 1 no listo

This article by Michael Hofmann in The Observer newspaper is a critical argument about modern British society and the failure of their educational system in relation to learning new languages. This idea is suggested in the title as it says "It's not civilized" as the author "attacks", by the use of these words the British people who normally think of themselves as 1st world citizens, so well, civilized.

Most of the article is written in informal language, using phrases as: "grammas? Pronunciation? [...]" This is mainly because by using language this way, the author can keep the reader engaged to the article by not showing boring facts and complicated formal language, so making it more interesting to read (so the reader doesn't get bored with a monotonous text). As well, its easier for any kind of audience to understand the message, as the targeted audience intends in all British people who are not interested in learning new languages, by the use of comparations and similiraities to explain in simple words complicated topics as in paragraph two: "Educaton is a field hospital, where the little troops [...]" The author uses this kind of comparations in order to explain in a simple way his point of view, rather than using complicated and specific words.
The use of language is very important in this text as it doesn´t only keep the reader interesten in the paper by making it dynamic and a simple lecture, in addition, this language serves the purpose of displaying the authors message about learning lenguages. In some sense, the author appeals to the British emotions as making them feel lousy with themselves: "The country is so rooted, so settled, one thinks it has survived everything others can throw at it, but it won´t survive its own wildly irresponsible experiments on itself". The author tryies on challenging the reader to learn new languages, and encourgages him to do this in order to save his country.

The author appeals not only to emotions like anger to try to convinve people to adopt his point of view by the use of ironies like: "the so called world language, english" to hurt tem on their pride, but it also makes interpretations of famous quotes like Les Murray's. Which is used to refer to the importance  of knowing at least two languages by scaring the reader, telling him that he would be "condemned" to only use the same words, phrases over and over again for he rest of his life, so by, to be chained to the same positions. Then he wouldn't be able to even comunicate with others, because "it requires two to speak English"

 The article itself and the illustration is a criticism about British society, in which depicts the British people as narrow minded, living inside a box, and because of this, as the illustration depicts, living in a different world than the rest of the people, as they refuse to communicate with the other "fish" (in the illustration countries or people are personofied by fish), and that´s why the british fish is facing the other way, not even looking at the others. As well, the author blames no one but the British, as its only because of them this is happening, destroying arguments like that English is the World's Language by giving facts about the numbers of people who actually can speak English, so there's no excuse for smeone to say that they don't need to learn another language because they know english, because is we imagine the world with only four inhabitants, considering 75% of them don't speak english, if you don't know any other language, who would you talk to?

Rationale WT

The past three or four classes have been about how media tries on making us think a certain way by the use of a lot of different literary devices as word choice for example. The tasks consists in writing a short story, blog, speech, opinion column, about this topic, either informing about it, or simply talking about it in no more than a thousand words.

I chose to do a blog, and by the use of informal language ( I can tell you my friends), I tried on making it the funnier as it could be (using modern internet jokes like "A wild Axe Ad came out the grass" *insert Pokemon music*) , so it's not very complicated for the reader to understand but also quite serious to not only get a laugh off the reader but an opinion. Because of this, the text's audience is aimed for young people who are most likely to be influenced by all the blog's talking about and will, overall understand the humor and the ironies.

About the text, it can be resumed in only one sentence:  The media and information is manipulated and WE are believing their story. The main topic though, it's about the word choice and "image" choice, which is how the Ad companies use certain words and images to influence our way of thinking in the most dissimulated way possible.

Atonement Reading Session Chapters 11-12

1) To explain how the book would be different (because it would be) if Briony was a boy instead of a girl, I would like just to allude to three different passages of the book, the first one being the scene when she sees her sister with Robbie by the pond and she first thoughts about a wedding proposal scene (something a boy would never even imagine on thinking) and then starts creating a whole story behind what she just saw without knowing what was actually going on. So she creates for herself a horrifying perspective about Robbie, and even more, when she reads the letter she wasn't supposed to (something that probable a boy wouldn't have done, because we shouldn't forget that she did it because she was jealous of her sister's relation with Robbie, because she liked him (if Briony were a boy its highly improbable for him to like Robbie)) she convinces herself about that this guy its an actual sex maniac, and lets be honest, men are not as exaggerated as women in these kind of things. And later on, when she witness against Robbie, she's blinded by her girly-one-sided point of view so she doesn't even reconsider her statements. In a few words, the book would have been really different, and probably wouldn't even had a plot if it wasn't for Paul Marshall raping Lola.

2) No, because the main plot is the change on Briony's point of view and personality through the novel, all the war scenes about Robbie only add the context to Briony's changing on the middle-end of the book, and on the last part, we can appreciate that all these scenes are just made for helping Briony developing her last thoughts, that are her feeling of guiltiness and sorry for what she had done.

3) These 'macabre' scenes respond to all the war-suffering scenes in which the author describes the horrifying characteristics of the war, and the wounds of the injured soldiers, in order to to create a realistic context to the story, as well as as producing an effect on the reader.................................

Atonement

https://www.educreations.com/lesson/view/atonement-commentary/34664552/?ref=app

The Gods must be crazy narrative.

The Gods Must be crazy by Jamie Uys its an informative and descriptive short text about the Desert of the Kalahari, told by a third-person narration, tells us about the life of ''the little people of the Kalahari'',  a group of people who has adapted to the hard life of the desert. Or is it hard? By the use of the direct narration in present tense, the author catch us in an interesting piece in which describe the story of how the Bushmen adapted to a place that seemed like impossible to live in and transformed this arid place, in a heaven, or not transformed but they saw in this place what no one ever saw, while our modern-society how we know  it today is left as something... ''not nearly close as good'' as this place. By a free indirect speech, the narrator lists all the good implications about the life in the Kalahari and all the codes to survive in this habitat in order to make us read until the end so we can sleep well in the night, without trying to figure out how these people survived a all these years.

Blow Bugle Blow analysis

Blow Bugle Blow -by Alfred Tennyson
The poem tells us about a war that its taking place far far away, in which people are dying and suffering, so they blow bugles in a call for help to their homeland but they don't get any response from the castle and the aristocracy that lives in it.

 The use of words like Bugle (brass wind instrument typically used on military marches) gives us the idea of the war by suggesting sound, an specific sound that we are most likely to relate to war times, that is the sound of the trumpets of battle (bugles). And combining this with the word ''echoes'' helps us create a more concrete and clear image of the poem's war in our minds, connecting echoes with characteristics like ''distant'' (that is the distance of the war) at the same time that its suggests the idea that these ''echoes'' are echoes for something, I mean they are not voices anymore, so the idea of death is implicitly  given. And further more, if at the end of each stanza there is a repeated word ''dying'' combined with ''echoes'', one can easily say: The echoes are the people's voices, and they are dying. As well as these words relate us to a war time, the use of ''wild'' remarks the characteristics that the human can acquire during a conflict like this in a comparison to animals.

The tone of the poem its kind of bipolar, because it presents a calmer tone at every stanza's beginning but when we reach the end of them, this sense of calmness gets disturbed making allusion to what its actually happening on the poem: At every ''call for help'' from the people, the tone changes according to which place its being talked about, either far away from the war, in the wealthy and peacefully lands or in the war itself where soldiers are fighting and people are dying.
The title ''Blow bugle Blow'' makes connection to the poem by being part of the refrain at the end of each stanza. And by only reading the title one can easily tell that the poem is about war times and that's exactly about what it is, BUT it makes a connection with some really important factor in the poem , which is the use of sounds, either like in ''reading out loud'' types of sound, or words that suggests us sound.

The theme of the poem its ''An ignored call for help'' in which the soldiers and the people scream for any help from the upper class (which its assumed to be their government) , but, as the theme suggests its being ignored. In this poem, Tennyson expresses the feeling of the people on the battlefield (who are not receiving any help) and make us adopt an critic point of view like someone who's outside the conflict and cannot do anything to help.

The poem has both internal and final rhyme. The first one can be easily seen and its used on every first and third verse of each stanza. On these verses, the rhymes help on making the poem a little slower to suit the feeling and mood that is portrayed every time the lyrical speaker talks about the peaceful place away from the conflict, and to contract this place with the war zone. As well it contributes on making the poem flow more easily by giving it some kind of musicality.  On the other side, the final rhyme contributes on changing the sense of calmness to chaos by using soft word sound at the end of every second and forth verse as well as using heavy sound words in the fifth and sixth verse of every stanza.

The poem starts with two verses that both contribute on giving majestic and marvelous characteristics to the castle in which the high class lives (personification), using a personification to refer to the splendor (in caps) falling on the castle's walls which shows the glory and the prestigious construction that it was supposed to protect the people. With an enjambment (which gives a feeling of fluency and calm) with the next verse gives us an idea of ancientness of this castle in order to make us think about this castle as an even more powerful building, ''old in story''. In the next two verses the lyrical speaker speaks about the landscape near the castle which is as peaceful and splendorous as the castle itself. The feeling of peace is given by the use of the word light because (in my opinon) when we hear an expression like this one one of our first thoughts its about an late afternoon for example, with the sun hiding etc. But this peace will be interrupted in the next two verses with the call of the bugles from far away, the call of wild echoes flying that are slowly dying when not heared. In this part, the use of alliteration in nessesary in terms of giving the poem a little more speed to differ from the peaceful part of the first verses. Meanwhile the people is dying, these other ''aristocratic'' guys live in peace and wealth ignoring all the fatalities from the war but still claim the glory of these battles for themselves, all the glory and honor goes to the powerful and rich high class people.

In the next stanza, the lyrical speaker makes a call for everyone (including the reader) to hark, to attentively hear these ''thin and clear'' words that are traveling through the wind trying to reach their goal, trying to warn the castle and get some help from them, or even an answer, it is said that these words are getting thinner because of the warriors dying and fewer in numbers. But ''O sweet and far from cliff and scar'' its how exactly the people on the castle are living, without worries  about anything, far from the war and the scar (the scar is a metaphor for all the wounds that the people are taking for them), the cliff its compared to the war because of the ''potential danger'' they share, and because of the probable abrupt and sudden deaths that can occur in places like these, living in some sweet place that's even compared to an Elfland. But what does is it mean to be this an Elfland? The Elfland, or land of the elves its described as the most beautiful and peaceful place on the world where everybody lives happily and without worries, a place of majestic creatures that are superior to normal humans. And this place is not answering the echoes and the calls for help. Or is it? ''The purple glens replying'' its the light of hope that the warriors needed for their cause. The purple glens as well is an alussion to the Elfland that was mentioned before by giving a sense of majesty to all what belongs to the far away castle. Even though this response is going to rise the moral of the soldiers, they are falling on their own trap, the sound of the glens its only giving them some fake hope on their task, so its even worse for them to hear them (but sadly they don´t know). The poem continues with two fast and strong verses in which the author identifies himself with the people in the war by using the word ''us'' to refer to him and the population. The lyrical speaker now speaks to someone who's not known (it is assumed to be God or any divine entity)  asking him to allow their calls for help to be heard in the capital , but this desire is not granted , so it continues to the next verse with the refrain calling once more to the city to please hear the echoes, because they are dying… dying dying dying. 

In the last Stanza, the lyrical speaker continues speaking to the divine entity and telling him, saying that because of this war ( and it is infered that because of the people of the castle) his people are dying under his beautiful and rich sky , which should not be messed or shadowed because of a calamity of men, like this. He talks about all the consequences that brought the war with , especially in terms of the loss of innocent lives, and that now their dead bodies are stacked in the rivers , hills and across the landscape. In the next two verses, the lyrical speaker stops talking to his ''God'' to begin a monologue about what would be the consequences of the war, specifically for the people that in their time of need did not help . The voices of those killed in combat would survive joining each other, between souls and souls  they would grow together forever and ever ( to use the word ever twice as an alliteration emphasizes the use and importance of time), and it follows that these words are not staying on the landscape only for attachment to their homeland but with a more important reason , to remind THEM of what they have done.The poem then ends with the same two verses that the first stanza ended with, again making allusion to the sounds of war, etc, But this time the tone its a little bit different. As the poem went on, the lyrical speaker told us about the consequences that their aristocracy shall suffer at the end of the war, but with these two last verses we can tell that everything he already talked about has not occurred yet, so its a warning to now hear the echoes and answer, because they are dying dying dying...

Letter task- The Walking Dead

AMC's networks
11 Penn Plaza, New York, United States.

Mr Darabont:

Im writing this letter as a form of praise to your show ''The Walking Dead'', because I really liked something about it, you were not afraid of making use of the stereotypes to describe your character's qualities, as well as I liked the evolution on these stereotypes in order to make them each time more worthless, for example in the first two seasons of the show, women were portrayed always as the ''weak'' members of the group, and the ones who used to cause all the problems, sort of useless, as well as most women were on roles like mothers, or persons who needed to be protected, while men were the protectors and the strong ones, I imagine you had quite a few complains about it coming from the feminine community.
 The stereotypes then, (only in gender terms) were weak women who were in need of protection to survive as well as trouble-makers. But I'm not saying this as a complainant, but as a congratulation about what you did, I think, and in my opinion most people think, that the use of these stereotypes is completely necessary in order to make the show have a little more content than only killing zombies, I mean , they were necessary to make the theme get more sense, the evolution of the characters its what I think that's the most important thing, how (by themselves or with help) they get rid of the stereotypes that were put on them at the first chapters.
 The other thing that I liked was the dominance of the male gender on the group, the obvious reason for this its that I'm a man and by nature we like being superior, but there was something that make this stereotype fell a little in order to make the show more realistic, that was the character ''Eugene'', the complete contradiction of all the characteristics portrayed as stereotypes on the men of the group, he is physically weak and he is not a zombie killer with a natural surviving instinct as the other characters, but a ''nerd'' who's afraid of almost everything, even though as well as the female's stereotypes, the character evolved in the last season to something more ''manly''.
  The other thing about stereotypes I noticed, took me a little longer that identifying the others. The innocence as a death factor, I mean that the innocent people were more likely to die. I can relate that to a day-to-day situation in which innocent or shy people are bothered and taken advantage of because of their conditions ands characteristics, so as in the show the innocent ones have to leave this behind, I see sort of an educational or motivation purpose on doing this to influence the audience who may or not be on this situation.