Evaluation of the year

This year with English has been a great year, and I think I've improved my writing skills, because we have written a lot of blog posts and a major in-depth project. But we should have learned a little more grammar, because we almost didn't have any grammar at all. Another thing is that we should have talked more English, and discussed more. But I liked the fact that we always did different things in class, and used different learning techniques, so the classes were never boring. We read inspiring books, watched great movies, had interesting Skype conversations and fun projects.

I think the red thread throughout the year as been the theme "an individual making a difference ". We've seen it in many of the things we have worked with; Erin Brockovich, The Kite Runner, Gran Torino, The Other Hand and Moliehi Sekese from Lesotho. It is an incredibly inspiring theme and I think everyone in class has learned a lot while working with these projects.

I will continue with English next year, and be in a class called Social Science English. I look forward to this, and hope that I will learn many interesting things!

A visitor from Lesotho

A few weeks ago we had a visitor in English class, Moliehi Sekese from the African country Lesotho. In 2009 she won the Educator Choice-award in Microsoft's Worldwide Innovative Teacher Award for her project on indigenous plants that she had with her class at her school. She teaches her students that education is the way out of poverty, and sets a good example for everyone in Lesotho.

In her school they only have two computers, and the number of students is 700! At my school, and many other schools in Norway, every student own their own laptop. And many students also have another personal laptop at home for non-school work. The contrasts between the two countries are huge! In Norway we wake up and go to school to learn, with a full stomach and clean clothes, and nothing worries us. In Lesotho many children go to school with an empty stomach, without warm clothes and even shoes, but they still come to school to learn. They have to worry about everything before they can educate themselves, but they still have the motivation to learn because they know it is important.

She was a real inspiration and the visit was really eye-opening. We take everything for granted in Norway and we don't think about how privileged we are, so it is really healthy for us to see how other people struggle in other countries, so we can learn that everybody doesn't live the good way we do and we can help them to a better life!

My group and I interviewed her, and we also filmed when she held a presentation for the class. We made a video, and you can watch it bellow:

(THE VIDEO IS COMING)


If you want to learn more about Lesotho you can visit this link

The Life of Nelson Mandela

Here is a video Shirin, Susanna and I made in English class about the life of Nelson Mandela, the former South African president and activist againt apartheid. I hope you enjoy it!

Varities of English

English is a language widely spoken around the world, and many countries have their own variety of the language. But even though it may seem like English is the number one native language spoken in the world - because we are faced with it every day - it is in fact the third most spoken language by native speakers. Mandarin Chinese and Spanish are number one and two. But English is also the leading language in international discourse and has become the lingua franca in many regions. It is also one of the six official languages of the European Union, and a official language in NATO and United Nations.

It is hard to find exact numbers of how many

English speakers there are in the world, but there are supposed to be about 500 million to 1.8 billion people who has English as their native, first or second language.

To us in Norway, the most familiar varieties of English is American-English, British-English and Australian-English. These three are languages we meet everyday, whether we watch TV or surf the internet. I will now write about two other varieties of English that we aren't as used to; Hinglish and Singlish.

In Singapore there has been developed two versions of the English language with influence from Chinese and Malay, and they are Colloquial Singaporean English and Standard Singapore English. The first one is also known as Singlish. It is an English-based Creole language. There are about 5 000 000 people who speak this language. The use of Singlish is low prestige in Singapore, and the language is heavily discouraged in school and in the mass media. Singlish is most commonly used by Singaporeans who are not fluent in English. Most of the educated people in Singapore speak Standard Singaporean English.

Read more about Singlish here

Here is a funny video about Singlish


Hinglish is the combination of Hindi and English, and is spoken mostly in the urban and semi-urban centers of the Hindi-speaking states of India. But via television, mobile phones and word of mouth, it is also slowly spreading into rural and remote areas. Hinglish is effecting the English which is spoken in England, with the adaption of words and expressions used by Indian immigrants and their offspring into colloquial English in England. This is similar to what is going on in Norway, where our language is influenced by the immigrants in our country. We use words from, for instance, "Kebab Norwegian", which is slang spoken by immigrants in parts of Oslo and other places.

Read more about Hinglish here

When I listen to both of the languages, Hinglish and Singlish, they both sound a bit funny to me. But I guess this is just because I'm used to hearing regular English being spoken, and not a mixture of languages. Sometimes it is really hard to understand what they are saying, because they speak unclearly and they add words like "lah" in the end of a sentence. But I guess with a little training, you can understand it easily! I would really like to learn to speak Hinglish or Singlish one day :)

Exam tasks

A)

1: You didn't see him, is it? -> You didn't see him, did you?
2: When you would like to go? -> When would you like to go?
3: That man he is tall -> That man is tall
4: Her jewelleries were stolen -> Her jewelries were stolen
5: I am understanding it now -> Now I understand (or I understand now)
6: They two very good friends -> Those two are very good friends
7: Sushila is extremely lazy girl -> Sushila is an extremely lazy girl
8: When you leaving? -> When are you leaving?


B)

1: In the tag question they have changed the subject from "you" to it". They have also changed the verb tense from did (past tense) to it (present tense). This is not normal in standard English.

The Other Hand - second blogpost

Hey :)

I have now read the whole book, The Other Hand by Chris Cleave, and I thought it was fantastic! It was funny, well written, interesting and very sad sometimes. I will definitely check out some of the other books that Chris Cleave has written, because he is an amazing author. You can read more about the book in my other post about it. In this entry I will try to describe a conflict in the book by using quotes from the book.

First of all, I think that the themes in the book are many, and one example is hope for a good future and friendship. The two women, Little Bee and Sarah, are from to different cultures and different in so many ways. Sarah is a editor of a magazine that focuses on superficial stuff, while Little Bee is the asylum seeker from Nigeria with a terrible background. But in the end they bond of the fact that they both have lost someone close to them, and wants to move on and they find comfort in each other. They learn that they have to appreciate what they have at the moment, because they see how life can change so fast by things they don't have control over. They both have a hope for a better future, because of the things they have experienced in their past. Little Bee wants to finally be free, and not live a life on the run from the soldiers in her home country.

One conflict that you maybe don’t think a lot about when you are reading the book is the conflict that Little Bee struggles with herself. In the book there are a lot of conflicts between people, but everyone also has their own personal conflicts. And the struggle Little Bee has is mostly hidden behind the use of humor and stories that she tells. One of the things she deals with is her past in Nigeria, and she is haunted by the thought of some men coming for her. Throughout the book she describes ways she could kill herself in different ways everywhere she goes if the men would come. One example of this is this quote:

If the men came suddenly, I will be ready to kill myself. Do you feel sorry for me, for thinking always in this way? If the men come and they find you not ready, then it will be me who is feeling sorry for you.

When she talks about suicide in the book, it really difficult to take her seriously, because it seems as such an easy think for her to do.

I worked out how to kill myself in every single one of the situations a girl like me might get into in a detention centre. In the medical wing, morphine. In the cleaner’s room, bleach. In the kitchen, boiling fat.

I think this quote describes the way she always had irony when she spoke, but deep down she was actually serious.

Another conflict she struggles with is that she finds it irritating that everyone always says that she is not selfish at all, and she goes around carrying a image of herself as very selfish because of what she did to Sarah’s husband (she thinks she caused him to take his own life). This quote is from a conversation with her and Lawrence, Sarah’s lover, where she tries to explain to him that she is in fact selfish too like everyone else.

I shook my head. “I am selfish too, you know”
“No, you’re really not”
“Now you think I’m a sweet little girl, do you? In your mind you still don’t think I really exist. It does not occur to you that I can be clever, like a white person. That I can be selfish, like a white person”

She is regretting leaving Sarah’s husband “hanging in the air” and therefore she wants to help Sarah as much as she can to make up for what she did. Throughout the book Little Bee is afraid of meeting police and that they would find her and send her back to her country, but in the end she does something that is very unselfish and puts another person’s needs before her own. I won’t tell you what this is, because that would ruin the book for you, so I will just leave you with this quote:

[Lawrence]”(…) And Bee, you take my phone and you go to where you can get reception and you call the
police. Then you wait at the plantation gate for the police, so you can show them where we are when they arrive”
(…) [Sarah] She just stood there. I couldn’t work out what the problem was.
“The police, Sarah,” she said.
I stared at her. Her eyes were pleading. She looked terrified. And then, very slowly, her face changed. It became firm, resolved. She took a deep breath, and she nodded at me.”

I really though that this was a great book, and I recommend it to everyone! You will laugh, cry and smile when you read it, and you could actually learn something from the book.

Anna

Gran Torino

Today in English class we watched a movie called Gran Torino. It is a drama film from 2008 directed by Clint Eastwood, and was named one of the ten best movies of 2008. Eastwood also plays the main character in the movie, a grumpy old man called Walt Kowalski, who just lost his wife and is dealing with his own problems from his past. As a young man he was in the Korean war, and memories of his killings and this time seems to haunt him deeply. Living in a neighborhood with Hmong people (a people from parts of Thailand, China and Laos), he is constantly annoyed with these people.

A gang in the Hmong society one day tries to get Walt's neighbor Thao Lor (a young and mannered boy) to join their gang, and though he refuses at first, they make him steel Walt's car, a perfect Gran Torino from the 1970's and the most possessed thing in Walt's life. Walt almost caught him in the action, and Thao is more afraid of his angry neighbor than ever. But one day the gang comes back to get Thao, and they start a fight with the Lor family. The leader of the gang is also Thao's cousin. When someone in the fight accidently steps on the lawn that belongs to Walt, he threatens to kill everyone of them if they ever set a foot on his property again. This scares the gang and they run. The next day, the Hmong people of the neighborhood treats Walt like a hero, because he saves the life of Thao. He also rescues the daughter in the Lor family, Sue, from some other gang bangers, and after a while he starts hanging out with both Sue and Thao - and he starts feeling joyful again. But the trouble with the gang continues and the struggle for the Lor family is almost to much to handle - so Walt decides to end the fight one in for all.

I got a task to answer this question: How do Hollywood films portray people of different races and ethnicities?

And I will try answering this as best as I can.

I think Hollywood movies portray people of different races and ethnicities very stereotypically. The image of the people are almost exactly how you expected it to be. But movies like this, challenges the stereotypes, as we can see for instance the character in Thao. They say in the movie that it is normal for the Hmong girls to og to college, while the Hmong boys end up in jail. But Thao is a good kid, who isn't looking for any trouble, and wants to stay away from the gangs and the crimes they commit. He'd rather do a woman's job, as they say in the movie, and do gardening and clean dishes. He is a hard working boy, who wants to do good in life.

Gran Torino is a great movie, and I recommend it strongly. Absolutely a movie you should see before you die. It's interesting, moving, funny and a movie you really learn something about. It brings up different problems, like gang violence, communication between different races and ethnicities, family issues and the fight for justice.

Anna