Eats, shoots and leaves

If you want to improve your punctuation try the ‘Eats, Shoots and Leaves’ game based on the Lynne Truss book.

Glossary of Poetic Terms

The Poetry Archive has a useful Glossary of Poetic Terms. You can use this glossary to check how to pronounce a word or phrase, find out what it means and learn how to use it in a sentence. You can explore some of the ways in which poets use language, the choices they make and the effects those choices create. There are examples to read and listen to, in poems specially chosen from the Poetry Archive. It is a great site to check out if you are in a 202 class and revising for Unfamiliar Texts.

What is figurative language?

Figurative language is essential in certain types of writing to help convey meaning and expression. Figurative language is often necessary to convey the exact meaning in a vivid and artistic manner. If the writer does not create an image in the readers mind, he or she may lose the reader’s attention and holding the attention of the reader is the writer’s goal.

Language using figures of speech such as simile, hyperbole, metaphor, symbolism and personification to form imagery is figurative language. It is used to:

• increase shock,
• for novelty,
• appearance,
• give illustrative consequences.

Examples of figurative language:

• A simile is a comparison between two objects using the words “like” or “as.” “Her eyes are like stars!”
• A hyperbole is a very strong exaggeration. “Her smile is as wide as the ocean!”
• A metaphor is the comparison between two objects. “His eyes are jewels!”
• Personification gives an inhuman thing human quality. “The diamonds are jealous of your beauty!”
• Image is the representation sense. Words, which appeal the senses such as a visual image, could be called a mental picture. “Two trees converged in a velvet meadow.”
• Symbol is a specific idea or object to represent ideas, values, or ways of life. A symbol is usually something more than what it seems. “The path not seen.”
• A paradox is a contradiction, which in reality is true. “Where ignorance is joy, it is foolishness to be wise.”
• Tone is the attitude of style or expression used to write
• Mood is the emotion the writing delivers to the reader.
• Alliteration is the repetition of the initial consonant consecutively or within a couple words of each other. “The tiny tot told two tales that totally twisted the truth.” “Two tales were told that spoke silently of the truth of the matter.”
• Allusion is pointing to something from literature or history to express your point. The word allusion is used to describe this figurative form of language because it is generally a brief, incidental or casual reference. Allusion is never a detailed lengthy description. Allusion is used in hopes of triggering an association to portray a meaning. “He’s a real little Hitler!”

It is the author’s plan to create with words imagery that will cause the reader to smell, hear, taste and feel the story as it is read. Figurative language can make its point without the tedious use of long drawn out sentences. The use of similes and metaphors in writing helps to bring it to life.

Mia Cadaver’s Tombstone Timeout

Mia Cadaver’s Tombstone Timeout

Advice for Unfamiliar Texts

For this achievement standard you will read a selection of short texts or extracts which you have not previously studied and answer questions about the ideas and language features.

You will be required to:

• Show an understanding of the ideas presented in the text: theme(s), characterisation, setting, context, (political, social, historical) and the positioning of the reader
• Show an understanding of the language features presented in the text: methods or procedures used in crafting and shaping the text, including structure, method of narration, style, literary features and language features
• Answer a range of questions which may require short or extended written responses
• Answer the questions precisely with supporting quotes and examples

To confidently analyse ideas and techniques you will need to know and be able to use the terminology of literary analysis. Revise your glossary of literary terms.

Answering Questions on Unfamiliar Texts

• Learn the correct terms for language features.
• Learn how to recognise these features.
• Read each question carefully: you must be clear about what is being asked.
• Refer to the text to develop your answer
• Do not rush as you may overlook crucial details
• Attempt every question
• Write your answer in full sentences
• Give examples to support any statements you make
• Two part questions require TWO part answers. If you are asked to identify and discuss a language feature, make sure you identify the feature using the correct term, then give an example, and then explain the purpose and effectiveness.
• Reread the question and proof read your answer before you move onto the next question.

Revise online

Really Useful Resources specialises in publishing NCEA revision guides and distributing many hundreds of other textbooks for the New Zealand secondary school market.

This website has recently been developed to make their NCEA revision guides available to you in online form. The guides are intended for students preparing for NCEA assessments. They include a large number of appropriate questions from previous assessments with suggested answers, as well as an indication of the probable assessment level of each question, i.e. Achievement, Merit, Excellence. The guides for English are available for Levels 1-3.

The company is offering you the opportunity to access these guides for free until the end of the year. If you are interested go here and register.

The Argument

The Argument is number 8 in List Universe’s 25 Greatest Monty Python stetches of all time.

The idea behind the sketch is that there is a service available that will expose customers to unpleasant experiences for a fee. For example, a customer can pay to be verbally abused or hit on the head with a mallet.
In the sketch Michael Palin pays to have an argument with John Cleese. At fitst Cleese simply gainsays everything that Palin says. This frustrates Palin, who asserts that “an argument’s not the same as contradiction”-(”Simply saying ‘No it isn’t’ isn’t an argument.” “Yes it is!” “No it isn’t!”)-until he realises that Cleese is engaging him in a sort of meta-argument about what constitutes an argument.

After you watch the video have a think about what an argument is.

What is an argument?

There are two types of argument. One is an emotional exchange, where winning is the most important thing. The other type of argument is an attempt to clarify thought. This type can take place between several people with opposing views – where opponents force each other to justify their statements, provide clear examples and other ideas revised on the basis of understanding opposing attitudes-or it can take place as part of the presentations of a single person, who questions and hence clarifies his or her own statements. Therefore at least two views are always present in an argument.

1. What type of argument is being presented in the sketch?
2. Under the conditions set up by the sketch, do you think a‘thinking’ – argument is possible?
3. To what extent is it true to say that, for a thinking argument to take place, the people arguing must not be doing it ‘just for argument’?

Remember for a ‘thinking’ argument to take place you need :

• proof
• persuasion

Dulce et Decorum Est

I have added this animation of Wilfred Owen’s poem ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’. The poem has been animated by Jim Clark and read by Alan Mumford. The notes that follow are from Wikipedia and were added to the Youtube entry.

“Dulce et Decorum Est” is a poem written by British poet and World War I soldier Wilfred Owen in 1917, and published posthumously in 1920. Owen’s poem is known for its horrifying imagery and its condemnation of war.

The 28-line poem, which is written in loose iambic pentameter, is narrated by Owen himself. It tells of a group of soldiers in World War I, forced to trudge “through sludge,” though “drunk with fatigue,” marching slowly away from the falling explosive shells behind them. As gas shells begin to fall upon them, the soldiers scramble to put on their gas masks to protect themselves. In the rush, one man clumsily drops his mask, and the narrator sees the man “yelling out and stumbling / and flound’ring like a man in fire or lime”. The image of the man “guttering, choking, drowning” permeates Owen’s thoughts and dreams, forcing him to relive the nightmare again and again.

Owen, in the final stanza enforces that, should readers see what he has seen, they (the government) would cease to send young men to war, all the while instilling visions of glory in their heads. No longer would they tell their children the “Old lie,” so long ago told by the Roman poet Horace: “Dulce et decorum est / Pro patria mori” (literally, “It is sweet and right/honourable, to die for your country”).

Dedication
Throughout the poem, and particularly strong in the last stanza, there is a running commentary, a letter to Jessie Pope, a civilian propagandist of World War I, who encouraged-”with such high zest”-young men to join the battle, through her poetry, e.g. “Who’s for the game”.

The first draft of the poem, indeed, was dedicated to Pope. A later revision amended this to “a certain Poetess,” though this did not make it into the final publication, either, as Owen apparently decided to address his poem to the larger audience of war supporters in general. In the last stanza, however, the original intention can still be seen in Owen’s bitter, horrific address..

Free Rice

This vocabulary game is educational and fun. For each word that you get right, 10 grains of rice will be donated to the United Nations World Food Programme. And for a word game, it is surprisingly addictive.

FreeRice is a sister site of the world poverty site, Poverty.com.

FreeRice has two goals:

1. Provide English vocabulary to everyone for free.
2. Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.

WARNING: This game may make you smarter. It may improve your speaking, writing, thinking, grades, exam performance …

Figures of Speech

We are revising Unfamiliar Texts at the moment and I know some of you have a few queries about terms that you are not sure of. Today I will remind you about figures of speech. I will give you some brief definitions of terms and an example.

Antithesis: balanced contrast for special effect.

e.g. (Alexander Pope describing humans)

“Created half to rise, and half to fall;

Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all…”

Hyperbole: deliberate exaggeration for dramatic effect.

e.g. (Lady Macbeth, full of remorse for Duncan’s murder)

“Here’s the smell of blood still. All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.”

Metaphor: a comparison, without ‘like’ or ‘as’, in which one thing is said to be another.

e.g. (Shakespeare’s description of death)

“That undiscover’d country from whose bourne

No traveller returns…”

Oxymoron: a contradiction in two words, again to catch the reader’s attention.

e.g. (from ‘Romeo and Juliet’)

“Parting is such sweet sorrow.”

Personification: giving human qualities to non-human things.

e.g. (Shakespeare’s image of dawn)

“But look, the dawn, in russet mantle clad.

Walks o’er the dew of yon high eastern hill.”

Simile: a comparison beginning with ‘like’ or ‘as’.

e.g.(picture of an overweight woman laughing)

“… all the woman heaves

As a great elm with all its mound of leaves

Wallows before the storm…”