tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-62598065205278538432024-02-07T09:01:03.437-08:00unfinished conversationsfor thoughts that didn't get full play in class - comments on other people's thoughts - odds and ends that come to you on the bus, in sleep, in queues - words and other things you want to shareUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger56125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6259806520527853843.post-89318106711636486252008-12-15T23:11:00.000-08:002008-12-15T23:15:13.712-08:00Email address updateHi everyone,<br /><br />My ACS(I) email account will expire soon. If you would like to contact me, please email me at jamieinschool@yahoo.com.sg. This email account will work for years and years to come, unless Yahoo! becomes a victim of the recession or is cannibalized by Google.<br /><br />Thank you!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6259806520527853843.post-69000148779725283922008-10-09T07:17:00.000-07:002008-10-09T20:20:10.162-07:00180 DegreesFor those of you who need extra practice with 'unseen' poetry, <a href="http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/p180-list.html">here's a major list</a>.<br /><br />And congrats to the blog-boss, who already has a charming 'assistant' as evidenced by the photo below this post!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6259806520527853843.post-11055486596990345852008-10-09T03:08:00.000-07:002008-10-09T03:18:33.286-07:00The reason why I have not replied to your emails<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj98XTScuSovDZSwp3HNV0Ll1rNMNFpJF81XJoxLB3MfJw0nijyWhe8afw-ZP89_2ZlUvZ9EKZpmCaLgo53Yf9QUWacXs3c7Pn78YOTdYh2sVcuManZg2se1w5WRWIBHAxQxDJWN3VZAbj-/s1600-h/DSC06692.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj98XTScuSovDZSwp3HNV0Ll1rNMNFpJF81XJoxLB3MfJw0nijyWhe8afw-ZP89_2ZlUvZ9EKZpmCaLgo53Yf9QUWacXs3c7Pn78YOTdYh2sVcuManZg2se1w5WRWIBHAxQxDJWN3VZAbj-/s320/DSC06692.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5255094293889486418" border="0" /></a><br />First, thank you to everyone who has been kind enough to ask after the baby and even to visit and buy gifts, even though I've asked you not to. Thank you especially to 6.14, Maria and Evelyn!<br /><br />Next, apologies to those to whom I've replied late, or, worse, not at all. Babies are challenging little creatures, and I am unfortunately currently in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_colic">colic</a> hell, which means I have no time to get on my laptop and read emails or essays.<br /><br />Lastly, some of you are asking me now whether I would still be able to read your essays. I would really like to - I'm not kidding, strange as that might seem - but I cannot promise, because it depends on when the baby stops crying and gives me time to open my laptop. If you email me I will try my best. If I don't reply, your best bet would be Mr Quek, Mr Connor, Ms Silverajan or Ms Loh. I wish I could do everything but I don't have superpowers.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6259806520527853843.post-23247648296259928292008-05-14T19:49:00.000-07:002008-05-14T20:00:44.109-07:00Stream of consciousness"As it has been refined since the 1920s, stream of consciousness is the name for a special mode of narration that undertakes to reproduce, without a narrator's intervention, the full spectrum and the continuous flow of a character's mental process, in which sense perceptions mingle with conscious and half-conscious thoughts, memories, expectations, feelings, and random associations."<br /><br />This is sometimes also called "interior monologue".<br /><br />James Joyce's <span style="font-style: italic;">Ulysses</span> (1922) has one of the most famous examples of the use of stream of consciousness: this is "a passage of interior monologue from the 'Lestrygonian' episode, in which Leopold Bloom saunters through Dublin, observing and musing:<br /><blockquote>Pineapple rock, lemon platt, butter scotch. A sugar-sticky girl shoveling scoopfuls of creams for a christian brother. Some school great. Bad for their tummies. Lozenge and comfit manufacturer to His Majesty the King. God. Save. Our. Sitting on his throne, sucking red jujubes white."</blockquote><span style="font-style: italic;">All information taken from Abrams, MH. </span>A Glossary of Literary Terms (6th ed). <span style="font-style: italic;">Orlando: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1993. Pg.202-3.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6259806520527853843.post-54116399007994651512008-01-29T17:48:00.000-08:002008-01-29T18:10:19.375-08:00Thinking of Literature as ArtWe're supposed to be thinking about Art now in TOK, and there are some interesting ideas that can be transferred to English A1 - as to how we appreciate literature as an art form.<br /><br />Two excerpts from Reuben Abel's <span style="font-style: italic;">Man is the Measure</span>:<br /><br />"Joseph Conrad's short story 'The Secret Sharer' is about a young sea captain on his first voyage in command. The captain protects a stowaway who is a murderer and a fugitive. The simple adventure has profound and ambiguous overtones - of delusion, homosexuality, the force of authority, the conflict between morality and justice, the story of Cain and Abel, the <span style="font-style: italic;">doppelganger</span>, Conrad's own life. There is little point in inquiring what the author's 'real' intention was, or what the 'true' interpretation is: any hypothesis which can be supported by evidence in the text ought to be thoughtfully examined and joyfully experienced. To insist on the 'real meaning' is to mistake literature and art for idealized science. A work of art is not a sense datum; it is not merely something perceived, but rather something interpreted. And in the richness, multiplicity, and range of its legitimate interpretations lie its fertility and vigor as a work of art" (257).<br /><br />"The essential requisite [for a work of art] is that the materials be so <span style="font-style: italic;">formed</span> that they are finally experienced as a <span style="font-style: italic;">unity</span>, whether they extend timelessly through space (as do painting and architecture) or whether they cumulate nonspatially through time (as does music). The frame of a painting, the pedestal of a statue, the proscenium in a theater, the silence that precedes and follows a piece of music, and the space around a cathedral all act to enclose the work of art in what Rilke called a 'circle of solitude.' Thus it is experienced as an isolated, unified, instantaneous presence" (258).Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6259806520527853843.post-89436966117149837622008-01-29T17:36:00.000-08:002008-01-29T17:48:01.062-08:00TaoIn one of your readings - the one that says 'Rebel-Seeker' at the top of the page - we are told that Hesse "was favorably impressed by Lao-Tse" and "became a passionate advocate of Chinese thought and belief" (Mileck 161).<br /><br />I was looking at the <span style="font-style: italic;">Tao Te Ching</span> recently and found a few excerpts whose sentiments and ideas <span style="font-style: italic;">Siddhartha</span> seems to echo. I've included one example below, for your perusal and mystification.<br /><br />"Be done with knowing and your worries<br /> will disappear.<br />How much difference is there between yes and no?<br />How much distinction between good and evil?<br />Fearing what others fear, admiring<br /> what they admire -<br /> nonsense.<br /><br />Conventional people are jolly and reckless,<br /> feasting on worldly things and carrying<br /> on as though every day were the<br /> beginning of spring.<br />I alone remain uncommitted, like an<br /> infant who hasn't yet smiled:<br /> lost, quietly drifting, unattached<br /> to ideas and places and things."<br /><br />(Walker, Brian Browne. <span style="font-style: italic;">The Tao Te Ching of Lao Tze</span>. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995.)Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6259806520527853843.post-41149518340410444122008-01-27T18:49:00.001-08:002008-01-27T19:16:36.179-08:00Does Time Exist?Many of the articles I looked at looked horribly difficult, so I've only included a couple of links below that looked more manageable and human:<br /><br />Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: <a href="http://www.iep.utm.edu/t/time.htm#H3">What is Time?</a> (Try the 7th paragraph onwards.)<br /><br />Discover Magazine: <a href="http://discovermagazine.com/2007/jun/in-no-time">'Newsflash: Time May Not Exist'</a><br /><br />Enjoy!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6259806520527853843.post-51422165302501887012008-01-21T18:07:00.000-08:002008-01-21T18:30:29.396-08:00Buddhist scripture and _Siddhartha_This is the excerpt from Karen Armstrong's <span style="font-style: italic;">Buddha</span> that I promised:<br /><br />"... a biography of the Buddha has... challenges. The Gospels present Jesus, for example, as a distinct personality with idiosyncracies; special turns of phrase, moments of profound emotion and struggle, irascibility and terror have been preserved. This is not true of the Buddha, who is presented as a type rather than as an individual. In his discourses we find none of the sudden quips, thrusts and witticisms that delight us in the speech of Jesus or Socrates. He speaks as the Indian philosophical tradition demands: solemnly, formally and impersonally. After his enlightenment, we get no sense of his likes and dislikes, his hopes and fears, moments of desperation, elation or intense striving. What remains is an impression of a transhuman serenity, self-control, a nobility that has gone beyond the superficiality of personal preference, and a profound equanimity. The Buddha is often compared to non-human beings - to animals, trees or plants - not because he is subhuman or inhumane, but because he has utterly transcended the selfishness that most of us regard as inseparable from our condition. The Buddha was trying to find a new way of being human. In the West, we prize individualism and self-expression, but this can easily degenerate into mere self-promotion. What we find in Gotama is a complete and breathtaking self-abandonment. He would not have been surprised to learn that the scriptures do not present him as a fully-rounded 'personality,' but would have said that our concept of personality was a dangerous delusion. He would have said that there was nothing unique about his life. There had been other Buddhas before him, each of whom delivered the same <span style="font-style: italic;">dhamma</span> and had exactly the same experiences. Buddhist tradition claims that there have been twenty-five such enlightened human beings and that after the present historical era, when knowledge of this essential truth has faded, a new Buddha, called Metteyya, will come to earth and go through the same life-cycle. So strong is this archetypal perception of the Buddha that perhaps the most famous story about him in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Nidana Katha</span>, his 'Going Forth' from his father's house, is said in the Pali Canon to have happened to one of Gotama's predecessors, Buddha Vipassi. The scriptures were not interested in tracing Gotama's unique, personal achievements but in setting forth the path that all Buddhas, all human beings must take when they seek enlightenment."<br /><br />---<br /><br />Other interesting excerpts:<br /><br />After the death of Gotama, the monks "started to collect their testimony in a more formal way. They could not yet write this down, but the practice of yoga had given many of them phenomenally good memories, so they developed ways of memorizing the discourses of the Buddha and the detailed rules of their Order. As the Buddha himself had probably done, they set some of his teachings in verses and may even have sung them; they also developed a formulaic and repetitive style (still present in the written texts) to help the monks learn these discourses by heart."<br /><br />Finally, the scriptural texts "purport to be simple collections of the Buddha's own words, with no authorial input from the monks. This mode of oral transmission precludes individualistic authorship; these scriptures are not the work of a Buddhist equivalent of the evangelists known as Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, each of whom gives his own idiosyncratic view of the Gospel..."<br /><br />---<br /><br />Can you see the relevance of the above excerpts to our understanding of <span style="font-style: italic;">Siddhartha</span>?Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6259806520527853843.post-46262753794275279002008-01-19T21:29:00.000-08:002008-01-19T21:56:26.303-08:00Language, perception and 'The Cool Web'I first read 'The Cool Web' more than a decade ago and, even though I found its meaning elusive, the words have stayed with me since. I have often wondered - since I deal with language pretty much on a daily basis - whether language is really as Graves proposes: a cool web that shields us from feeling too excruciatingly, but that we might also drown eventually in our own insipid, vapid volubility.<br /><br />Then today I read an <a href="http://discovermagazine.com/2008/jan/your-brain-on-music-magnets-and-meth/?searchterm=oliver%20sacks">interview </a>with Oliver Sacks, and it threw new light on the poem:<br /><br />"Savants are people with extraordinary capacities of calculation or music or drawing, mixed with generally low intelligence - a very startling anomaly...<br /><br />Some neurologists think that what may go on in the savant may be a relative preservation and heightening of primitive perceptual and computational powers in the right hemisphere - powers of a sort that are normally inhibited with the development of abstract intelligence and language. If abstract intelligence and language don't develop, it could be possible that they may be, in a word, freer. Something which might support this idea may be the late appearance of savant-like powers in people, say, with frontal temporal dementia; it is precisely with the decline of verbal and abstract intelligence that we sometimes see this emergence of artistic powers...<br /><br />...certainly, there's a tantalizing notion that such savant abilities may be universal or latent in all of us, and could be released in certain circumstances. But if the release entails a loss of enunciation - of our higher powers - it may not be such a good bargain."Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6259806520527853843.post-56557463557665778892008-01-19T21:20:00.000-08:002008-01-19T21:29:40.640-08:00The Cool WebChildren are dumb to say how hot the day is,<br />How hot the scent is of the summer rose,<br />How dreadful the black wastes of evening sky,<br />How dreadful the tall soldiers drumming by,<br /><br />But we have speech, to chill the angry day,<br />And speech, to dull the rose's cruel scent,<br />We spell away the overhanging night,<br />We spell away the soldiers and the fright.<br /><br />There's a cool web of language winds us in,<br />Retreat from too much joy or too much fear:<br />We grow sea-green at last and coldly die<br />In brininess and volubility.<br /><br />But if we let our tongues lose self-possession,<br />Throwing off language and its watery clasp<br />Before our death, instead of when death comes,<br />Facing the wide glare of the children's day,<br />Facing the rose, the dark sky and the drums,<br />We shall go mad, no doubt, and die that way.<br /><br />- Robert Graves (1927)Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6259806520527853843.post-59243807438145008702008-01-03T21:06:00.000-08:002008-01-03T21:11:06.791-08:00Wanted: people who have gone through hell and backIf you were in my SL class in 2007, and wouldn't mind coming back to Dover Road to share some tips for surviving Year 6 with my present SL classes, please drop me an email. We need to hear it from those who lived to tell the tale.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6259806520527853843.post-129963113977443952007-11-27T07:08:00.000-08:002007-11-27T07:12:46.824-08:00Experimental SeancesThe experiment has come to an end and we await the results. While we are aware that the experimental hypothesis was impeccable and the protocol was reasonably complete, we are not yet sure how effective and error-free the experiment has been. All of you are now on holiday and some of you will never use your brain cells again. We, of course, are not on holiday yet, still stalking the hallways like the unquiet dead.<br /><br />Well, here are some activities you can pursue if you do not want a fate like ours. Check out <a href="http://www.velcro-city.co.uk/stealth-fiction/">this link</a>. The rest of <a href="http://www.velcro-city.co.uk/">Velcro City</a> is also pretty amusing. Typical Brit humour, gone global.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6259806520527853843.post-50468919455094006692007-11-16T08:34:00.000-08:002007-11-16T08:56:22.126-08:00One ArtThe art of losing isn't hard to master;<br />so many things seem filled with the intent<br />to be lost that their loss is no disaster.<br /><br />Lose something every day. Accept the fluster<br />of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.<br />The art of losing isn't hard to master.<br /><br />Then practice losing farther, losing faster:<br />places, and names, and where it was you meant<br />to travel. None of these will bring disaster.<br /><br />I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or<br />next-to-last, of three loved houses went.<br />The art of losing isn't hard to master.<br /><br />I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,<br />some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.<br />I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.<br /><br />-- Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture<br />I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident<br />the art of losing's not too hard to master<br />though it may look like (<span style="font-style: italic;">Write</span> it!) like disaster.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"> Elizabeth Bishop (1969)<br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6259806520527853843.post-74932310873150126622007-11-10T05:31:00.000-08:002007-11-10T05:41:07.895-08:00Mailer Error<a href="http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/nmailer.htm">Norman Kingsley Mailer</a> died this morning, aged 84. He was an irascible and somewhat perverse man of letters. I will always remember him for a traumatic O-level year in which he published <i>Ancient Evenings</i>. It was a very interesting, meticulously well-researched piece of ridiculous social rubbish. It was also 704 pages thick. I wasted a lot of time on it. At the end I knew two things: Norman Mailer was a wonderful writer, and this was certainly not a good book.<br /><br />All the same, wherever he's gone, I hope it's not to his ancient Egyptian hell. There is such a thing as too much description.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6259806520527853843.post-35391355472723550132007-11-09T22:20:00.000-08:002007-11-09T22:40:47.051-08:00Sense and SensitivityAs IB students (and soon, graduates), you're supposed to develop an international outlook - open, tolerant and sensitive to other peoples and cultures.<br /><br />When you write in your essay "Huck Finn meets the nigger Jim and they run away together", you will show yourself to be an insensitive - even racist - oaf rather than the IB student we had all hoped for. This is because, as you know, the term "nigger" is an offensive term to many people. So, if you intend to use it in your essay, you must fence it in with quotation marks, to show that you are quoting Mark Twain, and that <span style="font-style: italic;">you</span> are not the one calling Jim a "nigger". OK? Do you know what I mean?<br /><br />In the same way, please stop saying that white people or the entire white community is corrupt, heartless and hypocritical. Twain does not make that generalization - <span style="font-style: italic;">you</span> are the one doing it. He has many examples of good-hearted white folks in the book. When you malign an entire culture/community so carelessly in an essay, you show yourself to be an insensitive Asian chauvinist. This is not the way to impress your examiner.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6259806520527853843.post-34203609099688486222007-11-08T00:52:00.000-08:002007-11-08T01:21:36.304-08:00The CorrectionsIf you feel like working your Paper 1 muscles today, you could take a look at the extract below. It's from Jonathan Franzen's <span style="font-style: italic;">The Corrections</span> (2001). Alfred and Enid are an older couple and Alfred is developing Alzheimer's.<br /><br />---<br /><br />Enid could hear Alfred upstairs now, opening and closing drawers. He became agitated whenever they were going to see their children. Seeing their children was the only thing he seemed to care about anymore.<br /><br />In the streaklessly clean windows of the dining room there was chaos. The berserk wind, the negating shadows. Enid had looked everywhere for the letter from the Axon Corporation, and she couldn't find it.<br /><br />Alfred was standing in the master bedroom wondering why the drawers of his dresser were open, who had opened them, whether he had opened them himself. He couldn't help blaming Enid for his confusion. For witnessing it into existence. For existing, herself, as a person who could have opened these drawers.<br /><br />"Al? What are you doing?"<br /><br />He turned to the doorway where she'd appeared. He began a sentence: "I am --" but when he was taken by surprise, every sentence became an adventure in the woods; as soon as he could no longer see the light of the clearing from which he'd entered, he would realize that the crumbs he'd dropped for bearings had been eaten by birds, silent deft darting things which he couldn't quite see in the darkness but which were so numerous and swarming in their hunger that it seemed as if <span style="font-style: italic;">they</span> were the darkness, as if the darkness weren't uniform, weren't an absence of light but a teeming and corpuscular thing, and indeed when as a studious teenager he'd encountered the word "crepuscular" in <span style="font-style: italic;">McKay's Treasury of English Verse</span>, the corpuscles of biology had bled into his understanding of the word, so that for his entire adult life he'd seen in twilight a corpuscularity, as of the graininess of the high-speed film necessary for photography under conditions of low ambient light, as of a kind of sinister decay; and hence the panic of a man betrayed deep in the woods whose darkness was the darkness of starlings blotting out the sunset or black ants storming a dead opossum, a darkness that didn't just exist but actively <span style="font-style: italic;">consumed</span> the bearings that he'd sensibly established for himself, lest he be lost; but in the instant of realizing he was lost, time became marvelously slow and he discovered hitherto unguessed eternities in the space between one word and the next, or rather he became trapped in that space between words and could only stand and watch as time sped on without him, the thoughtless boyish part of him crashing on out of sight blindly through the woods while he, trapped, the grownup Al, watched in oddly impersonal suspense to see if the panic-stricken little boy might, despite no longer knowing where he was or at what point he'd entered the woods of this sentence, still manage to blunder into the clearing where Enid was waiting for him, unaware of any woods -- "packing my suitcase," he heard himself say. This sounded right. Verb, possessive, noun. Here was a suitcase in front of him, an important confirmation. He'd betrayed nothing.<br /><br />But Enid had spoken again. The audiologist had said that he was mildly impaired. He frowned at her, not following.<br /><br />"It's <span style="font-style: italic;">Thursday</span>," she said, louder. "We are not leaving until <span style="font-style: italic;">Saturday</span>."<br /><br />"Saturday!" he echoed.<br /><br />She berated him then, and for a while the crepuscular birds retreated, but outside the wind had blown the sun out, and it was getting very cold.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6259806520527853843.post-83763173834035459682007-11-08T00:00:00.000-08:002007-11-08T00:48:03.081-08:00Think clearly, write to the point<span style="font-weight: bold;"></span>Hope everyone's papers have been going well!<br /><br />If you're looking to get into a good frame of mind for Paper 1 tomorrow, I suggest that you look at some subject reports, to remind yourself of what IB examiners want or don't want to see in your scripts.<br /><br />I've put the last 5 subject reports (May 2005 to May 2007) on LMS, so you can download it, scroll to the right pages for Paper 1 (it's somewhere in the middle, after Internal Assessment, aka IOC, and WL), and take a look at their feedback again.<br /><br />A few reminders:<br /><br />- Keep an <span style="font-weight: bold;">open mind</span> tomorrow when you read the passage and poem. Try not to jump to conclusions about what the piece is about (i.e. if you see a few references to war, don't assume immediately that the piece is about the futility and horror of war; don't make easy assumptions based on the title and year at the bottom - these assumptions are often wrong; etc). Allow the piece to speak to you - every piece will have its own set of concerns and style, allow them to come through. Sit there quietly and listen to it. Don't be too quick to impose your judgment on it. Spend the first 15 mins wisely. Read carefully.<br /><br />- Do not write a super-long essay. A hefty script at the end of 1.5 or 2 hours may reassure you ("I have a good essay! It's 10 pages!") but it will dismay the examiner before he/she even starts reading ("#%^&*!! <span style="font-style: italic;">Another</span> 10-pager! What is with this school and its students??"). It might be counter-intuitive for you, but <span style="font-style: italic;">please</span> restrain yourself from writing a long essay. We value quality so much more than quantity that when we get a concise essay with good ideas, we are desperate to shower marks on it to show our appreciation.<br /><br />So when your friend next to you raises his/her hand for the fourth time for more paper, restrain yourself. Write a <span style="font-weight: bold;">concise</span> and <span style="font-weight: bold;">good</span> essay. That will get you a '7'. Length will <span style="font-style: italic;">not</span>.<br /><br />- Write neatly. It matters. If you don't believe me, read the subject reports.<br /><br />---<br /><br />That's it from me for now. You guys have the intelligence and the ability to do well in this paper. Go out there tomorrow and show 'em what you've got! :)Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6259806520527853843.post-16952809497649950782007-11-01T00:29:00.000-07:002007-11-01T00:36:16.854-07:00Nov 2006 Paper 2 (SL and HL)Why are so many people asking me for this paper? It's on LMS - I put it there a week or two ago and I just checked and it's still there.<br /><br />Go look again, OK?Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6259806520527853843.post-65434581578701501882007-10-31T02:14:00.000-07:002007-10-31T02:27:35.802-07:00Dali<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYH9I678A2dBv-REpU5-N8oI3JPq_Ep6XZK5p8-Lz66DIlOwRVQbiWcsXZA0MHsAIzAx5wEP6PgmpJ555aPBfp6MTyYdoFeTe5v4_FK7srRxrKl-vD2TOy9qkNc_PKA-bafHT5cB_sZ88w/s1600-h/3Salvador-Dali-Premonition-Of-Civil-War.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYH9I678A2dBv-REpU5-N8oI3JPq_Ep6XZK5p8-Lz66DIlOwRVQbiWcsXZA0MHsAIzAx5wEP6PgmpJ555aPBfp6MTyYdoFeTe5v4_FK7srRxrKl-vD2TOy9qkNc_PKA-bafHT5cB_sZ88w/s320/3Salvador-Dali-Premonition-Of-Civil-War.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5127429353098281506" border="0" /></a><br />For the last time, friends, none of our Part 3 texts are 'surreal'. Stop saying that - it only shows that you don't understand what 'surreal' really means.<br /><br />In Term 3, we explained to the HL classes that true surrealist texts experiment with “free association, a broken syntax, nonlogical and nonchronological order, dreamlike and <span style="font-weight: bold;">nightmarish</span> sequences, and the juxtaposition of <span style="font-weight: bold;">bizarre, shocking, or seemingly unrelated</span> images”. Salvador Dali's <span style="font-style: italic;">Premonition of Civil War </span>above is a good example of surreal art.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Siddhartha</span> might be written in a non-realistic (epic, legendary, etc) manner but it is NOT surreal.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6259806520527853843.post-79333201637266545842007-10-31T01:23:00.000-07:002007-11-01T00:54:46.928-07:00Writing 101: ClarityThe problem:<br /><br />Your essay seems crystal clear to you. But, when it comes back after assessment, your teacher has written 'Unclear' or 'Huh??' in many places. What do you do now?<br /><br />Suggested solution:<br /><br />Ask yourself: "When I write, do I write with <span style="font-weight: bold;">a reader</span> in mind?" i.e. are you writing for yourself, or are you writing the essay for a teacher/examiner-type person?<br /><br />- If you're writing for yourself, stop doing that. An essay is NOT a diary entry. You are NOT the intended reader.<br /><br />- The <span style="font-weight: bold;">reader</span> you must keep in mind is someone like me, or like Mr Quek.<br /><br />You know how Siddhartha has that "clear and certain inner voice" that "had always guided him in his luminous time"? (p.70) That is what you should have.<br /><br />Ideally, when you look at your essay, you should not only look at it through your own eyes. The clearest writers are able to imagine reading it through their <span style="font-weight: bold;">intended reader's </span>eyes. They can critically assess whether their essays are clear by imagining Mr Quek or I reading it, and they are able to see where we might have more trouble understanding the progression of an argument, a sentence, etc.<br /><br />When I write blog entries, I imagine some of you reading it. That's why I break my writing up into shorter, coherent paragraphs - it's easier on the eyes and the understanding. That's why I write short sentences - they are easier to grasp. If you have not really consciously thought about your reader(s) when you write (your blog, essays, whatever), start doing so now?Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6259806520527853843.post-35750394663231203122007-10-31T00:59:00.000-07:002007-10-31T01:19:56.476-07:00First, the good newsSome of you have <span style="font-style: italic;">got</span> it. Your essays completely bowl me over with their intelligence and insights. Absolutely amazing. If you are getting a '7' from me at this point, you belong in this group.<br /><br />---<br /><br />If I can possibly find ANY time this weekend (between marking essays and being in school for a camp), I will type out a couple of these essays and put them on LMS (if I do, I will inform you on this blog).<br /><br />In the meantime, I leave you with this comment that someone made after reading one of these mind-blowing essays:<br /><br />'I read XX's essay, and her way of looking at the text seems so much more in depth... like she not only talks about the things I talk about, she'll go on further to say "another way of looking at it.. .." or "not only does it suggest [something that everyone will write], it also [...]'<br /><br />That's one of the distinguishing marks of a Grade '7', goddess-level sort of essay.<br /><br />And - I can't teach it. It's unteachable (like that guy's enlightenment). YOU have to DO it. There's no use asking me for any more pearls of wisdom or advice. I've given you everything I have. You have to jump in and start swimming, or get on that bike and start riding. It's all you. You know what you must do, and you just have to practice till you get there. Enlightenment, as you all know, will not come from your teachers.<br /><br />Or, I guess, you could also corner one of these folks with that enigmatic smile and kiss them on the forehead until you too 'get' it.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6259806520527853843.post-70005958145513427312007-10-19T06:07:00.000-07:002007-10-19T07:22:10.125-07:00HonestyOf all the essays I read and marked this week, the ones that showed the most promising improvements (i.e. grade 6' nudging a '7') were the ones that were honest.<br /><br />Remember what I said in class? A good reader is one who is involved with the text, intellectually and emotionally. He responds honestly to what he reads, is aware of his intellectual and emotional response, and is curious about <span style="font-style: italic;">how</span> this writer has managed to make him react in this manner. He thinks about the ideas on offer, thinks about what his stand is - does he agree with the writer? (completely? partially? grudgingly?) And then, he considers the strategies that this writer has used to affect his intellectual and emotional response - much the same way that any intelligent person, after watching a good ad or listening to a political rally or watching a good movie, <span style="font-style: italic;">analyzes</span> the way the director/speaker has evoked certain responses in him. An intelligent person knows that it is not magic that made him indignant during a speech or weep during a movie. There is an <span style="font-style: italic;">author</span> behind those works, and at least <span style="font-style: italic;">some</span> of the effects can be attributed to the choices that this author made.<br /><br />A lazy reader does little of the above. A lazy reader is a couch potato. He prefers easy books/movies that don't challenge him too much. Books/movies are either 'great' or 'boring'. He doesn't like to think that hard about the book, or to react in complex ways. Ambiguous endings are a pain - why doesn't the writer/director make things less complicated? Tell us the good guys won and kill all the bad guys spectacularly. He doesn't bother to think about <span style="font-style: italic;">how</span> the writer/director made him breathless with suspense - it was fun, but now it's over, let's get to the next one.<br /><br />Now, a lazy reader, when asked to write a thoughtful essay (about how a novel engages him, for example), will substitute generally accepted ideas for his own (because he doesn't have many to start with). The teacher and the smart kids in class have said that certain techniques, when used, engage the reader - so all he has to do is (1) memorize those techniques, and (2) repeat those arguments. This is not an honest response. It is a <span style="font-style: italic;">learned</span> response - a <span style="font-style: italic;">mugged</span> response, a rehearsed response, there is little that is heartfelt about it. There is nothing morally wrong with doing this. But just realize that a student who does this is not our idea of a good student (obviously). So he gets a well-deserved '5'.<br /><br />I understand that some of us are not lazy people - it may be that we are not sure of ourselves. Our ideas may have been shot down in class, so we think it's better that we take the smart kid's ideas than to venture into uncharted waters with <span style="font-style: italic;">our own</span> ideas that have never been validated and approved by the teacher. You can do this. But - I just want to tell you - you can take a calculated chance these 2 weeks and write me a couple of essays that convey your own POV. Take a chance on your own interpretation. Think hard about how you understand the books, think honestly about the question, and write me an honest essay. You may be surprised - as some people have been - at how much easier it flows, how much more natural it sounds and I might be pleasantly surprised at how much more convincing you are when you are not repeating memorized points you may not necessarily believe.<br /><br />It's not easy to think for yourself, but this is something that gets easier with practice. And - lastly - please do not complain about English A1 because it is not a subject where you can mug and get a '7'. If all you wanted was to memorize your way to an 'A', you needn't have - and you shouldn't have - joined the IB. Having joined the IB, please do not disgrace yourself by complaining that we are making you think.<br /><br />If you need assurance that your ideas are not way out there, email me your thoughts/essays and I can give you feedback. Go on, be brave. Say something honest (and relevant). :)Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6259806520527853843.post-4902914549770789592007-10-19T05:34:00.000-07:002007-10-19T05:43:12.443-07:00An Interview With Roddy DoyleHere's an exercpt from Dave Weich's interview with Doyle on October 4, 1999.(Taken from www.powells.com.)Although it's primarily about his new book "A Star Called Henry", there are parts relevant to Paddy Clarke - you'll recognise a bit of it in the brief write-up in the book. Hope it helps!<br /><br />Dave: A Star Called Henry is filled with some very violent scenes. Paddy Clarke is violent, too, but in a very different way. I'd read it years ago, and rereading it, I felt that it was one of the most subtly achieved powerful endings I'd ever read.<br /><br />Doyle: Thank you.<br /><br />Dave: It's little things, like when they light Sinbad's mouth on fire. Around sixty pages later you say something in passing about how his lips look. All of a sudden, as a reader, you realize he's still suffering from that.<br />Page by page, that felt like one of the least linear things I've read.<br /><br />Doyle: That's the challenge, trying to capture the world of a ten year old kid. If it works, it's because every word he gives us is true, dead and earnest. The violence was easy to achieve in some ways. It was a gradual process, remembering what it was like to be a kid at ten or thereabouts. The freedom, but also the fear. The gang: one would never be a leader, but one had to make sure one was close enough to the leader to avoid being hammered. It came back quite clearly to me.<br />If I feel guilty at all about things in my life, it's that I used my humor maliciously a lot when I was a kid, in some ways to save myself. I was never a fighter and never going to be. I used to compose silly songs about people, give them nicknames, things like that. When I came around to writing the book, I began to imagine how they must have felt. But you move on, you know. I think it would be ludicrous for me to hunt down a forty year old man with four children to apologize for a rhyme I wrote about him when he was eight; we'd both be equally embarrassed by it.<br />Gradually, it came back. That book took a year and a half. There wasn't much in the first half of that time. It was very slow. The biggest achievement of that book was putting it all together because it was all sorts of little episodes. I knew there was a shape, but I couldn't find it. It took a long time, putting pages together. I was trying to capture a different kind of link. It wasn't a logical one, not in the adult sense. It was a bit like subtle film editing. I was doing that a lot more than I had in the past, constantly going over things again and again.<br />I've told people that a good day's work is often a page. That's because I spend a lot of my day going over other pages.<br />You can feel that reading it. Because it's not as if you took a bunch of fragments, tossed them in the air, and laid them out into the book randomly. Any particular passage in the book contains bits from three different strains of the novel - which is where I thought it became more effective, more true to the unpredictability of a ten year old's mind, more of a craft.<br />One of the reasons I liked the ending so much was that you avoided all the easy cliches. You see Patrick's loss in those moments, but looking forward - reading between the lines, what you don't say - there's a lot of hope. It's balanced in a very credible way.<br /><br />Doyle: I think all the books have that to a certain extent, they show a certain resilience. Part of the human package is loss. We can try to protect our children as much as we can, but that would be the biggest loss of all in some ways; you'd end up with them in the chicken coop - becoming chicken. An essential part of living is that loss, fear and cruelty, confronting it and triumphing over it. It seems like there's a balance that has to be achieved, a certain protection, but letting-go at the same time.<br />He's unleashed into the world just a little bit early. It's no tragedy, though. Parental breakdown, it's sad, but it's so common. Most people survive it quite intact. And other than that, he's just growing up. So the drama had to come from somewhere else.a studenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01712077560583150047noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6259806520527853843.post-31590922008763984952007-10-19T01:53:00.000-07:002007-10-19T02:03:18.472-07:00Consultations and essaysA good number of you have been coming to see me, with essays that show clear signs of improvement - thank you very much.<br /><br />For the rest who have not made appointments so far:<br /><br />- If you have been scoring '7's consistently, that's fine. Practice on your own. Send me an essay if you like.<br /><br />- If you've been scoring '6's, please send me at least 2 essays. I will give you feedback over email if you don't want to come back to school.<br /><br />- If you have been scoring '5's and below, email me NOW for an appointment. That means YOU, Shahir. And if I don't get an email from you for an appointment by next week, I will be calling your parents to let them know the grade they should expect to see on Jan 7 next year. If both your parents and you are perfectly happy with the '4' or '5' you are getting now, tell me and I too will not ask anymore of you.<br /><br />Thank you.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6259806520527853843.post-22518119063544456802007-10-19T01:41:00.000-07:002007-10-19T01:46:50.819-07:00A message for SL studentsI have just upload these documents onto LMS:<br /><br />- Nov 2006 paper, markscheme and subject report (thanks Chris for the reminder!)<br />- May 2007 subject report<br />- Jennifer's brilliant Paper 1 essay from the Prelims<br />- the PwPt used for the SL paper review (I edited it a little)<br /><br />Please note that I have uploaded the complete subject report this time, which starts by talking about WL, then IOC, then HL Paper 1 and 2, then finally SL Paper 1 and 2. So please scroll to the last few pages for the relevant information. Please read their feedback on Paper 1 too! It will help enormously.<br /><br />Jennifer's essay on 'To Help a Monkey...' was everything I said it was in class. Please look at how she responds carefully to what is on the page in front of her - no pre-conceived notions, no attempt to make the poem say what it doesn't, etc.<br /><br />That's it for now. More comments will come this weekend!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3