SESSION 1:
A Drinking Song
by William Butler Yeats
William Butler Yeats was one of the best poets of the English Language of all times and received a Nobel prize for Literature in 1923. He was Irish so he was really influenced by the Irish heritage and politics.
I have chosen one of his poems for today's lesson, A Drinking Song, mainly because I like its simplicity not only of its form but also its message.
A Drinking Song
by William Butler Yeats
Wine comes in at the mouth And love comes in at the eye; That’s all we shall know for truth Before we grow old and die. I lift the glass to my mouth, I look at you, and I sigh. One of the main aims of this course is to improve your writing. It must be condensed, down to the point, orderly...and reading poetry can help you attain this goal. Here you have a very simple scene, the author is drinking a cup of wine, red or white...we don't know but no bother, he's reflecting on the act of drinking itself, not the way some would do during the weekends, nope, not the way people do when they want to numb the pain and forget the past, nope. It's something more spiritual. He is actually enjoying his wine. He focuses on perception, mindfully. It’s all about awareness and experiencing what you are doing.
Watch this video from "The Hours":
A poem is like a picture, there's something very poetic in this scene, isn't there? An adult trying to explain what death is like to a kid, there's not much difference between animals and human beings. A peaceful instant in time only interrupted by the clutter of a noisy crowd. Assignment! Well, I want you to imagine the scene in A Drinking Song and perceive what's going on. Why? Because you will have to transform this poem into prose. A description. This has much in common with the narrative form, relating an experience in terms of the writer's own feelings and responses. How come can I do that??? Follow these simple instructions:
First, analyse the poem, you need to understand what the poet is trying to convey.
Break the poem into manageable sections, making sure that they are complete sentences.
Study each sentence in your paragraph to determine whether it is a run-on sentencen like : "The trees are in their autumn beauty, the woodland paths are dry." Separate the two sentences with semicolons or periods, or by adding a conjunction such as "and," "but," "because," "so" or "when."
Check each sentence in your paragraph to make sure that it has a verb and a subject, If not, the sentence is a fragment. For instance : "Not rudely, as a beast, to run into an action." There is no subject saying who doesn't run rudely as a beast, making the sentence a fragment.Study any fragments to determine what the subject and verb should be .
Check the context if there's any. In this case, there are no morethan one stanza so you will have to imagine it.
Read over the paragraph to check if it flows well in prose form. If the sentence is extremely long, it won't work.
Check they are grammatically correct. But change as little as possible so you can preserve the meaning of the poem while still making it grammatically correct.
The length? Enough to make a thorough description Here you have a guide to personal narrative essays It's challenging but cool! I can't wait to see the result!
SESSION 2:
READ ALOUD TO BUILD COMPREHENSION
Listening is a challenging skill for many of you. It takes practice to focus, listen and understand what is being said. When you listen to stories read aloud, you are hearing higher level vocabulary than you can read yourselves. The more familiar you are with hearing these bigger, harder words, the easier it will be for you to recognize and decode them in print.
Today we will practice our listening/reading skills. In class, I will ask our assistant Jimmy to read this passage aloud. It is taken from Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano. Those who are at home will have to read it ALOUD, NO KIDDING. You can even record yourselves and play it back! Please don't do any research before reading it. Try to imagine the scene, the place, the time of the day, the smells, the colors...
1. Take a piece of paper and listen. Jot down the words that answer the questions where, when, who, why and how.
" It is a light blue moonless summer evening, but late, perhaps ten o’clock, with Venus burning hard in daylight, so we are certainly somewhere far north, and standing on this balcony, when from beyond along the coast comes the gathering thunder of a long many-engineered freight train, thunder because though we are separated by this wide strip of water from it, the train is rolling eastward and the changing wind veers for a moment from an easterly quarter, and we face east, like Swedenborg’s angels, under a sky clear save where far to the northeast over distant mountains whose purple has faded lies a mass of almost pure white clouds, suddenly, as by a light in an alabaster lamp, illumined from within by gold lightening, yet you can hear no thunder, only the roar of the great train with its engines and its wide shunting echoes as it advances from the hills into the mountains: and then all at once a fishing boat with tall gear comes running round the point like a white giraffe, very swift and stately, leaving directly behind it a long silver scalloped rim of wake, not visibly moving inshore, but now stealing ponderously beachward toward us, this scrolled silver rim of wash striking the shore first in the distance, then spreading all along the curve of the beach, while the floats, for these are timber driving floats, are swayed together, everything jostled and beautifully ruffled and stirred and tormented in this rolling sleeked silver, then little by little calm again, and you see the reflection of the remote white thunderclouds in the water, and now the lightening within the white clouds in deep water, as the fishing boat itself with a golden scroll of travelling light in its silver wake beside it reflected from the cabin vanishes round the headland, silence, and then again, within the white white distant alabaster thunderclouds beyond the mountains, the thunderless gold lightening in the blue evening, unearthly."
2. Comprehension Questions:
1. Identify the characters in the story by making a list of all the characters.
2. When and where does the story take place? 3. Tell what the story is about. 4. Locate facts in the story and list the main facts. 5. Find the two most interesting sentences in the story.
6. Make a list of the words in the story you do not know.
SESSION 3:
FCE READING TEST: Read the two tests and do the exercises:
e-mail from an friend:
story extract
SESSION 4:
WE WERE LIARS CHAPTERS 55-60
1. Listen to Maddie while reading chapters 55-60. As you read, check out the pronunciation of new words and write their transcription and meaning in your glossaries.
2. Answer the questions from the STUDY GUIDE related to these chapters.
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