Vitally Important Information for Everyone!

Dear English classes

While we learn a lot of English in Room 3-15, the point of all of this furious work is to prepare you for life.
School focusses a lot of attention on exams but no-one gives you a test to write when you are at work.

How can you better prepare yourselves for life, which is, after all, the point of school?

Have a look at these articles and bits of advice. The first article is about succeeding at university, but a lot of it applies to life as well.

Education
Secrets of the Most Successful College Students


This next article looks very intimidating but it is not!
In this article Mr Mike Brown, the CEO of Nedbank discusses a number of issues in a radio interview that was conducted on the Market Update on SAFM (listen every day at 6pm). Most of the interview is not very relevant to you but the LAST question is. Scroll to the bottom of the interview to see what one of the most successful men in the country says to young people like you!

http://www.moneyweb.co.za/moneyweb-safm-market-update/r-885

Grammar for Everyone!

Dear Classes

I have been reviewing Errors of Concord with my Grade 10 classes but here is a review of it for everyone.

An error of concord is when you create a sentence that grammatically disagrees with itself:
"He are a student." "Are" is the verb that should be used with "we, you, they" not "he."
Our biggest problem with concord is the following sentence: "There's many prizes to be won!"
"There's" is "There IS," "is" is the verb form used for the singular "he/she/it" but many prizes are precisely that: MANY prizes. So your sentence is not in concord with itself - it grammatically suggests a single prize but the words suggest many prizes.

The upshot is that you make no sense - oh dear!

Here are two songs that have errors of concord, can you identify them?





Here is a video imitating the Timbaland video.
Parody is "an imitation of the style of a particular writer, artist, or genre with deliberate exaggeration for comic effect"

Satire is "the use of humour, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people’s stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues"

These definitions are courtesy of: http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/

Is this video a parody or a satire?

Why not eat insects?

Here is Friday's TED video. Think of it in terms of what we we watched about the Global Food Waste Scandal.
What can you do to solve the world's food problems. All it will take is a decision to make a small change in each of our lives: Meat Free Mondays and Fish Free Fridays! It is as easy as that...or you can eat insects...

Grade 10s Very Important Information

Dear Grade 10s

Please do the first 5 exercises on Apostrophes on Page 2 of your Language Exercises booklet.
10 GLD: We will be marking the questions on "Poem for my Mother," "Let the Children Decide" and the language work on Wednesday in lesson 4.
Please will Set 1 and Set 2 go to the Lecture Theatre for lesson 3 on Wednesday and Thursday. We will be doing Poetry so please bring those booklets with you.

Grade 12s: London

Dear Grade 12s



"London" is a rather dense and sad poem so here is the Power point that I put together in case you missed any of the images.

This is also a useful, brief revision of the poem from the BBC. It has a reading of the poem and some ideas as to its meaning.

To hear a man reading the poem have a look at this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bgUMoUNgJQ&playnext=1&list=PL0E775EE82A99301C&feature=results_video

Can you spot the mistake in the reading?

Othello

Dear Grade 12s

As we move at a cracking pace through the play it is important to do some extra reading as well.

Here is the Lit Chart for Act 2.3. I will continue to direct you to these as we read. They are a good way to revise the content and themes of the play.

There is another important concept that we need to deal with in the character of Iago. While we often label him as "evil," a more useful word that we can use to describe him is "Machiavellian." I know that this seems impossible to spell, let alone say, it is important nonetheless. A Machiavellian character is driven to succeed, no matter what the personal, social or external costs. I think that we can see how Iago is Machiavellian...
This is a wonderful discussion of the Machiavellian character. Please read it carefully! All credit for this goes to britaininprint!

This is a very simple little page that outlines some points (very briefly) about Iago's character.

This is a more detailed discussion to read.

Please note that I have not written any of these articles myself and take no credit for them at all.