Letters 3 from the 30s (*)

Evergreen 252

Rockwell, Alabama. 650200

11/26/1931

Dear Jim:

How are you doing? Her in Rockwell things continue going worse each day. Now the problems started at school. The school was the place where all my problems disappeared and where I could relax and be happy, but now it changed; the great depression affected our way of living forcing me to work after classes to gain some extra money for sustaining.

At school, several boys as me have to work and some of them had to leave the school, like my friend Jack, who works with his father now trying to get some crops to sell from the desolated fields beaten by the sandstorms. From thirty-eight boys we were at the start of the year now we remain seventeen, and every day we are less.

Apart from that, there’s no motivation to go to school anymore, the building is ¡s filthy and the windows are broken by the storms with pieces of rock. Some families are staying at the school at nights because they don’t have another place to go. At least the school is big and the playground is still usable. The teachers are in the same situation than us, some days they stay at home and when they come to school, they just lie around and leave us luckily some work. They don’t even correct the works, they just put A to us and tell us that we have done well, but it won’t help to fix the situation.

The biggest entertainment we got is to watch out the window, because in every moment a sudden storm could come and damage us. At home we just try to rest, because the days are awful and very tires. Hope things get better for my next letter.

Sincerely, Bart

Letters 4 from the 30s

Evergreen 252

Rockwell, Alabama. 650200

12/01/1931

Dear Jim:

This is the last letter that I send you and I going to tell you what is happening in our country now. Our country is living an economic depression. Also there are a lot of conflicts between white people and black people, these is because the black people want to have the same rights that the whites. All the newspapers and radios talk about the same things and conflicts, all the countries fell with the fell of our country there is like an domino effect, especially the countries that depends of our country like Chile that is the country that lose more in the economic crisis.

There are also a lot of new technology items that change the world and each day is a new item that revolutionizes the entire world.

Sincerely, Bart

Letters 2 from the 30s

Evergreen 252

Rockwell, Alabama. 650200

10/15/1931

Dear Jim:

Things continue badly here in Rockwell, we believe this is never stopping. The storms continue beating our homes and tearing out the crops, now we don’t have many chances to gain money.

Before this problem fell on us, I went to school like every normal boy, guess now I’m normal too staying at home… I ate my lunch and studied to some day maybe go to college, but now, all is different. Now you must think I’m lying on my home, I wish I could do that, I must work in the house to help my two big sisters on the house matters like cooking and cleaning, when we have things to eat, some days we just get along with water that we have stored for difficult situation. And when the week has gone too bad for us to continue, I must go to the street looking for things to eat or money to pass the day, sometimes the people need help in some work and I help them and my payment is some pieces of bread that I share with my family.

It’s difficult, but my father’s day is further worse. Before the crash, he was a farmer and made the living out for that, and we never complained, we had all we need, my sisters and my mother. Now my father prays all night for some thing to grow in the field, because the sandstorms had destroyed all his vegetables. He wakes up at 5am to start seeking for someone to employ him for the day to gain some money for buying food, and when he doesn’t find someone to help him, he just go around the city asking for food or picking what he can from the garbage bins.

And mother, I don’t know now, the last time I saw her she said that she was going to work to get us out from that, after that I never saw her again. The last thing I knew from her was that she was working in a house in the county on the side and that she would come back soon with the necessary money to go to a big city for better opportunities.

I remember that I enjoyed playing with my dog and my sisters, but it died a week ago from rubbish. Now I enjoy to sleep and being with my family when I can, in winter to get warm also. I must enjoy them while I can.

Sincerely, Bart

Letters 1 from the 30s

Evergreen 252

Rockwell, Alabama. 650200

09/20/1931

Dear Jim:

It has been a hard time to look for some paper to write you this letter; we need all the material we can get to repair the holes in the roof and walls and using paper for writing is a thing we cannot do all days, but I needed to write this for you to know the condition in which we are living here in Rockfell.

Last months have been horrible, the great crash affected us a lot because now our crops are worthless and apart from that, no one wants to buy nothing. Furthermore, the sandstorms had beaten up our home and our whole neighbourhood leaving complete families below the sky.

First, I must describe mi house, or well, what is left of it. First of all, our “door” is made of newspapers that remember us everyday of our condition; the windows are not more than holes in the walls that don’t let the light in because they are also closed due to the absence of glass. In the summer the air is suffocating inside, and in winter is freezing, despite that it is an adobe house, that prevents the great temperature oscillations, because the adobe left by the storms id very small, the rest of the house is of recycled materials like newspapers, plastic, old clothes and even with bathroom paper; and we must continue closing holes because also the people in the neighbourhood tries to enter and steal things.

The neighbours aren’t better than us, they are always complaining of rats in the houses, because they don’t have the luck that we have. Their walls are with holes and they don’t have materials to fix them, so the rats  enter and leave the entire place filthy and for worse, eat the food.

I’ll write you soon, now I have to work


Sincerely, Bart

Podcast Chapter 4: TKM

http://www.mediafire.com/?cmtk1gd239pfk5t

To Kill a Mockingbired

To Kill a Mockingbired

1)Scout who is older than six years old, as she is remembering how did her brother, Jem, got his elbow broken. It is written in first person, as the quote "I maintain that the Ewells started it all...", states.

2)

Scout, Jem, Atticus, Calpurnia; ----> Live together

Simon Finch, Alexandra Finch, Jack Finch; ----> Family

Mr. and Mrs. Radley, Arthur Radley; ----> Family

Dill, Miss Rachel; ----> Family

Cecil, Mrs. Henry Lefayette Dubose, Miss Stephanie Crawford, The Cunninghams. ----> Neighbours

They all leave in Maycomb County.

3) Maycomb County that is described as "an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it".  The atmosphere is slow, without any hurry as if the days were longer than they really were. However, there was a sort of optimistic mood as "Maycomb County had recently been toldmthat it had nothing to fear but fear itself".

4) At the middle, but then it return to its very first beginning: "When I was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow...I said if he wanted to take a broad view of the thing, it really began with Andrew Jackson..."

5) Simple and mysterious, it is not composed by any rethorical device but introduces some elements to catch the reader who keeps on reading.

6) About Atticus unpopularity as he fights for a black people rights. Racism and prejudgment.

7) Yes, I do. Adding some mistery to the plot. The fourth chapter, for instance ends stating: "Someone inside the house was laughing",alluding to the Radley House.

8) Just about behaviour, Scout is not able to know character's iner thoughts or feelings as she is no an omniscient narrator.

9) It is detaching, even between Scout and her father.

Concept Map

Interview to Headmaster

Introduction

Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication. The scientific study of language in any of its senses is called linguistics. This is a definition of language, but its more than this, the language is part of the identity of the people and a fundamental cultural factor.

In this interview we will interrogate the headmaster of our school, Mr. Mark Rosevear, to know his opinion about the language itself and to share some knowledge about it. We will make very general questions to some specific ones that will help us gathering the information we want.

On Thursday 30^th June we, Stefan Search and José Manuel Zulueta, had an interview with the headmaster of The Mackay School, Mr. Mark Rosevear. The topic of the interview was Language and Culture as this has been the topic of study in class. Language may refer either to the human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication. The scientific study of language in any of its senses is called linguistics. This is a definition of language, but it’s more than this, language is part of the identity of the people and a fundamental cultural factor. The purpose of our interview is to discover the opinion of our headmaster of language itself and to gather his knowledge on the subject. We will ask both general and specific questions to help us gather this information.

Headmaster of The Mackay School, Mr. Mark Rosevear.

José Manuel:

“What do you think about language in today's world?”

Mr. Mark Rosevear:

“There are certain languages that have become more global, obliviously English being one of them. In fact what I was just writing there 70-75% of the Internet is in English, so clearly if you can speak English or understand it you able to access more. I think that is very important, but at the same time the number is dropping because the amount of things in Chinese is going up but obliviously most people can't read Chinese. So yes, language is clearly important in that sense.

I also think that culturally its very important because once you lose your language you lose everything. For example in Ireland the Gaelic is compulsory until children are 16 because they feel if they don't learn it they will loose all their cultural roots, which I understand because where I come from in Cornwall we had our own language but it died in about the 18^th century. As a result there's little culture there because everything was written in that language.

The other thing you have to understand about language is that everything is translated these days. For example in your English or Spanish courses for IB you could read for example a book written in Arabic translated in either English or Spanish, does that mean you understand it differently in Spanish lets say than someone in Egypt who's reading it in Arabic because its got to be slightly different because the words don't translate. So depending on what language you read something in you might understand it very slightly differently because for some words there is a straight forward translation but for others there isn't, you have to use phrases. I think a lot depends on translation and where you read it, but clearly the ability to speak, I would say English and Spanish more than anything else, because they are the 2^nd and 3^rd most widely spoken languages in the world. If you can speak English and Spanish you have accesses to 2 continents as well as Europe, Australia, etc. Its a big thing those 2 languages.

Stefan Search:

Having been in Chile is there any slang, or words you would take back into your own culture if you were to return?

Mr. Mark Rosevear:

Probably none that I would repeat to you! I learnt Spanish in Chile and then when I went to Colombia, and lived, I realised that I understood a lot more Spanish than I thought I did because here it is hard for a foreigner to learn Spanish because Chilean Spanish is very different. The way you use a lot of slang and other words makes it's hard for a foreigner to learn it here. It's much easier for people to learn it, in say for example Columbia. Any particular words? Let me think about that while we are talking and I'll see if I can come up with some.

José Manuel:

Should we have only one unique language or is it better to be bilingual? Please consider the cultural components.

Mr .Mark Rosevear:

I don't know if you have ever heard of anything called Esperanto.

José and Stefan:

No.

Mr. Mark Rosevear:

Esperanto was a language, I think it came in the 1920's or after the first world war. It was an attempt, I think, by someone to write a language that everybody would learn. So your second language for example for you, you wouldn't learn English, you would learn Esperanto and the same for a Russian, they would learn Esperanto. The idea being that there would be a global language that everybody would be able to converse with. I suppose the fact that it failed and you never heard of it probably answers the question. I think is very important that people do learn as many languages as possible because it just opens doors. It goes back to the first question because if everybody learns one language they all lose their culture. So I think you have to have one language but at the same time if you can learn another that's obviously going to be very helpful.

Stefan Search:

Does language contact automatically create a sort of hybridized language? For example British colonies such as India where you get a language that is made from Indian as well as English, in a mixed language.

Mr. Mark Rosevear

Yes, I can think of one obvious example, Cuba. If you go to Cuba, the Spanish that you hear there is very weird. I mean it's not like here where the words are just invented or fictitious words, or not just here, any where else. In Cuba as well as the Spanish they've thrown in a lot of very different thing that come out of Africa from the old slave trade so I suppose it is in the same way that you will often here words here. Well in Spanish someone will often come out with an English word or in English people will say, if they wanted a rest in the afternoon, I'll take a siesta.

José Manuel:

Are other languages being wiped out by English in the world?

Mr. Mark Rosevear:

No, I don't think they are, I think English is, or are they, no I think as important as it is to be international in your outlook because that's essential, in today's world when you grow up you’re going to end up doing business with people from many different countries, so yes the ability to speak English is important but those people, or yourselfs for example, your not going to loose Spanish, it's not going to disappear. I don't think those languages will disappear, I just think more people will learn a second language and maybe even a third language, than they do today. Tell you what will happen though is languages in very remote places say for example Eskimos up in Canada or whatever, were those who choose to stay in their little villages where there is 100 people, in 10 years time there will be 80 and 20 years there will be 60 people. Those sort of small languages within groups, those will die but that's been happening since the worlds existed but the main languages like Spanish or Italian and French or whatever there not going to go.

Stefan Search:

Is the language related to, and important for its corresponding culture?

Mr. Mark Rosevear:

Is it the language that breeds the culture or the culture that breeds the language. I would think that the language is part of the culture, or is it the other way round. I mean if you loose your language you loose part of your culture but if you loose the culture you wouldn't necessarily loose the language. So for example someone could move away from, you could move out of this country and go and live overseas for 50 years. You would still speak Spanish, you not going to loose that but you might loose certain parts of your culture because your not living here any more. Where as it would not happen the other way around. Someone moving in would learn Spanish and would learn the culture. A little bit like me.

José Manuel:

Do you think that language change destroys the language or does it add to the identity of the area where it happens?

Mr. Mark Rosevear:

I think that when language changes, when new words come into existence, it only enriches the language. When most people try to read something from 600 years ago they probably wouldn't recognise half the words. I'm sure Spanish is the same, I mean I've not studied old Spanish but what I have seen of some of the writings of the conquistador's and things like that, I read it and I think what, I've got no idea what they are talking about. So clearly language moves, it develops and I suppose that the new words that come in, particularly with technology, add to the language and language is never going to stay the same, it's always going to keep moving. It just changes like everything else, it's like if you looked out here 30 years ago and you would have seen a very different picture, does that mean it’s better or worse depends on your point of view. I would argue that what ever it is like now is a lot better than what you would have been looking at 30 years ago but someone else might say, “But no it was far better with lots of open fields”. So I think that language, it changes whether its good or bad I think depends on how old fashioned maybe you are or how modern your views are, conservative or going forth.

Conclusion

With this interview we could get the information we wanted about the opinion of our headmaster about the language and also he shared some of his knowledge about history and social sciences with us like the information about “Esperanto”. With the information we got we can make an idea of the language as a fundamental thing in the present and also as a factor of special identification and changes.

Speaking activity

We based our speaking activity on Jargon and Argot, language and culture, and language and identity, as we represent the contact between European culture, illustrated throughout two English tourists, and rural one represented by an huaso. They met and exchange different perspectives about how should life stile be like, discriminating the tourists in a very despective way how does the huaso live. The huaso uses certain words which are characteristic on its argot, while tourists pronounce in a too sophisticated and exaggerated way, which show us the contrast between both cultures. This argot provides identity to our language and culture.

Analytical questions

Analytical Questions

1.       It occur a phenomenon called language contact, in which the two languages interact and a creoles, pidgin or patois might be created.

2.       When the subordinate countries of an Empire get independent and begin with an own nation and identity.

3.       The end of a culture and a complete literary history.

4.       Because the English was imposed in all the colonies around the globe such as India, Africa and the Caribbean.

5.       Because it attaches to the culture where it is imposed and changes the culture.

6.       No, because it represents a complete nation and an Empire with a vast culture and traditions.

7.       The language itself it’s no part of my identity because in a lot of countries the Spanish is spoken, but the way I use the language represents me and differentiates me from others.

8.       It’s a language that has been modified due to the union of two languages, forming a new one with common characteristics.

9.       It produces a sort of identity thing when you read a dialect you instantly think in some determined society or community.

The Boy pt. 1

His mother always asked him: "Where have you been, why do you arrive so late? And always continued with: "Go to bed, young delinquent". She was always annoying him, day or night; always making problems out of nothing, always on top of him, checkin' his every move, searching for  sometimes nonexistent faults to punish him for. The mother was good-looking, but she had been alone since her husband died in the Great War. Since that day, she was never happy again, taking medicine that, instead of helping her, killed her slowly. If she wasn't sleeping, she was screaming at everything or everyone, thing like: "You kid! Come here and help me, don't you see I'm sick?". The boy wanted to help his mother, he knew that it wasn't her fault, that she was this way, maybe it was him... To escape was the only answer that come to his mind, his presence would annoy her forever, and then, while he was thinking, his mother appeared and said: "Go to sleep!".

Published online 15 May 2011 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2011.290

News

Bacteria helped early animals to breathe

Microbial mats might have functioned as oxygen oases for primitive multicellular life.

Matt Kaplan

Animals can use the pockets of oxygen trapped in mats of photosynthetic bacteria to survive in anoxic environments.

Mats of plant-like bacteria dramatically increase local oxygen levels in the lakes where they are found, as a result of photosynthesis. That might have given early multicellular animals the boost they needed to evolve in an ancient world where oxygen was scarce.

A study exploring this idea, published today in Nature Geoscience¹, analyses bacterial colonies called microbial mats in the Los Roques lagoons of Venezuela.

Like most modern microbial mats, those in Los Roques have a surface layer of blue-green algae, or cyanobacteria, which collect the bulk of their energy from the Sun, and a lower layer of sulphide-oxidizing bacteria. However, unlike most mats today, those in Los Roques are found in highly saline waters that are inhospitable to most of the plant-eating animals that would normally graze on them. The mats can therefore completely cover lagoon floors and behave very much as such mats would have done in the Ediacaran Period, 542 million years ago, when multicellular animals were only just starting to evolve.

Murray Gingras, a palaeontologist at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, examined the chemistry of the water above and inside the living mats. He and his colleagues found that although oxygen levels in the surface waters of the lagoon were very low, often reaching 0.10 units of atmospheric pressure (atm), daytime levels in deeper waters near the mat rose to between 0.25 and 0.45 atm as the bacteria produced energy from sunlight and released oxygen as a waste product.

In the top millimetre layer of the mat itself, the team discovered an environment of nearly pure oxygen, with daytime measurements of up to 1.05 atm.

Modern atmospheric oxygen levels average around 0.21 atm, but when multicellular life was evolving, levels of around 0.10 atm would have been the norm — too low for most multicellular organisms. "Daily fluctuations in oxygen would have made it very difficult for animals other than simple creatures like sponges to exist," explains Jim Gehling, a palaeontologist at the South Australian Museum in Adelaide.

Gingras and his colleagues propose that the mats had a key role in helping early animals to get the oxygen they needed. "We think that animals used the small but highly oxygenated zones as oases," says Murray.

Oxygen tanks

Palaeontologists have long theorized that early animals fed on microbial mats, because fossils of animals and mats are often found together. But this is the first time that researchers have shown how mats can function as important oxygen resources for fauna.

"The idea that microbial or even algal colonies could have provided oxygenic havens for early life is an intriguing one," says Martin Brasier, a palaeobiologist at the University of Oxford, UK.

Gehling agrees that it is a "neat idea", but there are some glitches.

Because the rich oxygen supply is created by photosynthesis, it would only have been available when the sun was shining. At night, the environment around the mats would have become oxygen-deficient, as Murray and his colleagues saw in the Venezuelan lagoons.

Insect larvae that live inside the modern lagoon mats go into a state of hibernation after nightfall to cope with the sudden loss of oxygen, but it is not known whether early animals could do the same.

Gehling also points out that early animals that might have used the microbial mats' oxygen were much larger than the insect larvae that live inside modern mats, and would have had difficulty benefiting from the high-oxygen environment in the mats' narrow top layer.

Gingras counters that not all Ediacaran animals were large, pointing to trace-fossil evidence that include the burrows of millimetre-scale worm-like animals. In addition, the oases provide oxygen not only to the immediate mat area, but also to the water above the mat.

"Larger animals may have used mat-hugging behaviours from above to benefit from the high oxygen gradient near the mat," he says.

Perhaps the most important matter that demands further attention is whether the mats of the past really behaved like the mats of the present. "What we now need is good evidence that the Ediacaran mats were photosynthetic," says Brasier. 

 My complete work

New technology texts

New technology texts



Websites

The websites differ mostly from other traditional written texts in that the material is presented in a screen rather than on a page, carrying with this other type of differences between texts:

                                                            Characteristics  
 
                                                           


Ex: Facebook

E-mail

An e-mail is very similar to a letter, but there are some distinctive linguistic characteristics compared with a letter. Also the informality, the interaction and the way it gets close to the spoken language.













Text messages

The main characteristics for text messages are keeping the message the short and concise as possible. The space for writing is very tiny and the small keypad encourages compression and short messages.

In text messages:

• Words are shortened
  
• Phonetic spelling
  
• Letter homophones
  
• Grammatical compression
  

Text C

This chat room presents different characteristics that are particular to the new technology texts. Some of the characteristics that are present on this text are prosodic features, colloquialisms, grammatical expressions and non-standard spelling. The prosodic feature of using upper case letters in the text is presented in the word BOOK, where Geoff is demonstrating his excitement with the acquirement of a new book. The use of colloquialisms is also present in the text in words like lounging and expressions like hang out, that are examples that get closer the text with a spoken discourse. The shortened words for the days of the week are a clear example of grammatical compression, trying to make the text shorter because of the space and the use of a keypad for writing and also the use of excessive punctuation marks in the exclamation of Geoff. Finally, the non-standard spelling is presented with the ellipsis of words in some construction without subject in the speech on JillyB, "how have the holydays been treating everyone?" and "lots of lounging about I trust, this kind of expression is used because the sentence have a sense if it is read in a context despite the missing of the subject and also is more concise than writing the whole sentence. In conclusion, this texts contains a lot of grammatical techniques that characterizes it as a new technology text, in every context.


 New Technology Texts