1. There were several students missing today but we moved ahead anyway. (This close to the end of the semester… I don’t have time to be too lenient and wait.)
2. We began a new sub-unit on Multicultural people. We read a poem called “The Laundress” aloud together and discussed its meaning and dissected it slightly.
3. We started a discussion about language for multicultural people. They would have whole experiences and understandings in their own language but in order to move forward in their Canadian experience they would have to embrace English or French which can leave some people feeling disconnected from their past experiences and emotions.
4. We watched portions of the video The Terminal where Tom Hanks does a wonderful job of showing the frustration and confusion of a man who cannot speak enough English to manage effectively in his new surroundings. Even later in the movie when his English does improve, he is reading the fast-moving English words at the bottom of a television screen at the airport and seems pleased that he can read aloud the words as they scroll by but obviously loses the meaning and tragedy of what he reads. When you learn another language, sometimes you are so focused on the interpretation of thoughts from first language to new language and responding in that language.. that there is such a time lapse that natural reactions, responses etc are of no value. Language becomes a functional thing and not an expressive thing.
5. The exerpt we are reading titled “Lost in Translation” (no relation to the Bill Murray movie by the way) is about a woman who has to choose between continuing to speak her native language of Polish and enjoying the emotions and colors of her language or challenging herself to focus on English which has no emotion or colorful memories for her and is only a language of distant things and neutral observations. We are reading it slowly, paragraph by paragraph, and I am having the students underline important lines and paraphrase in the margins so they clearly will understand what we’re reading.

Check out this preview of The Terminal.

 [youtube]AkBn2ExXg7U[/youtube]

Check out this longer clip about a portion of the movie that focuses on the importance of understanding language. Your native language has passion and great emotion to you. Speaking in a foreign language with such passion and emotion is very difficult. This is the topic of our reading… that emotions, memories, colors, feelings are lost through translation.

[youtube]QxEtbbGr7XA[/youtube]

1. While I played the part of the Judge in the Mock Trial for the Law 3o class, Mr. Ausum was kind enough to watch the grade ten class today. They worked in the library continuing to write out their formal essays. They had the opportunity to begin typing them and work on some editing.

1. Students are continuing to write their essay based on the two essay questions given to them yesterday.
2. Some students began with their introductory paragraph, instead of following the assignment to write the body paragraphs first.
3. We discussed, in an awkward way, the importance of only listing the topics of the body paragraphs in the thesis and not before that. I am finding that a lot of students write their intro using three sentences to explain the three topics they will write and then add their thesis sentence. It is repetitive and uninteresting for the reader.
4. Some ‘Things to watch for’ in essay writing we discussed:
   1. Try to keep the verb tense consistent. (Don’t switch back and forth between past and present. Pick one and follow through.)
   2. Avoid the use of contractions in a formal essay. (Write out the two words a contraction usually combines, such as ‘do not’ instead of ‘don’t’ or ‘will not’ instead of ‘won’t’.)
   3. Avoid personal pronouns and first person opinions. Instead of saying “I believe the reasons for this are… ” say simply “The reasons for this are…”
   4. Of ultimate importance, avoid, at all costs, saying “In this essay I will discuss………”                No!!!!!!!! That’s a no-no! Never tell someone that’s reading your essay that they’re reading an essay. It’s elementary and we are much more advanced in writing than that.

1. I handed back some student work today. The week before last students wrote an essay in lieu of their end of unit exam. They were given the essay prompts from the 2003 Departmental Exam and had to write an ‘in class’ essay complete with integrated quotes and proper format of a five-paragraph formal essay. These were corrected, with comments and suggestions for improvement, and returned.
2. Students were told if they want to make the suggested changes and type up the essay to hand in by Thursday they can for some bonus marks.
3. I returned the writing students produced in yesterday’s work class in writing the Narrative Writing Assignment.  A mark was given out of three based on what they produced during that hour.
4. We read through the assignment handout together to be clear students understood what I was asking of them in the assignment, what the expectations were as far as what would be evaluated, and the importance of focusing on an Event in this individual’s life and having a point of climax. Students seem invovled in this assignment.