Poe

Thank you for the comment, José Ángel.

2011-06-12T10:34:18.261+02:00

Thank you for the comment, José Ángel.

"A Lecture upon the Shadow" used to be o...

2011-06-11T15:13:37.554+02:00

"A Lecture upon the Shadow" used to be one of my chosen poems for my literature class on John Donne. It is highly autobiographical, I think, and addressed to his wife. I like the passionate all-or-nothingism of "and his first minute after noon is night". As to Feste's song, I agree both with Wikipedia and with Bloom: it's (between the lines) about a (male) man´s life, and the "little thing" that makes him a man- a curious ending for a play about sexual ambiguity and transvestism, it's all about "to have or have not" but the song is rather skeptical about masculinity.

Si tienes apuntes o resúmenes del libro de Ken Bea...

2011-03-25T15:12:59.242+01:00

Si tienes apuntes o resúmenes del libro de Ken Beatty, por favor los podrías postear?
Soy alumna de Uned,
y me falta ese libro,
miles de gracias.

A great resource for students, Maite. I hope it ke...

2011-03-04T09:26:40.539+01:00

A great resource for students, Maite. I hope it keeps growing.

Wonderful, isn´t it? You can suscribe and receive ...

2011-02-01T14:30:07.673+01:00

Wonderful, isn´t it? You can suscribe and receive bookmarks of the day.

Here, you can find today´s bookmark: The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.

http://www.bookdrum.com/bookmark-of-the-day-20110201.html

Yes, the readings are really good. Today, I also d...

2011-01-13T20:09:47.181+01:00

Yes, the readings are really good. Today, I also discovered this other website (http://www.smories.com/) with stories read by children and I was impressed by the quality of the readings too.

Thanks, Maite. I´ve tried some poetry from Poe and...

2011-01-13T13:44:30.684+01:00

Thanks, Maite. I´ve tried some poetry from Poe and Shakespeare and it´s beautifully read!!

Which makes one think, that you can also be vain w...

2010-12-30T11:44:56.024+01:00

Which makes one think, that you can also be vain without being proud!

Thanks, Maite. Very interesting. A good excuse to ...

2010-12-20T16:57:00.357+01:00

Thanks, Maite. Very interesting. A good excuse to visit London..

I´ve tried the quiz and it´s not very difficult. I even remembered the Old Norse they...

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=118117729971...

2010-09-24T10:44:51.123+02:00

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=118117729971

"Beating is an essential part of any successful shoot. If you are unfamiliar with what beating actually is, basically a beater is a person who has the job of flushing birds such as pheasants or grouse from cover in the direction of the guns.

Beaters work as part of a team normally led by the Gamekeeper or Underkeeper through woodland or other cover such as gamecrops to make sure that the birds fly in the desired direction. Their job is to investigate every bit of cover in the wood and flush the birds out using a stick."

There's more description on the info section. It took a little more digging than I'm used to!

How interesting! Things look a little different wh...

2010-08-10T17:39:29.542+02:00

How interesting! Things look a little different when you know the whole story. I´m afraid there are all kind of peculiar theories out there, in linguistics. I myself have a couple of them, but I always thought you need a reputation before launching a new daring theory. Maybe it works better the other way round!
Juan F.

Sulzberger's research and Sulzberger's con...

2010-08-09T16:22:54.106+02:00

Sulzberger's research and Sulzberger's conclusion are completely different things.

Sulzberger investigated whether it was easier for English speakers to learn Russian words that fit the sound patterns of English to those that don't.

Unsurprisingly, he found this to be the case. He could have come out talking about how most language courses ignore the relative difficulty of words, but he chose not to.

Instead he took a massive leap in logic. He had proven that it was difficult to learn unfamiliar sounds, so he decided to claim that this meant you needed to make them familiar before you could learn them (non-sequitur A) and that the way to make them familiar was to listen to the radio without having any clue what they were saying (non-sequitur B).

Why? I can only assume that he figured people would blog about his spurious conclusions and make him famous.

Thank you for your enlightening comment, José Ánge...

2010-06-22T21:40:38.013+02:00

Thank you for your enlightening comment, José Ángel. When studying English Philology I found literary criticism – especially some poststructuralist approaches – really hard to understand both regarding postulates and purpose. Reading some analyses from the point of view of deconstruction, for instance, – or trying to do something similar with a text – made me think of two distancing worlds.

Another question that arose the other day in the discussion was to what extent writing or editing texts for professional reasons, i.e. activities that involve continuous language analysis, affect the way of reading.

Reading literary criticism, I think, is not the be...

2010-06-22T18:02:10.135+02:00

Reading literary criticism, I think, is not the best way to enjoy literature. Actually, the relationship between literature and literary criticism works the other way round. Literary criticism is not there to allow you to enjoy literature, but to understand it better. If that deeper understanding leads to enjoyment, so much the better, but it need not. Understanding will lead us to a deeper enjoyment of some works (arguably the greatest), but will dissipate the charm of others. Indeed, understanding may lead to distance, skepticism and disillusion, as does the philosophical or scientific understanding of any other aspect of life. Someone said the relationship between literature and criticism was exactly the contrary. One does not read literary criticism in order to enjoy literature: rather, one reads literature in order to be able to read, understand and enjoy literary criticism– which is, as Oscar Wilde said, a higher intellectual pleasure, fit for the gods—though perhaps it is not much of a pleasure for humans who try to enjoy stories, songs, and the illusions of art.

Just taking note of another blog post on the issue...

2010-06-21T22:15:05.020+02:00

Just taking note of another blog post on the issue of favourite words: http://www.fzayas.com/darlealalengua/?p=1434

When I played the game I realised that many of the words we chose were of an Arabic origin like albaricoque or alhelí.

It was a man. At least he looked like a male. Anyw...

2010-06-17T17:16:10.255+02:00

It was a man. At least he looked like a male. Anyway, it was a curious gathering. Five people in a house in a small village in Bierzo. Two of us had not met the person who suggested the game before, but communication flowed easily. Part of the interaction took the form of this game. Funny.

I´ve never seen Alice in Wonderland as a story for...

2010-06-17T12:35:02.604+02:00

I´ve never seen Alice in Wonderland as a story for kids. It´s kind of frightening! I bet that all those who think that clowns are scary also don't like Alice in Wonderland!
Juan

Hi, Maite! I have a question: Who was the one that...

2010-06-17T12:30:37.500+02:00

Hi, Maite! I have a question: Who was the one that proposed such a game? Maybe it was a woman? For no particular reason I can't imagine a man suggesting it.
Any comment?
Juan

Dale caña aita!

2010-06-16T14:17:18.461+02:00

Dale caña aita!

Well... not too many contributions so far... Anywa...

2010-05-15T15:15:37.829+02:00

Well... not too many contributions so far... Anyway, blogs can also be useful to take notes. Just by sheer chance I've come across the following three blog posts which deal with the idea of 'favourite words' in the last hours:

A way of using Spanish 'favourite words' in the classroom, http://apiedeaula.blogspot.com/2010/05/el-grupo-en-el-dia-e.html

'La palabra más bonita del español'. Some writers, journalists, politicians... choose a word they like and give some reasons to explain their choice, http://www.materialesdelengua.org/LENGUA/lexico/palabrabonita/palabrabonita.htm

Some contributions in another blog, this time in English, http://wordstogoodeffect.wordpress.com/your-words/

Pues habrá que coger unos cuantos. Si se quedaran ...

2010-02-03T23:13:00.425+01:00

Pues habrá que coger unos cuantos. Si se quedaran simplemente en dulces, tampoco estarían mal. El libro que tengo últimamente entre manos, y que digiero como puedo, sabe a ladrillo puro y duro.
Suerte si vas la semana que viene, Jon.
Un saludo.

En Bergara también tenemos caramelos a la entrada ...

2010-02-03T10:33:11.682+01:00

En Bergara también tenemos caramelos a la entrada de los exámenes. Pero en nuestro caso es una única cestita. Me imagino que serán caramelos multiusos y servirán tanto para el amor como para aprobar los exámenes. ¡Qué suerte la nuestra!

I suffered the same. As you wrote, it has not been...

2010-01-29T15:58:56.931+01:00

I suffered the same. As you wrote, it has not been an easy task to find out the meaning of "grouse-beater". As "grouse" could be also use for a sort of complain, initially I was tempted to follow that way; but in the end I agree with your assumption.

Well yes, there's lots of bad sex in that nove...

2009-12-25T08:15:53.221+01:00

Well yes, there's lots of bad sex in that novel, but it is a memorable portrait of Nazism. Don't read it for the sex, but it's recommended reading as far as I'm concerned.

Sulzberger's research is interesting, and he i...

2009-12-22T12:59:25.175+01:00

Sulzberger's research is interesting, and he is by no means the first language instructor to come to this conclusion.
For example, the huge Latinum audio project for teaching Classical Latin through extensive audio exposure (http://latinum.mypodcast.com) was set up in response to earlier research into the importance of audio for acquiring grammatical patterns subconsciously, irrespective of meaning.

This goes back to Chomsky's famous "colourless green ideas sleep furiously" - that grammatical information can be encoded in sentences without meaning.