Week 8 summary

Translation activity

During this task we both realized that there are a lot of differences between Spanish and English (besides the obvious), we couldn’t translate everything straight to the English language without making it sound a bit computerized or dumb. 

We had a harder time trying to set order to our sentences than when we translated the actual words, also we discovered that not every word in the Spanish language needs to be translated, and we actually were able to skip a few words because some of them didn’t mean anything in the context of the English version of the text. Learning English clearly isn’t a tool for translations but a tool to get to know a different culture with different characteristics.

Week 7 Summary: Various activities

Creative contest writing

In the first session we worked on creating a story with a select group of themes. My story was about a girl being lecture by her dad in a park in the future, in a underwater city to be more exactly. The girl is very young having an altercation with another child because of a broken toy. Her father told her that her actions always have consequences and you have to be at the same time responsible of your actions, making references on ho humanity is now living underwater due to pollution on Earth.

I was inspired mostly of sci-fi movies, videogames and books I have read, also I wanted to included a development of artificial intelligence in the form of the serv-bots but the extension of the story didn't gave me the opportunity. 

Punctuation exercise

In session two, we worked in pairs (in my case I worked with Julio) using the magazines we brought in order to write them again without any punctuation and capital letters. This task was very difficult because I confused a lot of points with commas.

Shakespeare search

I worked alone for this activity in CETEC, because my computer is not working properly these days, the activity really made me think if the writer really did all of his plays, because of the lack of information and that there is no original manuscripts written by him. 

Week 6 summary: Poem presentation

My poem presentation experience

In the first session, my team and I worked on how we were going to present the poem to the group and we decided reading it first and then explaining the meaning behind it.

This will be a very short entry in my blog so I will better start explaining that again I survived making a presentation. If I recall correctly we were the second team in presenting their work, we read the poem (which you can find in the week 5 summary post) and explained it to the class, it turned out to be a very good presentation.

As a final comment, I enjoyed reading the story and playing the activities the other teams made, like playing jeopardy, and also I enjoyed it more because my team won.

Week 5 summary

Wall street activity

The first part of the activity consisted in watching a part of the movie "Wall street", in my opinion it is a very clever movie that show us the corruption and tactics employed in Wall street in order to obtain more money. I heard of the movie in the past but didn't see it, it was interesting seeing Charlie Sheen in a serious role and not being a plain character like in the series of Two and a Half Men.

For the second part we read the articles "Why be Honest if Honesty Doesn't Pay" and "Keeping Your Colleagues Honest". 

We have to link the main ideas in the articles with the plot of the movie, at first I knew what ideas I would talk about in my paper but I find it very difficult to explain my ideas.

For session three we made an investigation in teams about a country and their different ways of talking English. In our team we talked about Australia, South Africa and India. In my case, I center my search with South Africa and realized that their English is heavily influenced by European and African accents, and also that they also have their own terms. The most curious one was bathing suit instead swimming costume, because when they refer to costume it refers to halloween costumes.

Week 4 summary: Charles Dickens' proposal

Charles Dickens' proposal

At first I thought that I was going to work alone in my proposal, fortunately I formed a team with Thelma and Jorge. We agree in making a poem based in the story "The old curiosity shop" of Charles Dickens. The poem's name is "Wealth and death", we came up with it because the recurring aspirations of many of the characters in the story is obtaining money.

Wealth and death

Dickens usually talked about debt

He used literature to reflect his life

It must have being harsh I bet

His beginnings were not rife

The Old Curiosity Shop was inspired

by a personal tragedy in Dickens’ life

Nell is based on the seventeen year old sister-in-law

of Dickens who lived with him and whom he was fond of.

Money made Nell’s future to be a gamble

More than his grandfather’s struggle for health

Their destiny was completely a scramble

With the main objective of gaining wealth

Frederick, Dick and Quilp acted with ambition

To obtain what they thought deserved

Forgetting to accomplish their mission

Ultimately enjoying what they earned

All human’s fate includes death’s kiss

Our constant struggle to embrace

To earth trying always to escape

Death, prevents us to have bliss

To reach a goal we need more than a plan

That’s what Nell’s grandparent did

He thought his actions were the best bid

That was the problem with being a player man.

Even though currency is not total happiness

It is the tool to reach our goal’s fulfilling

But forgetting your ideals end with emptiness

Or could it be that I am just chilling?

As time passes by and their health decline

with a calming aura she will appear

and don’t be scared, everything will be fine

as they will be by the river together with no fear.

By:Thelma Cárdenas, Jorge Vela, and Victor Ordoñez