Welcome back to ASC and Second Year Spanish! I hope that you are full of enthusiasm and can't wait to get started! That would be my good old British sense of humour and sarcasm coming to the fore again!
Soooooo, we have a lot of work to do and a lot of knowledge to absorb. I will be checking on my blog at regular intervals and so I will expect you to comment on some of the things that we do in class and on your homework. If you have any websites that you feel are of use to the others in your class, then let us all know.
Buena suerte a todos
Ms R
Monday, June 6, 2011
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Spanish Websites
Do you know that there are literally thousands upon thousands of websites that teach Spanish? All you have to do is wade thought the rubbish to find some of the better websites. Unfortunately it can be a time consuming exercise, but once you have found some good ones don't forget to share with your peers and of course your teachers.
In the past I have used www.studyspanish.com and www.bbc.co.uk, the first one is excellent for grammar and exercises to help you understand the grammar, its a site that is growing all of the time. BBC is good for listening materials and also you can get the news in Spanish if you click on mundo on the home page. You can find all kinds of articles both recent and not so recent.
In the past I have used www.studyspanish.com and www.bbc.co.uk, the first one is excellent for grammar and exercises to help you understand the grammar, its a site that is growing all of the time. BBC is good for listening materials and also you can get the news in Spanish if you click on mundo on the home page. You can find all kinds of articles both recent and not so recent.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Spanish Literature
Unit 1
17 Narradoras Latinoamericanas: Cartas de amor traicionado by Isabel Allende, La casa nueva by Silvia Molina and El Primer beso by Clarice Lispector.
Cartas de amor traicionado is a short story about a woman called Analia who is orphaned when she is two weeks old. She is sent by her uncle to a convent school which she enjoys. Her Uncle encourages her to become a nun but even though she relishes the idea as a bit of a rebel she tells him she wont do it. When Analia turns 17 her uncle visits her at the school for the first time. They have to be introduced and her uncle tells her that from now on she will receive an allowance of 100 pesos each month. The mother superior explains to Uncle Eugenio that as Analia has never been on a holiday nor had a Christmas gift sent that he should understand her discourteous behaviour. The uncle comes back a month later and asks if it would be possible for her cousin to write to her, which she allows.
When the letters start to arrive, Analia doesn't want to read them but then due to boredom she does. And after a while the letters start to use a secret code to speak of things that perhaps the Mother superior would not approve of. The intimacy between the two increases and Analia begins to think that a person capable of such feelings has to have some kind of deformity. she invents all kinds of handicaps and decides that it is the spirit of the person that is more important than his looks. The correspondence between the two lasted two years by the end of which Analia had a hat box full of letters.
She is disappointed when she meets Luis, the supposed letter writer, because he is good looking and she was expecting a hunch back! Nevertheless they marry and from the first day that they are married she loathes him. She feels as if she has been tricked into a marriage of convenience in order to her parents lands in the family. she realises that Uncle Eugenio is not a man to be trifled with. Every time that she asks about the letters her husband mutters some excuse and shuts her mouth with a kiss making her believe that he was not the true writer of those wonderful letters.
Luis, her husband, becomes the legal administrator of the lands but in reality it is Uncle Eugenio who takes care of everything.
Analia gives birth to a son and as soon as she does so she moves into a small room with a single hard bed like those in the convent and locks her door each night to avoid having to have marital relations with her husband. As a result Luis starts to go out drinking an womanising and loses interest in the work on the land. Analia replaces him and discusses decisions with Uncle Eugenio while her husband sleeps off his hangover.
Analia teaches her son all she can and eventually Luis decides it is time that the child be sent to a school in the city, but Analia doesn't want to be separated from her child and so she stands up to him and he backs down and they send him to a school int he town where he will be an boarder during the week but come home each weekend. Analia anxiously tries to keep her son home each weekend but never finds an excuse to do so, and slowly but surely the child tells her of the things that he gets up to in school. She realises that the child is happy there and when she receives his first report card she sees that he is doing very well. the card comes with a note from the teacher, which she reads smiling to herself, for the first time in a long time. she becomes very interested in her sons school and everything linked to it, asking the child lots of questions and rewarding the class with jars of home made marmalade and baskets of fruit.
Luis has an accident in the village after having too much to drink and trying to show off that he is a good rider. He falls from the horse and it kicks him in the testicles and bursts them. He is taken to the clinic where he dies screaming in agony from the pain. Now she could stop praying for him to die!
Uncle Eugenio tries to speak to Analia about the land and she tells him straight that she is going to stay and look after her own land and that her son will stay too. she finds a necessary personnel to carry out her orders without questioning her and she gets rid of Uncle Eugenio. She visits the school dressed in a white dress (she should have been in mourning therefore wearing black), and waits for the children to be let out for recess. Her son sees her and she asks him to show her his classroom and she walks in to see the teacher sitting behind the desk, his crutches not within his reach. She mentions the letters and he admits to having written them telling her that they were the happiest years of his life. the walk out onto the patio of the school together where the sun has not yet set (metaphor for their life isn't yet over).
La casa nueva is a story about a little girl who is obviously promised lots of things by her father but nothing ever comes of the promises. One day he takes the child to visit a new house which is quite far from their own house. They get to the house and she is shown a bedroom which her father says will be hers, a beatiful room all to herself, no longer will she have to share with her brothers. She imagines hanging her clothes int he wardrobe and putting her things on the shelves. He then shows her the bathroom in which she imagines herself lying in the bathtub being lulled to sleep in the warm water. In their own house they didnt have such luxuries. They go through the other rooms of the house and go down stairs to the living room, the dining room, the kitchen and even to the ironing room. She imagines how she will write a composition for school called The New House. They are about to leave when she lets go of her father's hand and runs up stairs again to look again at her room and touch the bed, look at the furniture and the huge window, when all of a sudden a man in a uniform comes to her and tells her to go downstairs as they are about to close.
She doesnt understand and asks her father what is going on and he replies that the house will be theirs, as soon as they win it in the raffle!!!!!!!!
The child is devastated, of course.
El Primer Beso is a story of coming of age. It is about a young man who is on an excursion with his school and he is very thirsty, its very hot out and he is trying to stop himself from dehydrating. The bus suddenly comes to a curve and he can smell the water round the next bend. the bus stops and he is first out to quench his thirst. He approaches the fountain and starts to drink from it, the cool water soaking him totally from the inside out. Once he has his fill of the cold water he opens his eyes and realises that he is looking into the eyes of the statue from which the water is dribbling. It is the statue of a woman and its from her mouth that the young man has been drinking the water. He realises that his is his first kiss and this thought gets him sexually excited for the first time! And in the words of the author, 'he becomes a man'.
17 Narradoras Latinoamericanas: Cartas de amor traicionado by Isabel Allende, La casa nueva by Silvia Molina and El Primer beso by Clarice Lispector.
Cartas de amor traicionado is a short story about a woman called Analia who is orphaned when she is two weeks old. She is sent by her uncle to a convent school which she enjoys. Her Uncle encourages her to become a nun but even though she relishes the idea as a bit of a rebel she tells him she wont do it. When Analia turns 17 her uncle visits her at the school for the first time. They have to be introduced and her uncle tells her that from now on she will receive an allowance of 100 pesos each month. The mother superior explains to Uncle Eugenio that as Analia has never been on a holiday nor had a Christmas gift sent that he should understand her discourteous behaviour. The uncle comes back a month later and asks if it would be possible for her cousin to write to her, which she allows.
When the letters start to arrive, Analia doesn't want to read them but then due to boredom she does. And after a while the letters start to use a secret code to speak of things that perhaps the Mother superior would not approve of. The intimacy between the two increases and Analia begins to think that a person capable of such feelings has to have some kind of deformity. she invents all kinds of handicaps and decides that it is the spirit of the person that is more important than his looks. The correspondence between the two lasted two years by the end of which Analia had a hat box full of letters.
She is disappointed when she meets Luis, the supposed letter writer, because he is good looking and she was expecting a hunch back! Nevertheless they marry and from the first day that they are married she loathes him. She feels as if she has been tricked into a marriage of convenience in order to her parents lands in the family. she realises that Uncle Eugenio is not a man to be trifled with. Every time that she asks about the letters her husband mutters some excuse and shuts her mouth with a kiss making her believe that he was not the true writer of those wonderful letters.
Luis, her husband, becomes the legal administrator of the lands but in reality it is Uncle Eugenio who takes care of everything.
Analia gives birth to a son and as soon as she does so she moves into a small room with a single hard bed like those in the convent and locks her door each night to avoid having to have marital relations with her husband. As a result Luis starts to go out drinking an womanising and loses interest in the work on the land. Analia replaces him and discusses decisions with Uncle Eugenio while her husband sleeps off his hangover.
Analia teaches her son all she can and eventually Luis decides it is time that the child be sent to a school in the city, but Analia doesn't want to be separated from her child and so she stands up to him and he backs down and they send him to a school int he town where he will be an boarder during the week but come home each weekend. Analia anxiously tries to keep her son home each weekend but never finds an excuse to do so, and slowly but surely the child tells her of the things that he gets up to in school. She realises that the child is happy there and when she receives his first report card she sees that he is doing very well. the card comes with a note from the teacher, which she reads smiling to herself, for the first time in a long time. she becomes very interested in her sons school and everything linked to it, asking the child lots of questions and rewarding the class with jars of home made marmalade and baskets of fruit.
Luis has an accident in the village after having too much to drink and trying to show off that he is a good rider. He falls from the horse and it kicks him in the testicles and bursts them. He is taken to the clinic where he dies screaming in agony from the pain. Now she could stop praying for him to die!
Uncle Eugenio tries to speak to Analia about the land and she tells him straight that she is going to stay and look after her own land and that her son will stay too. she finds a necessary personnel to carry out her orders without questioning her and she gets rid of Uncle Eugenio. She visits the school dressed in a white dress (she should have been in mourning therefore wearing black), and waits for the children to be let out for recess. Her son sees her and she asks him to show her his classroom and she walks in to see the teacher sitting behind the desk, his crutches not within his reach. She mentions the letters and he admits to having written them telling her that they were the happiest years of his life. the walk out onto the patio of the school together where the sun has not yet set (metaphor for their life isn't yet over).
La casa nueva is a story about a little girl who is obviously promised lots of things by her father but nothing ever comes of the promises. One day he takes the child to visit a new house which is quite far from their own house. They get to the house and she is shown a bedroom which her father says will be hers, a beatiful room all to herself, no longer will she have to share with her brothers. She imagines hanging her clothes int he wardrobe and putting her things on the shelves. He then shows her the bathroom in which she imagines herself lying in the bathtub being lulled to sleep in the warm water. In their own house they didnt have such luxuries. They go through the other rooms of the house and go down stairs to the living room, the dining room, the kitchen and even to the ironing room. She imagines how she will write a composition for school called The New House. They are about to leave when she lets go of her father's hand and runs up stairs again to look again at her room and touch the bed, look at the furniture and the huge window, when all of a sudden a man in a uniform comes to her and tells her to go downstairs as they are about to close.
She doesnt understand and asks her father what is going on and he replies that the house will be theirs, as soon as they win it in the raffle!!!!!!!!
The child is devastated, of course.
El Primer Beso is a story of coming of age. It is about a young man who is on an excursion with his school and he is very thirsty, its very hot out and he is trying to stop himself from dehydrating. The bus suddenly comes to a curve and he can smell the water round the next bend. the bus stops and he is first out to quench his thirst. He approaches the fountain and starts to drink from it, the cool water soaking him totally from the inside out. Once he has his fill of the cold water he opens his eyes and realises that he is looking into the eyes of the statue from which the water is dribbling. It is the statue of a woman and its from her mouth that the young man has been drinking the water. He realises that his is his first kiss and this thought gets him sexually excited for the first time! And in the words of the author, 'he becomes a man'.
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