دوشنبه، مرداد ۰۳، ۱۳۹۰

All we need to konw about English Literature

Believes
School of thought
works
Writers/poet
Philosophers /critics
Period
Age

Paganism
-Iliad odyssey
-Beowulf

-Homer


-Virgil

Old English(Anglo-Saxon period)
450-1066
-Wheel of fortune
-chain of being
-Christ
-feudalism
-courtly love

Canterbury tale
Chaucer

Middle English
1066-1500











-Sir thomas Hoby

-Earl of Surrey

Critics    
-Stephen Gosson
-Sir Thomas Elyot
-sir Philip Sidney
-Ben Jonson

The Renaissance
(Early Modern)


Elizabethan Age

Jacobean Age

Carolin Age

Common wealth (puritan interregnum)

1500-1660




1558-1603

1603-1625

1625-1649

1649-1660


Astrophel & Stella

sir Philip Sidney






-Complaint of Rosamond
-Musophilus  or Defence of all learning
-Samuel Daniel

1562-1619





Delia
-Ben Jonson

1572-1637





Idea's Mirror
Michael Drayton

1563-1631





-England's Heroical Epistles

Edmund Spenser

1552-1599





Four Hymns

Shakespeare

1564-1616





Christopher Marlowe

1564-1593






John Donne

1572-1631






Richard Crashaw

1613-1649






Henry Vaughan

1621-1695






Abraham Cowley

1618-1667





-The Mistress
-Centuries of meditation

Thomas Traherne  

1637-1674






Andrew Marwell

1621-1678





Paradise Lost
John Milton
1608-1674
Common
wealth


شنبه، مهر ۲۴، ۱۳۸۹

How to be a good teacher

1. Start little by little you shouldn’t expect too much, children might resist sudden changing of language.

2. Children learn by doing and any activity that uses one or more of their five senses enhance learning.

3. Initially if it wasn’t understandable by the children you can help them understand by translating, but the goal is to stop doing this little by little. Before translating you can help them understand your mean by gesture, posture, pictures and playing a role.

Studies indicate that pointing to an object helps children better understand and learn the meaning of new words .researchers believe that pointing to an objects helps a young child channel his/her attention and focus more intensely on what you are talking about.

4. Help children to ask their questions in English, if they couldn’t do it at all, do help them word by word; but don’t answer them in your own language.

5. Give context for the words that you use.

6. Try not to overwhelm children – a couple of new words at a time is fine.

7. Subjects of your discussion should be about the things that children are very interested in; it makes the class as active as possible.

8. In the first days they might just play a role as a listener but step by step it will change, try to make them as active as possible.

9. Don’t correct the child’s mistake while she/he is talking. Try to correct the mistakes indirectly.

10. Be a good listener.

11. If a child stuck on a word and you know what she wants to say, do go ahead and supply the word to help her along. If she says: “I want a,a,a….” you can say: “ a new sheet ?”

12. As a teacher you should replace word like “thing” with the appropriate word. Then ask all the class to repeat the sentence or the phrase.

13. Even if the child is not so fluent in English to reply quickly to you, that’s no problem; studies show that children who hear a lot of elaborate vocabulary will also learn those words.

14. Read simple story books, it is an effective way to improve children lexicon. Ask parents to read 1 simple story every night for the child.

15. Want parents to provide activities like simple dialogue games for the child.

16. Hold a program that contains every day conversation, it is the best way for a child.



یکشنبه، مرداد ۱۷، ۱۳۸۹

Witches’ Loaves - By O,Henry


Witches’ Loaves
Miss Martha Meacham kept the little bakery on the corner (the one where you go up three steps, and the bell tinkles when you open the door).
Miss Martha was forty, her bank-book showed a credit of two thousand dollars, and she possessed two false teeth and a sympathetic heart. Many people have married whose chances to do so were much inferior to Miss Martha's.
Two or three times a week a customer came in in whom she began to take an interest. He was a middle-aged man, wearing spectacles and a brown beard trimmed to a careful point.
He spoke English with a strong German accent. His clothes were worn and darned in places, and wrinkled and baggy in others. But he looked neat, and had very good manners.
He always bought two loaves of stale bread. Fresh bread was five cents a loaf. Stale ones were two for five. Never did he call for anything but stale bread.
Once Miss Martha saw a red and brown stain on his fingers. She was sure then that he was an artist and very poor. No doubt he lived in a garret, where he painted pictures and ate stale bread and thought of the good things to eat in Miss Martha's bakery.
Often when Miss Martha sat down to her chops and light rolls and jam and tea she would sigh, and wish that the gentle-mannered artist might share her tasty meal instead of eating his dry crust in that draughty attic. Miss Martha's heart, as you have been told, was a sympathetic one.
In order to test her theory as to his occupation, she brought from her room one day a painting that she had bought at a sale, and set it against the shelves behind the bread counter.
It was a Venetian scene. A splendid marble palazzio (so it said on the picture) stood in the foreground -- or rather forewater. For the rest there were gondolas (with the lady trailing her hand in the water), clouds, sky, and chiaro-oscuro in plenty. No artist could fail to notice it.
Two days afterward the customer came in.
"Two loafs of stale bread, if you blease.
"You haf here a fine bicture, madame," he said while she was wrapping up the bread.
"Yes?" says Miss Martha, reveling in her own cunning. "I do so admire art and" (no, it would not do to say "artists" thus early) "and paintings," she substituted. "You think it is a good picture?"
"Der balance," said the customer, is not in good drawing. Der bairspective of it is not true. Goot morning, madame."
He took his bread, bowed, and hurried out.
Yes, he must be an artist. Miss Martha took the picture back to her room.
How gentle and kindly his eyes shone behind his spectacles! What a broad brow he had! To be able to judge perspective at a glance -- and to live on stale bread! But genius often has to struggle before it is recognized.
What a thing it would be for art and perspective if genius were backed by two thousand dollars in bank, a bakery, and a sympathetic heart to -- But these were day-dreams, Miss Martha.
Often now when he came he would chat for a while across the showcase. He seemed to crave Miss Martha's cheerful words.
He kept on buying stale bread. Never a cake, never a pie, never one of her delicious Sally Lunns.
She thought he began to look thinner and discouraged. Her heart ached to add something good to eat to his meagre purchase, but her courage failed at the act. She did not dare affront him. She knew the pride of artists.
Miss Martha took to wearing her blue-dotted silk waist behind the counter. In the back room she cooked a mysterious compound of quince seeds and borax. Ever so many people use it for the complexion.
One day the customer came in as usual, laid his nickel on the showcase, and called for his stale loaves. While Miss Martha was reaching for them there was a great tooting and clanging, and a fire-engine came lumbering past.
The customer hurried to the door to look, as any one will. Suddenly inspired, Miss Martha seized the opportunity.
On the bottom shelf behind the counter was a pound of fresh butter that the dairyman had left ten minutes before. With a bread knife Miss Martha made a deep slash in each of the stale loaves, inserted a generous quantity of butter, and pressed the loaves tight again.
When the customer turned once more she was tying the paper around them.
When he had gone, after an unusually pleasant little chat, Miss Martha smiled to herself, but not without a slight fluttering of the heart.
Had she been too bold? Would he take offense? But surely not. There was no language of edibles. Butter was no emblem of unmaidenly forwardness.
For a long time that day her mind dwelt on the subject. She imagined the scene when he should discover her little deception.
He would lay down his brushes and palette. There would stand his easel with the picture he was painting in which the perspective was beyond criticism.
He would prepare for his luncheon of dry bread and water. He would slice into a loaf -- ah!
Miss Martha blushed. Would he think of the hand that placed it there as he ate? Would he --
The front door bell jangled viciously. Somebody was coming in, making a great deal of noise.
Miss Martha hurried to the front. Two men were there. One was a young man smoking a pipe -- a man she had never seen before. The other was her artist.
His face was very red, his hat was on the back of his head, his hair was wildly rumpled. He clinched his two fists and shook them ferociously at Miss Martha. _At Miss Martha_.
"_Dummkopf_!" he shouted with extreme loudness; and then "_Tausendonfer_!" or something like it in German.
The young man tried to draw him away.
"I vill not go," he said angrily, "else I shall told her."
He made a bass drum of Miss Martha's counter.
"You haf shpoilt me," he cried, his blue eyes blazing behind his spectacles. "I vill tell you. You vas von _meddingsome old cat_!"
Miss Martha leaned weakly against the shelves and laid one hand on her blue-dotted silk waist. The young man took the other by the collar.
"Come on," he said, "you've said enough." He dragged the angry one out at the door to the sidewalk, and then came back.
"Guess you ought to be told, ma'am," he said, "what the row is about. That's Blumberger. He's an architectural draftsman. I work in the same office with him.
"He's been working hard for three months drawing a plan for a new city hall. It was a prize competition. He finished inking the lines yesterday. You know, a draftsman always makes his drawing in pencil first. When it's done he rubs out the pencil lines with handfuls of stale bread crumbs. That's better than India rubber.
"Blumberger's been buying the bread here. Well, to-day -- well, you know, ma'am, that butter isn't -- well, Blumberger's plan isn't good for anything now except to cut up into railroad sandwiches."
Miss Martha went into the back room. She took off the blue-dotted silk waist and put on the old brown serge she used to wear. Then she poured the quince seed and borax mixture out of the window into the ash can.
مشاهده ترجمه داستان : http://www.scribd.com/doc/6651604/Se-Dastane-Kootah


  • Why O.Henry named the story, Witch’s Loaves?
The title is ironic like many other stories of Henry. When we start with the title we do not expect the ending to be like this. And we do not expect the loaves to bring such happening. But actually many things are surprising in O.Henry’s writing.
There is One hint in the story that we can make it relevant with the topic:  The man, Blumberger, calling Miss Martha an "old cat" when she inadvertently ruins his drawings because her romantic fancy of him as a starving artist prompted her to add butter to his stale bread, considers her the equivalent of a witch who put an evil spell on him and destroyed his work.
  • how is the setting of the story?
The story itself is set in a city, probably about 100 years ago or so  (it never states what time period, but one can guess from the bakery, and from the man having a German accent that it might be a time when European immigrants came to America in large crowds seeking work-about 100 years ago).  
[from:WWW.enotes.com




  • What does O.Henry want to show in the last sentences of "Witches’ Loaves?"

    if we pay attention to the story Miss Martha wanted to have a romantic relation with the man, and this desire pushed her to think in away that this man need her help. at the end of the story she has found out how wrong she was and she is going back to her previous life.  This return to her normal state is symbolized by the change of clothing.
  • Characterization :
  The are two characters Miss Martha Meacham and the German man, who she assumes is an artist (until the end), Miss Martha is a person who tried to help, actually she was kind. another thing was that she was a curious woman that she used the painting in order to fine out about her guess.
  • Style :
The style is rather straightforward, humorous, and a bit sarcastic, as a lot of O. Henry's works are, and the theme would be something along the lines of never assuming anything about anyone, don't be judgmental, or how presumptions can be wrong and dangerous.
[from:WWW.enotes.com]