The second language Essay Example for Free

The second language Essay The second language has one of its toughest influences in most of the third world countries where even the national language is the one that was imposed by the colonizer. It is a common trend that in most British colonies the language of the population is English. In most of these cases the foreign national language does not find a friendly ground with the native language. No wonder the third world inhabitants have a formed opinion that learning and acquiring this foreign language is being educated. (Heath and Mangiola cv, 1991) Â  The so called ‘first day in school’ (Knapp and Shields, 1990) is most stressing in the third world than it will anywhere else. Apart from the harassment from the old children in school, the toddler finds to its amazement that the language it will have to be acquainted to a completely new one from the common native language it is used to. The fact that in these parts of the world the whole curriculum is based on that one man who colonized this place complicates the whole process of learning. It must be admitted here that the famous failing of exams in the developing worlds is not always because of the poor teaching tactics of this teacher in class but most probably because of the failure of this boy and girl to have a grasp of the language of the curriculum which is a foreign one mostly(Heath, 1991). Â  It is most obvious that most of the discussion will be based in the third world scope because its here that the native languages are still not developed in documentaries and that any form of communication at the national level has to in a foreign language recognized as the language of the masses .Going across Africa there is varied or a wide range of languages. Because of colonization, the different communities in these parts of the world and the other parts of third world including the Latin America, the Caribbean and Asia the issue of the second language has pressed so hard on the population. Because many of these countries have many tribes, the only common language they can use for official purposes is the language of the colonizer. Probably this is the main reason why Uganda, Kenya,Tanzania,Nigeria,Trinidad and Tobago and United States of America to name but a few have English as a national and official language . Britain was the colonial master of all of these nations. (Garcia and It will be very clear to give the influence of this second language by looking at an example in East Africa. In this region it is not taxing to tell a Ugandan from a Kenyan and the later will be told quite easily from their Tanzanian counterparts. Going deep further to individual countries, it is possible to tell a member of one tribe from another member of the second tribe. That this people make errors during communication is not a problem of their own making but because of their language of birth. For example for a native Lake Victoria ,the Luo tribe of Kenya, the word ‘fish’ is pronounced as , word ‘good’ goes as ‘ngood’ and drive as ndrive. To the Ugandan, the word ‘government’ is pronounced as ‘gafriment’.

Abrams and Tintern Abbey Essay -- Essays Papers

Abrams and Tintern Abbey In his essay, "Structure and Style in the Greater Romantic Lyric," critic M.H.Abrams describes a paradigm for the longer Romantic lyric of which Wordsworth's "Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey" is an example. First, some of the poems are either identified as odes in the title, or, as Abrams states "approach the ode in having lyric magnitude and a serious subject, feelingfully meditated." (201) The narrator of "Tintern Abbey" expresses deep sensations as he views a landscape familiar from his youth, the emotions and memories evoked lead to wider moral and philosophical cogitations. The prototypical lyric, Abrams continues, "present a determinate speaker in a particularized, and usually a localized, outdoor setting." (201) Indeed, Wordsworth's title specifically identifies the site of which the narrator speaks, it is "a few miles above Tintern Abbey, on the banks of the Wye." The narrators of these poems, continues Abrams, speak in "a fluent vernacular which rises easily to a more formal speech, a sustained colloquy, sometimes with himself or with the outer scene, but more frequently with a silent human auditor, present or absent." (201) "Tintern Abbey" begins with an informal statement, a sudden "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings": "Five years have passed; five summers, with the length / Of five long winters! And again I hear / These waters" (1-3); then gradually builds to more studied speech appropriate for philosophical ruminations: "For I have learned / To look on nature, not as in the hour / Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes / The still, sad music of humanity; / Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power / to chasten and subdue" (89-94). The narrator is speaking to a... ...e scenes of Nature shared together will be stored in their memories to draw out at a later date to be used as a sort of non-pharmaceutical anti-depressant: "Oh, then, / If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief, / Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts / Of tender joy wilt thou remember me, / And these my exhortations!" (143-147) Required Texts W. Wordsworth and S.T. Coleridge. Lyrical Ballads. (1798, 1800, 1802) Ed. R.L. Brett & A.R. Jones. Routledge, 1992. William Wordsworth, The Prelude: 1799, 1805, 1850. Eds. J. Wordsworth, M.H. Abrams & S. Gill. Norton, 1979. William Wordsworth: The major Works. Ed. S. Gill. Oxford, 1984/2000 Thomas Hardy, The Woodlanders. Ed. D. Kramer. Oxford, 2001. Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It. Chicago, 1989. Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age; or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer. Bantam Reprint, 2000

How Nothing’s Changed and Two Scavengers deal with social injustices Essay

Both â€Å"Nothing’s Changed† and â€Å"Two Scavengers† deal with social injustices, however, there are some big differences between them. â€Å"Nothing’s Changed† is set in Cape Town, Africa and focuses on the segregation of black and white people, after an apartheid was made. It is an autobiographical poem by Tatumkhulu Afrika. The poem is about how District Six used to be a place for blacks and whites to live together. But when that changed, Tatumkhulu left in anger (and prison). Now he has returned to his old home after many years and has discovered that the segregation has gotten wider and worse. The social injustice in the poem is the black and white segregation. On the other hand, â€Å"Two Scavengers† deals with the social segregation between the classes in America. At a set of traffic lights, early in the morning (9am), a garbage truck has stopped next to a couple in a Mercedes. The garbage men then ponder on the class system and how they are less respected by people like this couple. They wonder if they’d ever be seen as equals as they wonder if the democracy of America really works. The social injustice in the poem is the way the different classes are each treated differently. The first stanza of â€Å"Nothing’s Changed† is setting the scene as the writer walks towards his old home. We can tell that the area is now a wasteland by what the writer treads over (like the cans and weeds) on his walk back home. We can tell he’s angry from how his old home has turned out from when he says, â€Å"The hot, white, inwards turning anger of my eyes†, as he knows he has returned home. Although all of the stanzas use commas a lot, the second stanza uses â€Å"and† after each comma. I feel that the commas are used to in order to add more expression as you read, and as you pause at each comma, you wonder what’s coming next, thus creating suspense even though, in my opinion, the poem is not that exciting or interesting enough for it to have any use. On the other hand, the â€Å"ands† that are used throughout the second stanza, instead picks up the pace as we experience what he is going through at the same time that he is going through his feeling, since the poem is wrote in first person, as if he is actually reliving these memories, making us feel more emotional and connected to the writer. In the fourth stanza, there is only one line, but one that I feel is a very important line for comparing the poems.†No sign says it is: but we know where we belong†.This line shows us that although no one is saying that whites are treated better (new restaurant) than blacks (working man’s cafà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½), this line shows us that the blacks know that the segregation is still there. The writer says of how his, â€Å"Hands burn for a stone, a bomb, to shiver down the glass† of the whites only restaurant. We know that this is the same reason why the writer was sent. to prison all those years ago, but we are unsure whether this is that memory he is â€Å"reliving† or if he is speaking of the present day.The next and final sentence of the poem has the writer commenting that, â€Å"Nothing’s Changed†. This, I’d like to believe, tells us that, either way, the writer is willing to risk prison (or worse?) in order to vent his anger at the segregation. The first stanza of â€Å"Two Scavengers† sets the scene by introducing us to the characters and telling us what they are doing.The garbage truck is described as â€Å"bright yellow† while the garbage men are described wearing â€Å"red plastic blazers†, both of which would stand out anywhere in San Francisco at nine in the morning. I feel that this tells us that no matter how hard the government might try to â€Å"hide† the garbage men, they are going to get noticed at some point. The writer says of the garbage men, â€Å"one on each side hanging on†, in reference to where they are on the garbage truck (back stoop).This makes me think that the writer is trying to make out that the men are struggling to hold on to this job, even though it is such a looked down upon job. The writer then says that the two garbage men are â€Å"looking down into an elegant open Mercedes with an elegant couple in it†. In that section, the writer has took the literal meaning of â€Å"looking down† but we also think of the figurative meaning and then are meant to wonder if the garbage men are in fact better people than the couple and so their position should be swapped. From the fact we know that the couple are heading to his architect’s office while the garbage men are on their journey home, shows us that the couple and garbage men are like night and day, both there, but never at the same time. This emphasizes the segregation between the different classes. In the second stanza, the writer describes the older of the two garbage men as some â€Å"gargoyle Quasimodo†, Quasimodo being the title character of â€Å"The Hunchback of Notre Dame†, the main theme of the book being the cruelty of social injustice.Quasimodo led a tragic life, being kind and loving despite his ugliness. However, he dies of a broken heart. Quasimodo means â€Å"almost finished† or â€Å"half made†.From this, I believe that the writer is backing up my point about the garbage men perhaps being better people than the couple and that what we are seeing of the garbage men is only the tip (no pun intended) of the iceberg. In the second stanza, the writer describes the older of the two garbage men as some â€Å"gargoyle Quasimodo†, Quasimodo being the title character of â€Å"The Hunchback of Notre Dame†, the main theme of the book being the cruelty of social injustice.Quasimodo led a tragic life, being kind and loving despite his ugliness. However, he dies of a broken heart. Quasimodo means â€Å"almost finished† or â€Å"half made†.From this, I believe that the writer is backing up my point about the garbage men perhaps being better people than the couple and that what we are seeing of the garbage men is only the tip (no pun intended) of the iceberg. The last stanza is made almost entirely of a metaphor, one part of which grabs my attention because it is an oxymoron, the part being â€Å"small gulf†.The metaphor describes how even though there is not much of a gap between the two vehicles, making it easy for one person to climb into the other vehicle, they’ll never be able to do so because of the class system and how, because of it, they are always going to be looked down upon. Of course, the two poems are similar in the way that they both deal with social injustices (Class system and Segregation), but, in the same way, different because the two place settings (San Francisco and Cape Town) are so far apart. In â€Å"Nothing’s Changed†, as previously mentioned, the writer uses a lot of commas to slow down the pace in order, I believe, to add suspense.On the other hand, the writer of â€Å"Two Scavengers† doesn’t use any punctuation, instead stopping the line whenever he wants the reader to stop and let what they’ve just read sink in. Because of the punctuation, the structure of â€Å"Nothing’s Changed† looks less pre-prepared and more â€Å"straight from the heart†, as the plot would suggest.However, â€Å"Two Scavengers† is neater in it’s construction, despite the lack of punctuation, thus giving off the opposite feel to â€Å"Nothing’s Changed†. After studying both poems, although I feel that I wouldn’t need to, it’s obvious to me that â€Å"Nothing’s Changed† shows far more anger, raw as it might be, than â€Å"Two Scavengers†.The reasons for this being that in â€Å"Nothing’s Changed†, there is a constant reminder of how angry the writer is as he walks around his old home, in the end, of course, wishing he had a bomb to blow up a white’s only restaurant.But, in â€Å"Two Scavengers†, the two garbage men look at the social injustice in hope rather than anger, as seen by when they wonder if they’d ever be able to reach in to the Mercedes and start a normal conversation with the couple, like old friends.

My Life And The Internet - 1200 Words

Learning Portfolio. SECTION A. Everyday life and the Internet is entwined, the Internet has transformed modern behavior, and virtually every aspect of living, is both widely known and a source of ongoing study. In plain terms, such unlimited access to information and communication has radically altered concepts of self and community. It gives us up to date information to start our day from finance, work schedules, family. Marshall McLuhan quoted: â€Å"When something becomes commonplace people don’t identify it as everyday life, it becomes almost invisible†. This unconscious control associated to other elements of everyday routines, such as showering, cleaning, from a long inner structure we recognize, these activities are built into our psyches from a very young age, fabrics of living from generations of ones family or society in which we live, a formula for everyday routines. These activities vary from culture to culture; both reflect each community or environment in which they live. Faith and Spi rituality was main focus for my subject choice, raised in a large extended strict catholic family, although my immediate family today do not participate in partaking rituals, but religion hold a strong fabric. Within all of this lies the critical component of how spirituality, traditionally so fundamental an element in everyday life, is affected as well. Community and identity connects directly with religion, belief and faith are the foundations to religious communities and helpShow MoreRelatedThe Influence Of The Internet On Society901 Words   |  4 Pagestechnology has greatly influenced my life in a positive, it would be the internet. This paper will discuss how the internet has influenced my life as well as society. If I’m going to tell you how the internet influenced my life, I will have to give you a brief history about how it all started. 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You can always see such situations that some people refresh their Facebook when they have nothing to doï ¼Å' and there are some people even only use Facebook to keep in touch with others. Actually, Facebook has already become a part of our life; and it changed our lives in four aspects: it changed our online life, relationshipsRead MoreCyber Bullying. Today, This Is The Most Popular Topic Amongst1233 Words   |  5 Pagesrelates a story about a student named David Knight’s unbearable life entering the internet. Later in 2014, Rachel Simmons, a former Rhodes Scholar and the founding director of the Girls Leadership Institute, wrote an article titled â€Å"Cyberbullying is a Growing Problem.† Simmons’ article addressed the impact of cyber bullying in the 21st century and actions sch ool officials and parents overlooked when they are unaware of their child’s internet activities. The increasing use of social network sites like