Study abroad information

If you are interested in studying or working abroad over the summer or after you graduate, here are some links that will help you in your search. There are opportunities all over the world, but I know those from the U.S. best. There are also ways to pay for some or all of studying abroad.

If you have time over vacation, take a look =)

http://www.educationusa.state.gov/
http://www.educationusa.state.gov/home/financial-assistance/external

http://www.internationalscholarships.com/

http://www.fundingusstudy.org/

http://www.usjournal.com/en/students/info/finaid.html

http://www.eastwestcenter.org/?id=872

http://www.studyabroad.com/default-ielts.html

http://www.iefa.org/

http://www.foreignborn.com/study_in_us/1-introduction.htm

www.edupass.org

http://www.srnexpress.com/

http://www.studyabroad.ku.edu/

http://foundationcenter.org/getstarted/international/

http://www.internationalstudent.com/

http://www.yfuchina.cn/home/

http://www.askasia.org/chinese/resources.htm#summer

http://www.askasia.org/chinese/becomeateacher.htm

http://www.ihipo.com/

http://www.csulb.edu/~txie/advising/teacher.htm

谢谢你们都

Dear Class—Every Single One of You,

Thank you so much for an amazing semester. Good luck on your final exams (you will all do wonderfully) and have awesome vacations!

I have learned more in this semester teaching you than I can tell.

I am wearing my new slippers that you gave me today =） I love them! You are all too kind and giving. I am sincerely grateful for you not only being good students, but also exceptionally friendly and welcoming. China has become home. When people ask about culture shock, I honestly have a hard time answering them. China and Kaifeng feel natural, and it is because of you especially. Thank you.

Take care, have fun, and remember, life is good. Life is awesome.

It’s a beautiful life.

Love,
Marta

Fall Semester Chapter Review

Here's the work you did in your groups. You can use it to study if you want.

“The Middle Eastern Bazaar”

Author: maybe he is a reporter or a traveler
Where: a Middle Eastern Bazaar
When: 1962

Audience: everybody

Purpose: Introduce the Middle Eastern Bazaar to people, making people know more about the bazaar by giving them a vivid and detailed description

Main Idea: The text depicts a typical Middle Eastern bazaar with its rich exotic colors (and sounds and smells)

The first paragraph is the most important one because the author uses a lot of rhetorical devices, such as: the historical past (the Middle Eastern bazaar takes you back hundreds—even thousands—of years), contrast (you pass through the heat and glare of a big, open square into a cool, dark cavern….), alliteration (thread their way among the throngs of people) and parallelism (the din of the stall-holders, …, of….), which makes the paragraph sound vivid and lively.

Figures of speech:

Para. 1: “thread their way among the throngs…” alliteration
“ the din of the stall-holders…,of donkey-boys…and of would-be buyers…” parallelism

Para 5 (line 5): “a fairy of dancing flashes” metaphor and personification
(line 2): “in each shop sit the apprentices” inversion

Para 7 (line 8): “the dye-market…which honeycombs this bazaar…” metaphor

Para 8 (line 3): “it is a vast, somber cavern of a room” metaphor
(line 6): “In this cavern are three…” inversion

Para 9 (line 9): Ancient girders creak and groan -- personification


“Hiroshima—the ‘Liveliest’ city in the world”

Author: Noel Groves, a reporter
From: Canada or America
When: after 1955
Audience: all human beings, especially the American people

Purpose: By narrating the experiences in Hiroshima, he showed all the readers what the attitude of the local people toward this disaster (the atom bomb) and how his own feelings changed.

Main Idea: This text is a piece of narration; the purpose of the author’s journey is to interview those from Hiroshima. The author described that foreigners are not accustomed to old Japanese customs. Different from the thought which has preoccupied the author before, the people of Hiroshima do not want to mention the bomb and misery anymore. The author is puzzled whey they are willing to hide the history. But after talking with an old man, he understands that the Japanese want to expect a good future rather than think of a miserable past.

Important paragraph: “Do you really think that Hiroshima is the liveliest city in Japan? I never asked it. But I could read the answer in every eye.”
I think this paragraph is the most important because it suggests that Hiroshima is the liveliest city in its spirit. People in the city have an active attitude.

Figures of Speech:
The “liveliest” city in Japan (pun and irony)
Was I not at the scene of the crime? (rhetorical question)
kimono and the miniskirt (symbolism, antithesis)
no on talks about it any more, and no one wants to (parallelism)
time marches on (personification)
they have been testing and treating me (alliteration)
when thousands upon thousands of people…where thousands upon thousands of others…(repetition)
skyscrapers (metaphor)


"Speech on Hitler’s Invasion of the USSR"

Author: Winston Churchill
When: In WWII after Hitler invades the USSR
Audience: People in England, and all people against the Nazis

Purpose: If Hitler invades Russia successfully, next time its purpose may be the British. Churchill realizes this and writes this speech to appeal to people against Hitler’s activity. He also tells America and other countries that they should ___ at Hitler’s invasion.

Thesis: This chapter is about a speech of Winston Churchill on Hitler’s invasion of the USSR Churchill made a decision to give a speech immediately after being told the German invasion of Russia. In his speech, he notified the audience of the current situation in front of Russian and declared the government policy, further convinced the listeners of the validity of the decision appeal to people to strike with united strength while life and power remain.


Rhetorical Devices:
*I suppose they will be rounded up in hordes (metaphor)
* If Hitler invades Hell, I would make at least a favorable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons (hyperbole)
* It is devoid…appetite and racial domination (metaphor)
* From this nothing will turn us—nothing (inversion)
* fighting for his hearth and home (synecdoche and alliteration)
* like a swarm of crawling locusts (simile)
* that is our policy and that is our declaration (parallelism)


"Mark Twain—Mirror of America"

Author: Noel Grove (National Geographic Atlas of World History)
Where: United States
When: 1970s

Audience: all the people of the world

Purpose: the author tries to explain the reason why Mark Twain is the mirror of America, through his experiences, characteristics, articles, and mind.

Thesis: Mark Twain is not only as adventurous, patriotic, romantic, and humorous as anyone has ever imagined, but also cynical, bitter saddened by the profound personal tragedies life dealt him.

Most important passages and why:
The 1st paragraph: in this paragraph, the author gives the general idea about this article and suggests the overall pattern of organization. The following paragraphs just narrate in details and depend on the first.

Figures of Speech:
(p. 153): It was a splendid population—for all the slow, sleepy, sluggish-brained sloths stayed at home (alliteration)
(p. 155) Bitterness fed on the man who had made the world laugh. (personification)
(p. 150) eternal boyhood… (hyperbole)
(p. 151) the young nation’s heart (metaphor)
That seemed phonographic (simile)
(p. 152) avoided contact with the enemy (euphemism)
Know more about retreating than the man that invented retreating (irony)
His pen would prove mightier than his pickax (metonymy)
(p. 154) Not until 1874 did… (inversion)
(p. 156) they vanish from a world where they… where they… (repetition)
A world which will lament them for a day and forget them forever (antithesis)

"But what’s a dictionary for?"

Author: little is known of the writer Bergen Evans

Where: this text is an excerpt from an article of the same title in the book The Play of Language. Actually, the article first appeared in the Atlantic Monthly in May, 1962.

Audience: the people who abuse the Third International Dictionary and the common readers who use or buy the dictionary

Purpose: After the Webster’s Third New International Dictionary was published, a lot of people argued against it and said it has a lot of faults. The writer stands out and supports the new dictionary.

Main Idea: The new dictionary may have many faults, but nothing that tries to meet an every-changing situation over a terrain as vast as contemporary English can hope to be free of them.

The most important paragraph: the last two.
Reason: the thesis statement is in these two paragraphs.

Figures of Speech:

Metaphor: the storm or abuse in the popular press
Life called it a “non-word deluge”
Antithesis: much touted Second International…much clouted Third International
Repetition: Just what’s a dictionary for? What does it propose to do? What does the common reader go to a dictionary to find?


"The Trial that Rocked the World"

Author: John Scopes (1900-1970) was an American teacher who violated a state law by teaching the theory of evolution in a Tennessee high school. His trial was a highly publicized confrontation between defense attorney Clarence Darrow and the director of the prosecution, William Jennings Bryan. Scopes was found guilty and fined a small sum, but his conviction was later reversed on technical grounds. The name of John Scopes became synonymous with his trial, which is popularly known as the Monkey Trial.

Audience: The passage was written for the readers all over the world no matter who he is, where he comes from, and which religion he believes.

Purpose: The author recorded the whole trial in his point of view. Through the passage, the readers can know about what happened at that moment and the influence that the trial had made. In the text, there are some personal feelings and other reflections. To some extent, he wasn’t so subjective. However, the description of the passage is vivid and easily understood.

Thesis: Fundamentalism was strong in Tennessee and the law that prohibited the teaching of “any theory that denies the story of creation as taught in the Bible (Fundamentalism).” The new law was aimed squarely at Darwin’s theory of evolution.

South Park

If you guys want to re-watch that South Park on global warming...
http://www.southparkstudios.com/guide/908

I'm sure that someone has translated them, somewhere on the internet, into Chinese....although the cultural references are probably hard to translate....

Also, here is something I'm teaching in my conversation class. But since you guys are so cool, here it is for you.
I would be interested to see what you think of this--the documentary is about Chinese people our age.

Ok, sweet!

Tuesday 14.10.2008

We will be in room 412 of the South Language Building!

We're going to watch An Inconvenient Truth, which is by Al Gore.

and, another song I love...
Nick Drake "Pink Moon"

:)

Saw it written and I saw it say
Pink moon is on its way
And none of you stand so tall
Pink moon gonna get ye all

And it’s a pink moon
I saw it written and I saw it say
Pink moon is on its way
And none of you stand so tall

Pink moon gonna get ye all
And it’s a pink moon
Yes, a pink moon

Figures of Speech 1

Even though some of it is in Latin, you can do this! Many figures of speech are merely visual; you don't need to know what the words mean. You just have to observe where they are and the patterns.
______________________________________________________________________________________
Musa, mihi causas memora, quo numine laeso, [alliteration]
quidve dolens, regina deum tot volvere casus
insignem pietate virum, tot adire labores impulerit. [repitition]
Tantaene animis caelestibus irae?


Muse, tell me the cause: how was she offended in her divinity,
how was she grieved, the Queen of Heaven, to drive a man,
noted for virtue, to endure such dangers, to face so many
trials? Can there be such anger in the minds of the gods? [rhetorical question]
_______________________________________________________________________________________
Illi indignantes magno cum murmure montis [alliteration]
circum claustra fremunt; celsa sedet Aeolus arce [alliteration]
sceptra tenens, mollitque animos et temperat iras.


The angry winds moan [personification] angrily at the doors, with a mountain’s vast murmurs: [onomonopoeia]
Aeolus sits, holding his sceptre, in his high stronghold,
softening their passions, tempering their rage.
_______________________________________________________________________________________

The oars break: then the prow swings round and offers
the beam to the waves: a steep mountain of water follows in a mass.
[hyperbole; also metaphor (water is a mountain)]
Some ships hang on the breakers crest: to others the yawning deep
shows land between the waves: the surge rages with sand.

________________________________________________________________________________________

…the winds, formed ranks, [personification]
rushed out by the door he’d made, and whirled across the earth.
Suddenly clouds take sky and day away [personification]
from the Trojans eyes: dark night rests on the sea.
________________________________________________________________________________________

Some of the figures of speech we’ve talked about:
hyperbole, rhetorical question, metaphor, simile, personification, onomatopoeia, alliteration

谈一谈

Happy Vacation!

I'm writing this just after talking with a couple of you. People are very curious about music and what I do in my spare time :) Here's a small taste....

Music: Caribou, Belle and Sebastian, Luna, and Of Montreal....I love lots of music... Lucinda Williams, Mika, and I absolutely love this song :)

I worked at Beloit College Magazine, the Homer Tribune, and the Stateline News as a reporter and writer. I still write a lot. Here is one article I wrote this summer.

In my spare time I'm trying to learn Chinese :) If anyone wants to help me, just give me a call.

I also love photography and biking. I'm interested in art and documentary work. One of my interests is also the connection between theory and practice, thought and action. I like learning neuroscience for laymen (regular people).

I'm very excited and nervous about the upcoming presidential elections in the U.S. I think this election is particularly important, especially with the wars lingering in Afghanistan and Iraq and the economy. I support Barack Obama. Actually, I saw him speak at Beloit College last spring! He is quite a good speaker.

I'm trying to learn to cook, too, so if you want to cook with me sometime, just let me know :)

Ok, bedtime.

Sweet,
Marta

Worksheet for Hiroshima 1

Here is the worksheet we did aloud today with the answers. Feel free to ask if you do not understand :)


1. Tom thinks he is so cool but he should ____ his pedestal. He’s just like the rest of us.

a) down from b) get off c) slip off

2. I saw you the other day; you were ____ a cute outfit.
a) in b) on c) about


3. ___ seeing you cheered me from my gloomy mood.
a) merely b) when c) on


4. The reason I didn’t get my homework done doesn’t ____ staying out late with friends and partying….
a) because b) have anything to do with c) mean


5. The desert did not ___ have many animals. I only saw one lizard.
a) sort of b) look to c) seem to


6. The little girl was so absorbed in her book she was ___ her mother calling her name.
a) oblivious to b) ignore c) seeing


7. That boy puts on a(n) ___ like he knows what he is doing. But he has no clue at all.
a) appear b) façade c) sight


8. My life ___ before my eyes as the taxi came within inches of hitting me.
a) slipped b) lurched c) flashed


9. The ___ of sun in the rearview mirror blinded me and I couldn’t see.
a) glare b) bright c) sight


10. The man on TV was so cute he ___ me (my attention) and I felt my heart stop.
a) stopped b) arrested c) moored


11. Even though Susan farted in class, she pretended Jerry did it to ___.
a) point of honour b) save face c) disdain


12. When I came to China, I __ unable to say simple things.
a) at a loss b) found myself c) intermezzo


13. “You are right Mary. That is __ the reason we are in France---to learn French.”
a) only b) why c) just


14. My plans are __. We can do whatever you want. It’s no biggie.
a) flexible b) beige c) cautious


15. Britney Spears dances without ___ and does whatever she wants.
a) inhibition b) restrain c) muted


16. “No! You can’t pay! I __. You are my guest. I am taking you out.”
a) protest b) insist c) make a point


17. The traditional Japanese houses ___ with the skyscrapers in Hiroshima.
a) clashed b) honeycombed c) dwarfed


18. No one wanted to talk about what had happened at Nanjing and they ___ their memories.
a) shamed b) suppressed c) traced


19. Talking while other people talk makes me ___.
a) jolt b) humiliated c) agitated


20. I had a big pimple on my nose and everyone was staring. I was so ___.
a) shamed b) embarrassed c) stigmatized



21. When my boyfriend left me, he took everything and left without a(n) ___.
a) trace b) impact c) trickle


22. Even if you want to avoid seeing Mark, you’ll ___ him everyday. He’s in your class.
a) clash b) encounter c) linger

From cathedrals to catwalks

Gothic originally comes from a term in architecture and describes things like the arch in the bazaar.

It is a very intricate and ornate style. Usually it also is spooky and dark. Even books can be "Gothic," which means they are mysterious and eerie.

Here's a recent article from the NY Times about the style: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/18/fashion/18GOTH.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Welcome to our blog!

Dear Class,

Yes, you! Everyone.

This blog is a place to chat about the reading and to post questions and concerns. It is also a place where I will put articles and links and information of interest and relevance to our readings. We are together for a long time. So I want to be able to communicate easily with all of you. Remember, you can always email me, too: martacasey@gmail.com

Sweet.

Marta