School is back!

After the one-month long June holidays and the week long home e-learning, I finally returned to school yesterday. After such a long time away from school, going back wasn't easy. There were a lot of things that I forgot to bring. The habits that I had during term 1 and 2 were gone. I had to make new habits.

After three days of schooling, I find that the habits are coming back. I no longer forgetting stuff that I ought to have done or not do. As usual, there were a lot of projects and homework. Besides that, there will be a Project's Day judging next Thursday (getting nervous already). As if that wasn't enough, I will have to finish my history ACE before tomorrow.

Seems like I shouldn't have left it till the last minute. So, I will do my Project Day's project this weekend. Hopefully I will be able to finish the powerpoint slides, web report and script in those two days.

Home e-learning wasn't all that bad. Actually I think it was quite fun. Besides gaining new experience, home e-learning lets you practice on meeting deadlines. We have to submit the first batch of homework (2 subjects) by 10.30 am and the second batch in the afternoon. Sometimes the instructions are quite confusing, but in the end I managed to finish them all.
In view of H1N1 virus, there may be more home e-learning in the future. So I hope that everyone will enjoy it (I definitely will).

Please take note....

There seems to be some confusion over whose blog this belong to. So I'll make an introduction of myself. I am Goh Chih-Yang from 1A2. My index number is 5. Thank you and feel free to browse.

Lesson 5: Poetry on Gambling:

http://www.britishcouncil.org/learnenglish-central-poems-gambling-poem.htm

Go to the website and read the three poems Tom Beatty, The Green Clothes and One-Dollar Gambler. You have to do a brief comparison of each poem to a short story in approximately 100 words. Respond to at least 2 discussion threads below. Do note that you are also to comment on your friends' comments and these will be graded too.

Show how the poem Tom Beatty could be compared to The Rocking Horse Winner . In studying the poem, note that the opera house is really life and when He makes the rules it's either the Lord or perhaps the devil. Beatty suggests that everyone has about 70 years, but Paul in The Rocking Horse Winner had much less time. Explain what Paul's weakness was, how the cards were stacked against him and do you think Paul was lucky not to live to be an old man fumbling the cards, leaden-eyed and whining about his losses?

Paul was too obsessed with winning the gamble that he could not focus on anything else except the races. If Paul did not ‘know’ which horse will win, the odds against him winning were high. On the other hand, if he ‘knew’, he will most likely win. I think Paul is lucky not to live to be an old man cursing his luck and whining about his losses because his chances of winning depends if he ‘knew’ the result. If Paul grew up, his obsession with gambling may confine his life to gambling horse races, just as how Beatty’s opera house was really life. By then, no one can save him anymore.

In The Green Clothes, green is the color of envy, greed and money! This poem is thematically similar to Paper . Even though the poem takes place at a roulette wheel the gamblers from the short story and the poem have similar experiences. Explain how tips, dry lips, and all that was spent in vain could apply to the short story Paper .

The gambler in The Green Clothes was looking to get back for his losses by winning the gamble. He was so focused on winning that all he cared for was the small ball trembling in the circle. He even sacrificed his sleep to gamble. Similarly in Paper, Tay Soon gave his all to buy shares in the stock market. In the end, he spent all of his money for nothing. When the stock market started crashing, he was indecisive to sell his shares. At last, he decided to gamble by not selling his shares. His nervousness and desire for winning the gamble contributed to him suffering an emotional breakdown. Besides losing his money, he also lost his health, and died soon after.

Lesson 4: Theme: Gambling

Three short stories: Catherine Lim's Little Ironies , Paper and Lottery and D.H. Lawrence's The Rocking Horse Winner . http://www.dowse.com/fiction/Lawrence.html

In relation to Paper, you should explain exactly what the title refers to and why it is so significant to gambling, gains on the stock market and ultimately the conclusion of the story.
Tay Soon and Yee Lian who worked hard to earn their forty-eight thousand all put their money into the market shares. They earned a lot of ‘paper gains’ after a few days and could not stop buying more shares. Shortly after the market crashed, and all their profits were lost, Tay Soon suffered an emotional breakdown. Not long after that, he was hospitalized and he died. The paper house that Yee Lian made for him was ‘a delicate framework of wire and thin bamboo strips covered with finely worked paper of a myriad colours’. The paper house was seven feet tall and was made to Yee Lian’s specifications. It was burnt at Tay Soon’s funeral. The title referred to the paper gains and how it turned into a paper house for Tay Soon.

For The Rocking Horse Winner, write a paragraph of 100 words in which you point out who was responsible for Paul's death.
I think the reason for Paul’s death was mainly because of his obsession for luck. After successfully winning some money the money his uncle gave him the first time he gambled, he started to gamble more and more with bigger amounts of money. His mother’s explanation of luck also made him curious about luck and wanted to ‘arrive’ at where luck is. He ‘knew’ the winning horse of most races and won a lot of money. When he stopped ‘knowing’, he was upset and was determined to ‘know’ the result for the next race. His uncle’s and Bassett’s partnership also made him all the more determined. In the end, he had brain fever and died.

Lesson 3: Analyzing & Composing poem

The Son is in Secondary School by Affran Sa'at

My badge has a Latin motto

Hope for the future

The future is hope

Or something

At times black crows try to interrupt

When we sing the National Anthem

It is difficult to maintain

The whiteness of my shoes

Especially on Wednesdays

I must admit there is something quite special

About the bare thighs of hardworking scouts

The Malay chauffeurs

Who wait for my schoolmates

Sit on the car park kerb

Telling jokes to one another

Seven to the power of five is unreasonable

On Chinese New Year

Mrs Lee dressed up

In a sarong kebaya

And sang Bengawan Solo

The capital of Singapore is Singapore

My best friend did a heroic thing once

Shaded all A's

For his Chinese Language

Multiple-choice paper

In our annual yearbook

There is a photograph of me

Pushing a wheelchair and smiling

They caught me

At the exact moment

When my eyes were actually closed

What are the poet's thoughts? What were his feelings as he think back on these ?

The writer probably feels amused at his friend's and his past actions. He also remembers the difficulty of secondary school life.


Think back on our days in Primary School. Do you share the same sentiments? What were your memories of those days? Write a poem of no less than 4 stanzas.

Then I was still in primary school
Joking and fooling around
Teachers chasing students for homework
Happens everyday

When the bell rings
At exactly 1.00 pm
The students will pack
And run from the classroom

Exams and tests come by
All sit in a quiet room
Trying to write something
To tell the teacher I know the answers

After six years of studying
We all will leave this school
Chatted endlessly
Before saying goodbye

My Favourite Poet

My favourite poet is Matthew Arnold (1822-1888). He was an English poet and a cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools. He was the son of Thomas Arnold, the famed headmaster of Rugby School and brother to both Tom Arnoold, literary professor, andWilliam Delafield Arnold, novelist and colonial administrator.

I think that his poems are interesting and engaging. Here are some of his poems :

Immortality

Foil'd by our fellow-men, depress'd, outworn,
We leave the brutal world to take its way,
And, Patience! in another life, we say
The world shall be thrust down, and we up-borne.

And will not, then, the immortal armies scorn
The world's poor, routed leavings? or will they,
Who fail'd under the heat of this life's day,
Support the fervours of the heavenly morn?

No, no! the energy of life may be
Kept on after the grave, but not begun;
And he who flagg'd not in the earthly strife,

From strength to strength advancing only he,
His soul well-knit, and all his battles won,
Mounts, and that hardly, to eternal life.

Growing Old

What is it to grow old?
Is it to lose the glory of the form,
The lustre of the eye?
Is it for beauty to forego her wreath?
Yes, but not for this alone.

Is it to feel our strength
Not our bloom only, but our strength decay?
Is it to feel each limb
Grow stiffer, every function less exact,
Each nerve more weakly strung?

Yes, this, and more! but not,
Ah, 'tis not what in youth we dreamed 'twould be!
'Tis not to have our life
Mellowed and softened as with sunset-glow,
A golden day's decline!

'Tis not to see the world
As from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes,
And heart profoundly stirred;
And weep, and feel the fulness of the past,
The years that are no more!

It is to spend long days
And not once feel that we were ever young.
It is to add, immured
In the hot prison of the present, month
To month with weary pain.

It is to suffer this,
And feel but half, and feebly, what we feel:
Deep in our hidden heart
Festers the dull remembrance of a change,
But no emotion none.

It is last stage of all
When we are frozen up within, and quite
The phantom of ourselves,
To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost
Which blamed the living man.

Dover Beach

The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Ægæan, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Arnold

http://www.love-poems.me.uk/biography_arnold_matthew.htm

They Did Not Expect This

by Vernon Scannell

They did not expect this. Being neither wise nor brave
And wearing only the beauty of youth's season
They took the first turning quite unquestioningly
And walked quickly without looking back even once.

It was of course the wrong turning. First they were nagged
By a small wind that tugged at their clothing like a dog;
Then the rain began and there was no shelter anywhere,
Only the street and the rows of houses stern as soldiers.

Though the blood chilled, the endearing word burnt the tongue.
There were no parks or gardens or public houses:
Midnight settled and the rain paused leaving the city
Enormous and still like a great sleeping seal.

At last they found accommodation in a cold
Furnished room where they quickly learnt to believe in ghosts;
They had their hope stuffed and put on the mantelpiece
But found, after a while, that they did not notice it.

While she spends many hours looking in the bottoms of teacups
He reads much about association football
And waits for the marvellous envelope to fall:
Their eyes are strangers and they rarely speak.
They did not expect this.

How are the figurative language used in the poem? Give the specific word(s), explain what type of figurative language it is and why the poet chose to use this figurative language?

1) By a small wind that tugged at their clothing like a dog
The poet used both personification and simile to describe the wind. These expressions showed that the wind was disturbing the travelers by 'tugging'.

2) Only the street and the rows of houses stern as soldiers.
Simile is used here by the poet to show that the travelers are strangers to the area, seeing the houses as 'stern soldiers'.

3) Midnight settled and the rain paused leaving the city
Personification is used here to show that midnight has come and the rain has stopped.

4) Furnished room where they quickly learnt to believe in ghosts.
Symbolism is used here to show that the room the travelers' room were uncomfortable and tend to give them an uneasiness.

5) Their eyes are strangers and they rarely speak.
Metaphor and symbolism is used here by the poet. Both of these devices show that the travelers were unhappy with their current situation.

Tell us why you like this poem in no less than 100 words.

I like this poem because it shows a the difficulty of some people leading a life. The poem starts with a couple arriving at a foreign city. Their arrival was not a good one as it was raining and makes it hard to move around in an unfamiliar place. They only found a place to stay at after the rain has stopped. Even so, the place that they found was not comfortable. I also believe that they were in financial trouble and the 'marvellous envelope' could be their salary. The financial problem could also well be the reason for them ignoring each other.

I like this poem because it shows a the difficulty of some people leading a life. The poem starts with a couple arriving at a foreign city. Their arrival was not a good one as it was raining and makes it hard to move around in an unfamiliar place. They only found a place to stay at after the rain has stopped. Even so, the place that they found was not comfortable. I also believe that they were in financial trouble and the 'marvellous envelope' could be their salary. The financial problem could also well be the reason for them ignoring each other.

(103 words)