Posted by Anna V. Filatova at 13:01 0 comments
This tutor weblog is a part of a collaborative web project exploring American literature created by the second-year studentds of the Department of Foreign Languages and Area Studies at Lomonosov Moscow State University. The blog is run by Anna V. Filatova, an MSU graduate student and an American Literature instructor.
много полезного на сайте http://englishtips.org
Posted by Anna V. Filatova at 11:46 0 comments
1. Naturalism in writing, and how "The Second Choice" is a naturalistic work.
2. The Lost Generation: who are theym why are they called that, what common characteristics do they share?
3. Hemingway’s principles of short story writing: traditions and innovations. Be prepared to show examples of it from the stories we read.
4. Peculiarities of E. Hemingway’s style.
5. W. Faulkner as a fine stylist (high rhetoric, folk language, long sentences, paradoxes, etc.).
6. Themes and plot structure in “Dry September”.
7. The peculiarities of narration in T. Dreiser’s “The Second Choice”.
8. Symbols and their role in “The Great Gatsby”.
9. Themes in “The Great Gatsby”.
10. Plot structure and themes in "Of Mice and Men".
Posted by Anna V. Filatova at 20:22 1 comments
Posted by Anna V. Filatova at 21:23 3 comments
Class,
By Thursday, please check out your groupmates' web sites:
Tennessee Williams Project: http://tennessee.web-box.ru/
Faulkner & Hemingway Project: http://nobelprizer.webstolica.ru/
One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest Project (please note that it's a new version!!!):
http://www.kesey-clinic.webstolica.ru/
The Great Gatsby Project:
http://msu-american-dream.narod.ru/
Please use the following evaluation criteria:
1. content - 35 % (your text, related sites, description of the sites);
2. organization - 10 % (effective overall organisation of the material (easy to find and navigate));
3.language - 30 % (grammar, syntax, vocabulary, style);
4. design (visual aspects) - 10 % (text characteristics, attractive background, pictures/images);
5. links - 10 % (about 20 links);
6. authorship - 5 % (contact information).
REMINDER: Please return all HAL and SAL books!
Image Source:http://inframe.by.ru/PICTURES/Stimulation-of-creativity.jpg
Posted by Anna V. Filatova at 14:22 11 comments
Posted by Anna V. Filatova at 19:22 1 comments
1. Robert Frost Information
2. Poems:
"The Road Not Taken"
"Acquainted with the Night"
"Fire and Ice"
"Mending Wall"
"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"
"The Sound Of The Trees"
Posted by Anna V. Filatova at 18:23 0 comments
Students,
Our last class will be on May 17. At 13.45 we'll meet in Room 315 for the final talk and course evaluation. Then, at 15.20 we'll move to the conference room 107-108 where your group presentations (which is 25% of your grade) will take place. Everybody's attendance is a must.
Your final web sites are due Mon., May 14.
If you are interested in what we have been doing this semester (watch the video below from TeacherTube),
I would encourage you to join the social network created by Eduardo Peirano which is called College 2.0 where faculty and students share their experience of using Web 2.o. services. So, you are very welcome to share your impressions!
Posted by Anna V. Filatova at 10:42 0 comments
Posted by Anna V. Filatova at 15:46 3 comments
Students:
We are heading for the last stage of our project work - your web sites.
May 3: your draft web sites are due.
May 10: final web sites are due.
May 14: group web site presentation.
Before you begin working on the HTML-documents (or generating sites from templates on free web hosting sites), please get together and decide which information from your e-portfolios (the materials you have published on your group blogs) you would like to publish on your web site. Please note that your web pages should have the following:
1. The introductory page of your site should introduce
o the theme of your project;
o your self-presentation (with digital photos and a recorded greeting);
o a mechanism for contacting you (email and links to your blogs);
o a site map (table of contents).
2. your own interpretation of the theme (you are supposed to include your papers or presentation); your analysis of literary works;
3. presentation of socio-cultural information (your interpretation + links);
4. presentation of Web sites relating to your theme (they might be hyperlinks or a list of useful links with their description);
5. literary works (as links);
6. useful links;
7. include at least one picture / image into your Web site.
For section 3-6 do not simply provide a list of links. After the title of each Web site and its URL, describe the site in a few sentences. You must include at least five links for each category.
By April 30, I expect to hear from you: please finish collecting materials on your blogs and report where you have decided to create your web sites. Sign up for a free web site and send me the URL of your first drafts.
I would recommend you to look into the following free web hosting services: http://geocities.yahoo.com/ , http://narod.yandex.ru/ or http://www.webstolica.ru/ (By the way, the Nobel Prize group has already launched their web site at http://nobelprizer.webstolica.ru/index.html. It's worth visiting!) To further inspire you, let me quote Olga K.: "I made it all by myself. It wasn't difficult. Besides, it was very useful and interesting. I really liked it".
The other option is to create your web pages from scratch and to upload them to our department server. If you choose this way, please put all files on one disk and save them as Index. doc 1 - the main page;doc 1.2 - the second page;doc 1.3 - the third page;doc 1.3.1 - the fourth page (linked to the 3d);doc 1.3.2 - the fifth page (linked to the 3d); etc. You can later upload this folder on ifolder.ru and send me the link.
The grading criteria will be the following:
content -35 % your text, related sites, description of the sites;
organization - 10 % effective overall organisation of the material (easy to find and navigate);
language - 30 % grammar, syntax, vocabulary, style;
design (visual aspects) - 10 % text characteristics, attractive background, pictures/images;
links - 10 % about 20 links;
authorship - 5 % contact information. (developed by Dr. Svetlana Titova)
Check out the web sites of Dr. Svetlana V. Titova's students at:
http://www.ffl.msu.ru/staff/stitova/amlit/samples.html
http://www.racism-ampss.narod.ru/
http://www.ffl.msu.ru/staff/stitova/amculture/theamericansouth/index.html
http://www.usarussia.narod.ru/
More Information on Web Projects:
http://www.lclark.edu/~krauss/computersf98/webass.html#yourpage
http://iteslj.org/links/ESL/Student_Projects/
Thanks go to my teacher and my academic advisor Svetlana Vladimirovna Titova for her valuable advice on project work.
Image Source: http://www.sesd.org/Schools/Columbia_Middle/images/weblogoweb.gif
Posted by Anna V. Filatova at 13:41 2 comments
Sveta: It has become fashionable in modern film industry to screen outstanding works of both classic and modern literature. Unfortunately, the wish of film makers to produce a vivid reflection of what’s written doesn’t always coincide with actual results. As an example ‘The Da Vinci Code’ or ‘The Painted Veil’ can be mentioned. Well, it seems today’s film industry penetrated by all-encompassing Hollywood influence fails to go deep into the essence of literature. Maybe it has bad teachers from the past? Let’s see.
Although the after-war film industry was blooming in Hollywood, Bollywood and the like, the art of screening literature works was in the pipeline. To support the point, I’d like to refer to the screen version of Fitzgerald’s ‘The Great Gatsby’. To begin with, the book itself made a deep impression on me. Although the end seemed to be quite predictable, it was quite challenging to watch the major characters’ manner of behavior in critical situations. The story itself seemed to be both a detective story and fiction and romance. In a word, a mixture of styles engendered a fountain of feelings and ruminations.
As to the film, it occurred somehow one-sided to me. The foundation of the film’s plot is the love triangle. So every word, every step is wrapped around the characters of Daisy and Jay Gatsby. However the book reviews other no less essential problems like American Dream (first and foremost), attempts to escape from the past, the sense of life, post-war fever and so on. Nevertheless, the film makers managed to depict the flapper fever, if I can put it that way, quite vividly. Jay Gatsby’s carnivals were shown with extreme accuracy. The pictures of drunk ladies and vulgar gentlemen bathing in the fountain made me feel disgust. The strong point of this particular episode is that the next scene presented Jay Gatsby in his room refusing to participate in the performance. I guess that was the key moment which stressed Gatsby’s unique personality.
Robert Radford managed the task perfectly featuring Jay Gatsby. It’s exactly that type of character that I drew in my imagination while reading the book: calm, dignified but showing glimpses of internal struggle. As to Mia Farrow who played Daisy in the film, I’m afraid she was too old for the role. The author gives a portrait of a still young and childish girl who constantly smokes and paints her lips red. Thus her face seemed artificially pale in comparison with red lipstick. I failed to see something like that in the film. Farrow’s Daisy looked rosy-cheeked and, in spite of that, quite bothered by Tom’s cheating on her. I didn’t think she was thus upset by the latter while reading the book. On the contrary, Jordan Baker featured by Lois Chiles turned out to be a fatal woman with low but touchy and sexy voice, young and attractive. Fitzgerald stressed that she looked somehow man-like wearing shapeless clothes and causing men little passion or any kind of that feeling. Frankly speaking, if I were a man I would fancy Jordan featured by Lois Chiles, not Daisy.
I guess the screen version of ‘The Great Gatsby’ abandons several aspects of prime importance. I would place Gatsby’s mysterious personality first and only then its impact on relations with Daisy and other characters. Daisy disappeared from the plot much earlier than Gatsby. Still we, readers, continued to learn new information about Jay even after his death. That’s why I suppose the film ‘The Great Gatsby’ can be perceived as a story of unfortunate love without reading the book. But if you’ve read the book, the film will disappoint you to some extent.
Posted by Anna V. Filatova at 22:05 3 comments
Students,
When I was browsing a blog of one of our groups, I was taken aback by the recurrence to the old habits, i.e. of using somebody else's essays and giving no credit to the author.
Any work in your blog is your own, unless cited. If it is NOT your work and it is NOT cited, it is plagiarism.
Image Source: http://sociology.camden.rutgers.edu/jfm/plagiarism/plagiari.jpg
There are two types of plagiarism:
1. Deliberate Plagiarism is intentionally using the ideas, words, phrases, opinions, arguments, full paragraphs or whole essays of someone else and deceptively passing them off as your own. Buying or taking a paper, or any portion of a paper, from the Internet, word-for-word copying without quotation marks or deceptive rewording without properly naming any source is, in no uncertain terms, literary theft and academic fraud.
2. Unintentional Plagiarism--no less serious--involves the improper and unacknowledged use of ideas, words, phrases, opinions, or arguments that do not originate with the writer. Apologetic explanations such as forgetfulness, sloppiness, haste, carelessness, or uncertainties about the use of citation do not excuse the student from this type of plagiarism.
Please don't forget to document the sources you are using for texts, graphics, video and audio files.
Be conscientious, be honest, be aware!
More on Plagiarism:
1. Plagiarism Rules: What Every Blogger Needs To Know
Posted by Anna V. Filatova at 22:01 0 comments
Dear Students,
I would like to thank you for your engagement and your enthusiasm about Hemingway's short stories that you demonstrated yesterday. I wish we had more time to discuss all the beauty and subtlety of his writing style, as well as his message in those 3 stories. I have already received a few letters from some students where they say what a deep impression these stories have produced on them. Please remember tha we are going to discuss "The Sun Also Rises" on April 19. (I have uploaded a file in the revised .doc format. It doesn't contain weird symbols.)
I got a very interesting message from Sveta and I would like to invite both my students and readers of this blog to a discussion of the issue raised by Sveta:
Posted by Anna V. Filatova at 13:44 6 comments
Ernest Hemingway was once prodded to compose a complete story in six words. His answer was "For sale: baby shoes, never used." Some people say it was to settle a bar bet. Others say it was a personal challenge directed at other famous authors.
Can you come up with a six-word story of your own?
A Few Noteworthy Links:
Ernest Hemingway’s Top 5 Tips for Writing Well
Six-Word Stories in Photography
Posted by Anna V. Filatova at 11:39 19 comments