Critical Thinking

Critical Thinking is a very useful Skill, according to "The Critical Thinking Community" the definition is:


"Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and
skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or
evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation,
experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief

and action."


I think this definition is really good because it talks about critical Thinking itself about how we do it, what skills are needed to do it. But the most important thing is too look deeper in the text and not for what it is said on it,
for example looking at the context and what the author is trying to express or tell us about, factors of the authors life that inspired him to make the book, all these factors are important to be a critical thinkers.

Analysing Images

This image is pretty deep, we can see how famine has evolved in Africa and how they need our help, but it's not an easy task to do, people are starving to death and theres still problems in Somalia with the militia,   although ONU is trying hard along with many internet pages that ask for donations which are used for helping however this isn't enough as we can see but is helping still, a the biggest drought on Africa is taking place these days which is making the plantation of crops super-hard and making the base of African's food die which is a big problem these days, but recently we have seen a new character "Joseph Kony" which is abusing, killing innocent people. But this image can reflect the comparison of white and black people, which we've been affecting within time, racism has always being a problem to razes such as the black people with the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), Nazi's, etc.

The Catcher in the rye Analysis

In class we saw an extract from the catcher in the rye which we analysed:

"Boy, when you're dead, they really fix you up. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you're dead?

The most of us agreed with the extract because it's a really stupid habit we have, probably because we dont want to make the person at the graveyard feel forgotten or banished like a Leaf with the wind, Holden didn't want to be like normal people he's just phony and tries to be different by doing this kinds of acts, or maybe thats the way he thinks, however he always have a different thought of other peoples habits or the things that are normal on the society, he's such a character i've never seen before, so complete and interesting. But this extract really makes us think about that habit, is it really necessary? why do we do it? is it part of our belief? I think those factors make Holden think how he does.

Pactical Criticism

You fit into me

You fit into me

like a hook into an eye

A fish hook

An open eye.

1.- What is the relationship between the title and the rest of the poem?
The title is saying a clear statement (that she/he fits into he/her)


2.- What words, if any, need to be defined?
Hook, because its the most important word which is used as a metaphor, about hooking with him.


3.- What relations do you see among any words in the poem?
Theres a relation between Hook and eye, which both are used in a metaphorical way as I explained in question 2.


4.- What are the various connotative meaning of the words in the poem? Do you see various shades of meaning help establish relationships or patterns in the text?
Theres different meanings for Hook and eye, I think she used hook meaning that the persona is engaged with  her, and eye to mean that he's hooked on her eyes.

5.- What symbols, images or figures of speech are used? What is the relationship between them?
Theres a change in the meaning of the of the poem in between the two first verses and the last two, because it uses the key words in different ways (hook and eye).

6.- What elements of rhyme, meter or pattern can you discuss?
Free verse poem, no pattern.


7.- What is the tone of the poem?
With some certain Angryness which we dont know where it comes from.

8.- From what point of view is the content of the poem being told?
The author probably tried to express her life, a failed love which started good and there was no Happy ending this time.


9.- What tensions, ambiguities or paradoxes arise within the poem?
Theres a change in the meaning of the poem as we can see the words hook and eye can express different things according to the context, as the start it's expressing love and affection but at the end some kind of angryness and hate.


10.- What do you believe the chief paradox or irony is in the text?

To express the fury the persona had to her crush

11.- How do all of the elements of the poem support and develop the primary paradox or irony?

Everything supports the ideas i said before.

a hook and an eye, probably the persona didnt meant a real eye, as we can see in the image the knot on the left is trying to scape and the one on the right wont let it go.

How we study Literature?

1. From all the approaches we studied today, with which one do you feel more comfortable? Which one was the most difficult to understand?.
-I feel more comfortable with the Marxism (Marxism: All texts have subtexts that are related, in some way, with something that happens it the real world), because it talks about the real world.


2. Think you will teach one of the approaches to a 6th grader. How would you make it easier for him to understand? How would you teach it? Pick the one approach you like the most.
Well according to the marxism I would explain it with bunnies!, or whatever to catch up his attention then I would say that from that bunnie more bunnies appear wich would be his childs and that marxism tries to explain almost the same, that from one text you can get more sub-texts.

Oral Presentation: "What is culture"?

Today we had to choose a Topic related to what we saw in class and me and Mr. Jeria decided to talk about "what is culture", a pretty hard topic, because even the definitions of culture may vary between one culture and another, so we took information from different sources.

We decided to make an Oral Presentation as neither he or me are good at acting haha, I presented 3 differents definition of culture:
-Excellence in fine arts and humanities (high culture).
-An integratted pattern of human thought, belief and behaviour that depends upon the capacity for symbolic thought and social learning.
-The set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization, or group.

In my opinion I really enjoyed this activity because I learnt alot i didnt knew about Culture and what my classmates presented. I think our topic was really good because culture these days is being debated alot.

What is Literature?

We all think that we know what literature is, and if we ask what it is people will probably laugh, but cmon' do we really know what literature is?... people have different ideas of what it is some of them say that is everything Written, others say that it is related to novels, poems... there's an extended list of people thoughts about Literature but according to Wikipedia Literature is:


-"the art of written work, and is not confined to published sources (although, under some circumstances, unpublished sources can also be exempt). The word literature literally means "acquaintance with letters"


And according to Dictionary.com:


-"writings in which expression and form, in connection withideas of permanent and universal interest, are characteristicor essential features, as poetry, novels, history, biography,and essays".


But what about Oral Literuature, because if we're presenting about any topic we are talking about the "universal interest" that Dictonary mentioned, is Oral Literature the same than Literature? No, they're differents expressions of Literature but Literature is defined as the art of Writting.

Class Debate!

Well, as member of the debate team I found this activity quite fun and interesting, a different way of learning is always accepted. "Humans are born with an ability to create language" vs"Language is a learnt construct like the rules governing a sport".


I had to defended the motion: "Language is a learnt construct like the rules governing a sport", I worked in a group of two, me and Mr. Labra vs. Mr. Reynolds and Mr. Romeu, both teams did really good at the debate, however the second motion was a bit harder to defend and the first one but we managed to get some good and clear arguments and make the debate entertaining, our strongest argument was: "When we are childs we learn language to ask for things, express ourselves such as in the video the kid saying "wadaa" for water", this shows that we are not born with the ability to create language we get in time, practicing and talking.

Stereotypes

Stereotypes are a big problem this days, people are being offended by people from other cultures because of them ignorancy to their culture, an stereotype is a generalization to a community or certain kind of people; in my opinion this can be really offensive and make people feel bad about it, for example my father sided family is jewish, I always hear things like "jews are stingy and bad people", etc... Stereotypes are mainly made to the media such as movies and the lack of knowledge used on those movies which generalize about communitys making the viewers get a miss conception of them.

Debate.

Well this class we were able to participate on a debate vs. our classmates which was really fun and in my opinion a way that everyone enjoyed to learn language, the motions were: "Language is a learnt construct like rules governing a sport" vs. "Humans are born with an ability to create language".
It was a complicated theme, but everyone managed to get good arguments and make a good debate overall.

The tower of Babel

1. What does the image, and the story, suggest about the benefits of everyone speaking the same language? What are the drawbacks?
-The benefits of everyone speaking the same language would be an easier communication with people from other cultures, making the job in the tower easier, in the other side, people will have no culture, I mean everyone will be from the same one making this a poor country with no differences.


2. What does the story suggest about the social functions of language?
-The story tell us about how easier it'd be if everyone spoke one language, the way working would increase, the production, and how we'll work as one community

The History of Language

The History of Language

1. Why is it said that people in East Africa developed more than the rest?

-This was because they spread their language in a better way that other communities which made it more developed.

2. What happened to the earlier languages on Earth?

-The other languages kept in the past because of the constant change of language and the evolution we're always in.

3. According to Dr Johanna Nichols, what were the first utterances made by Humans?

-Dr Johanna Nichols said that the first utterances were sounds refering to a certain object.

Language: Constant Change

1. What is the biblical story of "the Tower of Babel"?

-This story talks about a community which tried to make a Tower high enough to reach the sky; god punished them giving them different languages so they had to spread in groups.

2. What does historical evidence tell us of this biblical event?

-Nowadays we can see a lot of languages and that they are situated on different places, like spanish in south america. This tell us that the story may be true according to what it says.

3. What's the relationship between genes and language?

-Well, genes is not the right word to relate with language, mainly because they have nothing to do together and language is more geography based.

4. Why do languages constantly change?

-Because we're in a development and the words we say can be manipulated for us to be easier to say.