Feeling Vulnerable



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Listening:

1)Share with your partners what you have written about the answer to the following question: “What Are the Most Amazing Things You’ve Ever Seen in the Natural World?”

2)Watch Avatar’s trailer and answer the following questions:

▪ Which particular elements of nature caught your attention? How did the landscape, forests and fantastical creatures of Pandora that were created for the movie make the film different from other movies? Were you amazed or awed by what you saw? How would you compare your “experience” of Pandora with your experiences with nature on Earth?

▪ How did the flora and fauna of Earth inspire the imaginary world of Pandora? Why are so many people in awe of the world of Pandora? Does the flora and fauna on Earth deserve equal awe and fascination? Do we just need to see it with “new eyes”? Does Pandora reawaken in you a desire to study and investigate the wildlife on our own planet? Does it inspire you to look at Earth’s creatures differently and, if so, how?

3) Watch the trailer again, complete the blanks and put the verbs in the past form :

You’re Jake Sully?

I'd like to …………….. to you about a fresh start on a new ……………..

You'd be making a ……………..

I …………….. (become) a marine for the hardship. …………….. (tell) myself I can pass any test a …………….. can pass. All I ever ……………..(want) was a single thing worth fighting for.

Ladies and …………….. you're not in Kansas …………….. you're on Pandora.

You should see your ……………..

We have an indigenous population …………….. (call) the Novi

They are very hard to kill.

This is …………….. we're here because this little grey rock sells for 20 million a kilo.

Their village happens to be resting on the …………….. deposit and they need to re-locate.

Those savages are threatening our whole ……………..

We're on the brink of …………….. and you're supposed to be finding a diplomatic ……………...

The concept is to drive these remotely controlled bodies called avatars.

They're grown from human DNA …………….. (mix) with DNA of the natives.

A marine in an avatar body, that's a potent mix.

You get me what I need I'll see to it you get your legs back. Your …………….. legs.

Oh yeah sir.

Looks like you. This is your avatar.

Just relax and let your mind go blank. Shouldn't be hard for you.

Jake, it's real ……………...

I want you to learn from the inside, I want you to gain their ……………...

You should not be here.

Go back.

All this is your ........................

I need your help.

Outstanding.

Haven’t gotten .................. (loose) in the woods, have you?

D’you forget what team you’re playing for?

The strong pray on the wak, and nobody does a thing.

You’ve got one ..................

You .................. (know) this would happen? Everything .................... (change)

Jake it’s ............................here.

Woolrich is rolling and there’s no stopping him.

We’re going up against gunships with bows and arrows.

Then, I guess we’d better ....................... him

They’ve ...................... (send) us a message that they can take whatever they want.

But we will send them a message. That this... this is our ....................

Reading:

1) Read the following passage and discuss with your partners what the following text is about. You may use the questions below the paragraph as a guide.

CORANDIC

Corandic is an emurient grof with many fribs; it granks from corite, an olg which cargs like lange. Corite grinkles several other tarances, which garkers excarp by glarcking the corite and starping it in tranker-clarped storbs. The tarances starp a chark, which is expanrged with worters, branking a storp. This storp is garped through several other corusees, finally frasting a pragety, blickant crankle: coranda.

Coranda is a cargurt, grinkling corandic and borigten. The corandic is nacerated from the borigen by means of loracity. This garkers finally thrap a glick, bracht, glupous grapant, corandic, which granks in many starps.

AFTER CHAPTER QUESTIONS

1. What is corandic?

2. What does corandic grank from?

3. How do garkers excarp the tarances from the corite?

4. What does the slorp finally frast?

5. What is coranda?

2) Discuss:

• How were you able to construe meaning despite the unfamiliar vocabulary?

• What do you do when you read a passage and get to a word that you do not understand? Do you use a dictionary every time you see an unknown word? If not, how do you come to understand the meaning of what you are reading?

• What’s the meaning of the following terms: syntax, connotation, tone, context clues and word roots, prefixes and suffixes with the class. How does each help create meaning?

Learning new words when reading

The first way to figure out the meaning of a word is from its context. The context is the other words and sentences that are around the new word. When you figure out the meaning of a word from context, you are making a guess about what the word means. To do this, you use the hints and clues of the other words and sentences. You won't always be right, but many times you will be. You might not be able to guess the exact meaning of a word, but you may be close enough to get the meaning of the sentence it is in. A basic strategy for unlocking the meaning of an unfamiliar word is to search the context of the sentence in which a new word appears for clues. Sometimes this can be easy to do because the author may have provided a definition or a synonym right there next to or near a term that you can use to unlock its meaning. A definition is a statement giving the meaning of a word. A synonym is a word that means almost the same as another.

For example, read the following sentence: "Don't think of words as separate, discrete items, or entities." What is the meaning of the word entities? The definition is right there - separate, discrete items. But what is the meaning of discrete? The meaning of that word is right there too--separate.

When in doubt about the meaning of an unfamiliar word, look around in the sentence; check to see if there is a definition or synonym clue to help you unlock meaning.

Another kind of context clue (in addition to definitions and synonyms embedded in sentences) is a word or words of opposite meaning (antonym) set somewhere near a word that is unfamiliar. If you find a word or words of opposite meaning and you recognize it or them, you are "home free." You can unlock the meaning of the unfamiliar word.

For example, read the following sentence: "I was not exactly enamored of the travel plans my agent made for me; my lack of enthusiasm was triggered by the eight-hour layover required between flights." What is the meaning of the word enamored? You can use the context of the sentence to reason in this way: Enamored of means just the opposite of lacking in enthusiasm for.

Strategy

Step 1: Check for synonyms or definitions embedded right there. If you find a synonym or definition, reread the sentence with the new term keeping that synonym or definition in mind.

Step 2: Check for an antonym clue. If you find one, think about its meaning, actually telling yourself the opposite meaning. Then reread the sentence and rephrase it in your own mind.

Context Clues: Substitution

At times, rereading a sentence that contains an unfamiliar term and substituting a word or phrase for it that makes sense can help you to unlock the meaning of the unfamiliar word. To understand the substitution strategy, read the following sentence:

"When we stayed at the military base, each Saturday we went to the commissary to buy the food and supplies we would need for the next week."

Although you may never have visited a commissary, given the use of the word in this sentence, you immediately can substitute the word store for the word commissary. You probably can wrestle an even more complete meaning for commissary from the overall context of the sentence: a store for food and supplies that is located on a military base.

Steps in the substitution strategy are as follows:

Step 1: When you read a sentence that you have trouble understanding because of an unfamiliar word in it, reread the sentence and substitute a word that seems to make sense in the context.

Step 2: Read on. If the word you substituted does not make sense in the context of the rest of the paragraph, try again.

Step 3: If the sentence still does not make sense to you and you do not understand the main point the author is making in the paragraph, look for synonym, definition, and antonym clues. If you are still uncertain, check a dictionary.

Context Clues: Multiple Meanings

As you have learned, a basic strategy for unlocking the meaning of an unfamiliar word is to search the context of the sentence in which a new word appears for clues. This is especially important when a word has multiple meanings that you already know and you must decide the particular one that applies. Try using the following strategy:

Step 1: Check the context for clues: definitions and synonyms given "right there" as well as words of opposite meaning - antonyms.

Step 2: Substitute each meaning you know in the context of the sentence until you find one that makes good sense there. (Hennings, p. 48)

2) For James Cameron’s latest science fiction film “Avatar,” a language was created for the aliens to speak. In the article “Skxawng!”, On Language columnist Ben Zimmer explores the creation of an alien language and the history of cinematic alien-speak:

(adapted by Sabrina De Vita) Read the article and find out about it.

Skxawng!

When James Cameron’s science-fiction opus “Avatar” comes to the screen this month, audiences will witness meticulously conceived alien characters — speaking a meticulously conceived alien language. To give extra authenticity to the Na’vi — the tall, blue-skinned, vaguely feline humanoids living on the distant world of Pandora — Cameron enlisted the help of a linguist to construct a full-fledged language, with its own peculiar phonetics, lexicon and syntax. From the mind of Paul Frommer, a professor at the University of Southern California, was born a Na’vi language, with mellifluous vowel clusters, popping ejectives and a grammatical system elaborate enough to make a polyglot blush.

Why go to all the trouble? Do audiences really care if aliens on the silver screen are speaking in well-formed sentences? When the extraterrestrial visitor Klaatu barked orders to his robot companion Gort in the 1951 movie “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” nobody was too concerned about such linguistic niceties. Even in the “Star Wars” films, the films’ sound designer, Ben Burtt, often just manipulated bits of audio from different human languages for the nonhumans to mouth: some Quechua from South America for the bounty hunter Greedo, some Haya from Tanzania for Lando Calrissian’s odd little co-pilot, Nien Nunb.

Among discerning science-fiction movie fans, however, expectations are more sophisticated now when it comes to alien tongues, and for that we have the Berkeley-trained linguist Marc Okrand to thank. Okrand worked as a consultant on the “Star Trek” films, and his crowning glory is the development of Klingon, the most fully realized science-fiction language devised thus far. Working from a handful of Klingon lines that James Doohan (the actor who played Scotty) came up with for the first “Star Trek” movie, Okrand concocted a rich, internally consistent language, with a dictionary that has sold more than 300,000 copies. In her entertaining new book, “In the Land of Invented Languages,” Arika Okrent details how the rise of Klingon has started a passionate subculture of fans that have become specialists in the language. Now the guttural sounds of Klingon can be heard in everything from a coming opera by the Klingon Terran Research Ensemble in the Netherlands to YouTube videos of the inimitable Klenginem, a Trekkie who performs Eminem’s rap songs in Klingon translation.

Cameron clearly had Klingon in mind when he began envisioning the linguistic landscape of “Avatar.” About three years ago, he said that Frommer’s development of the Na’vi language would “out-Klingon Klingon.” Frommer now dismisses this as a bit of Cameronian hyperbole, assuring me that he has nothing but respect for Okrand’s masterwork. In fact, Frommer got the “Avatar” assignment in part on the popularity of his work on “Looking at Languages,” an elementary linguistics workbook that includes a student exercise in deciphering Klingon word order. (Klingon follows the unusual object-verb-subject ordering.)

Like Klingon, Na’vi needed to be exotic enough for audiences to recognize its alienness but not so exotic that it was beyond the ability of human actors to articulate. Cameron insisted that the sounds of Na’vi speech remain unmanipulated. What’s more, the film depicts human characters with varying proficiency in Na’vi. Sam Worthington as Jake Sully must learn the language when he is projected into alien form to go undercover on Pandora. Meanwhile, an experienced botanist (Sigourney Weaver) schools an eager young scientist (Joel David Moore) in the finer points of conversational Na’vi. It is in these linguistically credible interactions that “Avatar” may make its biggest contribution to science fiction.

3) Using the strategies for learning new vocabulary we have discussed try to infer the meaning of the words in bold letters. Then, check your definitions in a dictionary.

4) Discuss:

▪ Do you think that after seeing “Avatar,” fans will attempt to become fluent in Na’vi? Why or why not?

▪ Listen to a clip of Na’vi: Does it sound the way they imagined the aliens in “Avatar” would sound, based on Zimmer’s description?

▪ Now read a translation of the clip:

“Yesterday I was with Txewi in the forest and we saw the biggest trapper (type of carnivorous plant) I’ve ever seen. Those things are dangerous. They can kill a person, you know.”

If there were no subtitles, do you think you would have figured what it was about? If so, how? Tone, rhythm, mood? If you watched this repeatedly, do you think it would help you learn some Na´vi? Why or why not? Can listening to familiar songs, poems or speeches in a language that you are trying to learn facilitate learning?

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