Vorschlag 1: nicht-fiktional



13 LK E (Fb) - Vorschlag 1: nicht-fiktional | |Datum: March 22, 2010

Wortzahl: 787

Hilfsmittel: Wörterbuch (ein-/zweisprachig)

Hillary Clinton’s concession speech

The following text is an extract from the speech Hillary Clinton gave in Washington, D.C. on June 7, 2008, in which she ended her presidential campaign and endorsed Barack Obama.

[…] Today, as I suspend my campaign, I congratulate him on the victory he has won and the extraordinary race he has run. I endorse him, and throw my full support behind him. And I ask all of you to join me in working hard for Barack Obama as you have for me.

I have served in the Senate with him for four years. I have been in this campaign with him for 16 months. I have stood on the stage and gone toe-to-toe with him in 22 debates. I have had a front row seat to his candidacy, and I have seen his strength and determination, his grace and his grit.

In his own life, Barack Obama has lived the American Dream. As a community organizer, in the state senate, as a United States Senator – he has dedicated himself to ensuring the dream is realized. And in this campaign, he has inspired so many to become involved in the democratic process and invested in our common future.

Now when I started this race, I intended to win back the White House, and make sure we have a president who puts our country back on the path to peace, prosperity, and progress. And that’s exactly what we’re going to do by ensuring that Barack Obama walks through the doors of the Oval Office on January 20, 2009.

I understand that we all know this has been a tough fight. The Democratic Party is a family, and it’s now time to restore the ties that bind us together and to come together around the ideals we share, the values we cherish, and the country we love.

We may have started on separate journeys – but today, our paths have merged. And we are all heading toward the same destination, united and more ready than ever to win in November and to turn our country around because so much is at stake.

We all want an economy that sustains the American Dream, the opportunity to work hard and have that work rewarded, to save for college, a home and retirement, to afford that gas and those groceries and still have a little left over at the end of the month. An economy that lifts all of our people and ensures that our prosperity is broadly distributed and shared.

We all want a health care system that is universal, high quality, and affordable so that parents no longer have to choose between care for themselves or their children or be stuck in dead end jobs simply to keep their insurance. This isn’t just an issue for me – it is a passion and a cause – and it is a fight I will continue until every single American is insured – no exceptions, no excuses.

We all want an America defined by deep and meaningful equality – from civil rights to labor rights, from women’s rights to gay rights, from ending discrimination to promoting unionization to providing help for the most important job there is: caring for our families.

We all want to restore America’s standing in the world, to end the war in Iraq and once again lead by the power of our values, and to join with our allies to confront our shared challenges from poverty and genocide to terrorism and global warming.

You know, I’ve been involved in politics and public life in one way or another for four decades. […]

We made tremendous progress during the 90s under a Democratic President, with a flourishing economy, and our leadership for peace and security respected around the world. Just think how much more progress we could have made over the past 40 years if we had a Democratic president. Think about the lost opportunities of these past seven years – on the environment and the economy, on health care and civil rights, on education, foreign policy and the Supreme Court. Imagine how far we could’ve come, how much we could’ve achieved if we had just had a Democrat in the White House.

We cannot let this moment slip away. We have come too far and accomplished too much.

Now the journey ahead will not be easy. Some will say we can’t do it. That it’s too hard. That we’re just not up to the task. But for as long as America has existed, it has been the American way to reject “can’t do” claims, and to choose instead to stretch the boundaries of the possible through hard work, determination, and a pioneering spirit.

It is this belief, this optimism, that Senator Obama and I share, and that has inspired so many millions of our supporters to make their voices heard.

So today, I am standing with Senator Obama to say: Yes we can. […]

(from: )

ANNOTATIONS:

l.5 toe-to-toe: in a close fight

Your tasks:

1) Point out the main aspects Hillary Clinton deals with in her concession speech.

2) Explain how Hillary Clinton appeals to the audience to join her in supporting Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. Refer to content, use of language, sentence structure and rhetorical devices.

3) Choose ONE of the following tasks:

a) In her speech, Hillary Clinton claims that “for as long as America has existed, it has been the American way to reject “can’t do” claims, and to choose instead to stretch the boundaries of the possible though hard work, determination, and a pioneering spirit.” (ll. 48-50). Evaluate the validity of her claim by explaining how this “American way” and “can-do spirit” came into being (Turner).

b) Write an email to Hillary Clinton from the perspective on an illegal immigrant living “in the shadows”. Explain how you experience the American Dream and which changes should be made to improve your situation.

|Please leave a 50% margin for my corrections. Pay attention to the formal requirements and hand in ALL your sheets. |[pic] |

|Good luck and lots of flashes of inspiration!!! | |

|13 LK E (Fb) - Vorschlag 2: fiktional |

Datum: March 22, 2010

Wortzahl: 775

Hilfsmittel: Wörterbuch (ein-/zweisprachig)

Extract from Aldous Huxley’s novel Island (1962)

Will Farnaby is touring the Far East as a journalist and business contact for an oil and newspaper tycoon. A sudden squall shipwrecks him on the tropical island of Pala. Curious about the island’s social, economic and political structure, Will begins a fact-finding mission, interviewing several of the islanders. Here he finds out more about Pala and also about its companion island Rendang, which is ruled by the ruthless dictator Colonel Dipa. Willl’s interviewee is Dr Robert. Murugan, a student and one of Colonel Dipa’s ardent admirers, is also present as well as Dr Robert’s research assistant Vijaya.

“And what do you use for money?” Will asked.

Dr Robert dipped into his trouser pocket and pulled out a handful of silver, gold, and copper.

“In a modest way,” he explained, “Pala’s a gold-producing country. We mine enough to give our paper a solid metallic backing. And the gold supplements our exports. We can pay spot cash for expensive equipment like those transmission lines and the generators at the other end.”

“You seem to have solved your economic problems pretty successfully.”

“Solving them wasn’t difficult. To begin with, we never allowed ourselves to produce more children than we could feed, clothe, house, and educate into something like full humanity. Not being over-populated, we have plenty. But although we have plenty, we’ve managed to resist the temptation that the West has now succumbed to – the temptation to over-consume. We don’t give ourselves coronaries by guzzling six times as much saturated fat as we need. We don’t hypnotize ourselves into believing that two television sets will make us twice as happy as one television set. And finally we don’t spend a quarter of the gross national product preparing for World War III or even World War’s baby brother, Local War MMMCCXXXIII. Armaments, universal debt, and planned obsolescence – those are the three pillars of Western prosperity. If war, waste, and moneylenders were abolished, you’d collapse. And while you people are over-consuming, the rest of the world sinks more and more deeply into chronic disaster. Ignorance, militarism, and breeding, these three – and the greatest of these is breeding. No hope, not the slightest possibility, of solving the economic problem until that’s under control. As population rushes up, prosperity goes down.” He traced the descending curve with an outstretched finger. “And as prosperity goes down, discontent and rebellion” (the forefinger moved up again), “political ruthlessness and one-party rule, nationalism and bellicosity begin to rise. Another ten or fifteen years of uninhibited breeding, and the whole world, from China to Peru via Africa and the Middle East, will be fairly crawling with Great Leaders, all dedicated to the suppression of freedom, all armed to the teeth by Russia or America or, better still, by both at once, all waving flags, all screaming for Lebensraum.”

“What about Pala?” Will asked. “Will you be blessed with a Great Leader ten years from now?”

“Not if we can help it.” Dr Roberts answered. “We’ve always done everything possible to make it very difficult for a Great Leader to arise.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Will saw that Murugan was making a face of indignant and contemptuous disgust. […] Will turned back to Dr Robert.

“Tell me how you do it,” he said.

“Well, to begin with, we don’t fight wars or prepare for them. Consequently we have no need for conscription, or military hierarchies, or a unified command. Then there’s our economic system: it doesn’t permit anybody to become more than four of five times as rich as the average. That means that we don’t have any captains of industry or omnipotent financiers. Better still, we have no omnipotent politicians or bureaucrats. Pala’s a federation of self-governing units, geographical units, professional units, economic units – so there’s plenty of scope for small-scale initiative and democratic leaders, but no place for any kind of dictator at the head of a centralized government. Another point: we have no established church, and our religion stresses immediate experience and deplores belief in unverifiable dogmas and the emotions which that belief inspires. So we’re preserved from the plagues of popery on the one hand and fundamentalist revivalism on the other. And along with transcendental experience we systematically cultivate scepticism. Discouraging children from taking words too seriously, teaching them to analyse whatever they hear or read – this is an integral part of the school curriculum. Result: the eloquent rabble-rouser, like Hitler or our neighbour across the Strait, Colonel Dipa, just doesn’t have a chance here in Pala.”

This was too much for Murugan. Unable to contain himself, “But look at the energy Colonel Dipa generates in his people,” he burst out. “Look at all the devotion and self-sacrifice! We don’t have anything like that here.”

“Thank God,” said Dr Robert devoutly.

“Thank God,” Vijaya echoed.

“But these things are good,” the boy protested. “I admire them.”

“I admire them too,” said Dr Robert. “Admire them in the same way as I admire a typhoon. Unfortunately that kind of energy and devotion and self-sacrifice happens to be incompatible with liberty, not to mention reason and human decency. But decency, reason, and liberty are what Pala has been working for, ever since the time of our namesake, Murugan the Reformer.”

ANNOTATIONS:

l.4 paper: here – paper money; l.12 coronaries: a heart condition that may ultimately lead to a heart attack; l.16 planned obsolescence: making a product in such a way that it will soon become unfashionable or impossible to use; l.28 Lebensraum: allusion to Hitler’s aim of gaining ‘living space’ for the German people, mainly in the East; l.46 popery: cf. Pope – a derogatory term used for practices and rituals of the Catholic Church; l.46 fundamentalist revivalism: radical attitudes and methods of those who take everything in the Bible literally

Your tasks:

1) Summarise what Dr Robert says about the social, economic and political order of Pala. Then state what kind of society he considers it to be.

2) Analyse the way in which the tropical island of Pala is portrayed in this text. Pay specific attention to narrative techniques, stylistic devices and the role of the characters.

3) Choose ONE of the following tasks:

a) Dr Robert emphasises the significance of birth control on Pala. The authorities have also introduced DF (Deep Freeze) and AI (Artificial Insemination) of “superior genetic material” to “improve the race”. Against the background of these quotations, discuss the chances and risks of genetic research and engineering.

b) Imagine you are Will Farnaby who has toured the Far East as a journalist. Write a newspaper article about your journey to Pala comparing it with the world we live in at the beginning of the 21st century. In your article, you should focus on a specific aspect, discuss it and draw conclusions.

|Please leave a 50% margin for my corrections. Pay attention to the formal requirements and hand in ALL your sheets. |[pic] |

|Good luck and lots of flashes of inspiration!!! | |

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