Teenage Themes in The Wave - Morton Rhue Essay -- essays research pape

The Wave by Morton Rhue (Todd Strasser) is a novel from a student’s perspective, as an authoritarian right wing movement called â€Å"The Wave† changes her school. Ben Ross, one of the teachers in the school, created it to try to show his class the reasons for the inexplicable behavior of the Germans when the Nazi movement spread through Germany. Laurie, one of the students, finds out how she is alienated from her classmates when she does not accept their values of conformity through unity. Thus, it demonstrates how easily people can be swept up by a movement not only in Nazi Germany, but also in the modern day classroom, where students are learning about the evil influence of the Nazi movement in World War II. This can be applied to teenagers, as it is a period of their lives where they are easily influenced, and in the book, relevant themes to teens such as bullying, alienation and peer pressure are conveyed. Bullying is the act of intimidating a weaker person to make them do something. As the Wave spread rapidly through the school, those who refused to participate or join as a member were bullied into doing so. Such was the case according to the article submitted to Laurie â€Å"Join the Wave— or else† where a boy was warned â€Å"he’d (I’d) lose all his (my) friends if he (I) didn’t join† by a senior boy. This is clearly an intimidation tactic to make the boy join, and hence you could class it as bullying. Another case of bullying happened when David tried to intimidate Laurie to discontinue producing the magazine that condemns the Wave movement by showing the bad parts to it. He â€Å"held her arm† and when she â€Å"struggled harder to get out of his grasp†, he â€Å"threw her down on the grass.† Immediately after, he realized he had hurt his friend, ... ... instead of following the majority. The issue of peer pressure can relate to teens, as they are in constant pressure to be ‘cool’ or to be in the ‘in’ group. It does not really promote individualism, so people cannot develop their own ideas but rather follow the leader of their group. Overall, the themes of bullying, alienation and peer pressure that are shown in The Wave reflect the negative aspects of the lives of teens. It focuses on how they affect people, in general, by showing the consequences for all the scenarios (e.g. someone being bullied). This is done whilst revealing the important history lesson from the Nazi movement as well as from the school –- you have to be vigilant because it can happen to anyone. Even though the students were taught of the evil the Nazi party was committing, they did not think that they would do the same, although they were.

Teaching pronounciation

Teaching Pronunciation Pronunciation involves far more than individual sounds. Word stress, sentence stress, intonation, and word linking all influence the sound of spoken English, not to mention the way we often slur words and phrases together in casual speech. What are you going to do? ‘ becomes Whaddaya gonna do? English pronunciation involves too many complexities for learners to strive for a complete elimination of accent, but improving pronunciation will boost self esteem, facilitate communication, and possibly lead to a better Job or a least more respect in the workplace.Effective communication is of greatest importance, so choose first to work on problems that significantly hinder communication and let the rest go. Remember that your students also need to learn strategies for dealing with misunderstandings, since native pronunciation is for most an unrealistic goal. A student's first language often interferes with English pronunciation. For example, [p/ is aspirated in English but not in Spanish, so when a Spanish speaker pronounces ‘pig' without a puff of air on the / p', an American may hear ‘big' instead.Sometimes the students will be able to dentify specific problem sounds and sometimes they won't. You can ask them for suggestions, but you will also need to observe them over time and make note of problem sounds. Another challenge resulting from differences in the first language is the inability to hear certain English sounds that the native language does not contain. Often these are vowels, as in ‘ship' and ‘sheep,' which many learners cannot distinguish. The Japanese are known for confusing [r/ and Ill, as their language contains neither of these but instead has one sound somewhere between the two.For problems such as these, listening is crucial because students cant produce a sound they can't hear. Descriptions of the sound and mouth position can help students increase their awareness of subtle sound differences. Here are some ideas for focusing on specific pronunciation features. Voicing Voiced sounds will make the throat vibrate. For example, [g/ is a voiced sound while / k/ is not, even though the mouth is in the same position for both sounds. Have your students touch their throats while pronouncing voiced and voiceless sounds. They hould feel vibration with the voiced sounds only.Aspiration Aspiration refers to a puff of air when a sound is produced. Many languages have far fewer aspirated sounds than English, and students may have trouble hearing the aspiration. The English /p/, m, /k/, and /ch/ are some of the more commonly aspirated sounds. Although these are not always aspirated, at the beginning of a word they usually are. To illustrate aspiration, have your students hold up a piece of facial tissue a few inches away from their mouths and push it with a puff of air while ronouncing a word containing the target sound.Mouth Position Draw simple diagrams of tongue and lip positions. Make s ure all students can clearly see your mouth while you model sounds. Have students use a mirror to see their mouth, lips, and tongue while they imitate you. Intonation Word or sentence intonation can be mimicked with a kazoo, or alternatively by humming. This will take the students' attention off of the meaning of a word or sentence and help them tocus on the intonation. Linking We pronounce phrases and even whole sentences as one smooth sound instead of a eries of separate words. ‘Will Amy go away,' is rendered ‘Willaymeegowaway. To help learners link words, try starting at the end of a sentence and have them repeat a phrase, adding more of the sentence as they can master it. For example, ‘gowaway,' then ‘aymeegowaway,' and finally ‘Willaymeegowaway' without any pauses between words. Vowel Length You can demonstrate varying vowel lengths within a word by stretching rubber bands on the longer vowels and letting them contract on shorter ones. Then let the students try it. For example, the word ‘fifteen' would have the rubber band stretched or the lee' vowel, but the word ‘fifty' would not have the band stretched because both of its vowels are spoken quickly.Syllables Have students count syllables in a word and hold up the correct number of fingers, or place objects on table to represent each syllable. Illustrate syllable stress by clapping softly and loudly corresponding to the syllables of a word. For example, the word ‘beautiful' would be loud-soft-soft. Practice with short lists of words with the same syllabic stress pattern (‘beautiful,' ‘telephone,' ‘Florida') and then see if your learners an list other words with that pattern.

Our Waste Of The Free And The Home At The Brave Where We...

Oh America, the land of the free and the home of the brave where we’re run by big time corporations and the individual voice isn’t listened to. Environmental problems worldwide have been an ever growing problem based on our ignorant attitudes towards hazardous waste and an increase of CO2 being released by big time corporations. There are only so many things the public can do to change the spatial limitations of environmental destruction, yet governments care less about the environment and more about the money they make from destroying the environment. Humans are essentially the parasites of this world. In the movie â€Å"In Our Water†, Frank Kaler emphasizes his concern for the water pollution in South Brunswick and how getting help from local, county, state, and federal governments is like asking if Rutgers can give you free tuition for being an ordinary student. Frank Kaler’s emphasis on â€Å"making it more expensive to pollute than not to polluteâ₠¬  is a very strong solution to maintain the environment, yet to do this would be extremely hard from a political point of view because the public would have to pay more for electricity and other utilities. When Frank Kaler went to different levels of government in seek of help, he was told that they didn’t know what the problem was and told him to go ask someone else (run around strategy), which is what happens a lot to environmentalists seeking answers from the government. Frank Kaler states that we need to make it more expensive to