Does a picture speak a thousand words? My challenge in Dubai!
So, after my last photos and being a “budding photographer”, I thought I would try to get some interesting photos that were a little different as I strolled around Dubai albeit for short periods due to the immense heat. I popped back into the mall to get a drink quite quickly. These were created on my phone, so some of the quality was lost I feel, but hopefully, they get people creating thoughts and questions.
A solid concrete block that sits in the desert sun is maybe there for life. It’s strong and relatively immovable. Is it a metaphor for ‘Long Lies 4 Longevity’? I am always thinking of those pictures that get the students talking. I am using my iPad in my class, and some of these pics will look good mirrored onto the screen. The test is to see what the students think. Do they recognise Dubai Mall? They can not miss the 829.8 m high Burj Khalifa towering over the Dubai skyline. When was it built and is it still the highest structure in the world?
The ironic twist in “The Melancholy Hussar of the German Legion”
(859 words)
In the following essay, I will be explaining the way the tragedy of The Melancholy Hussar story works and how an ironic ‘twist’ contributes. Phyllis Grove, who is the female main character, is treated oppressively by her father. She needs a way out of the Wessex Downs where she lives in a secluded world in their ‘small, dilapidated, half-farm half manor house’. The story tells of her struggle for love and which man is right for her. The story, we are told is an injustice on Phyllis’ memory.
Phyllis is portrayed as a girl brought up in the country to a father who has lost his business through his own fault. The picture the reader develops is of a father frustrated with himself. Beyond the seclusion of Phyllis, lays the seclusion of her father and his darkness. He takes out his troubles on her. He does not seem to have a wife which leads the reader to think that he wants Phyllis to be at his beck and call. This corresponds with her feeling shy. Phyllis is a girl with her whole life in front of her, and her father is making her unhappy through his annoyance of life.
It is not surprising that Phyliss is unexpectedly asked to be married. Phyllis is unromantically pursued by Humphrey Gould, an unreliable-looking bachelor of 30 from Bath. It is her father’s wish for her to marry this man who is within her father’s perceived social level. The reader feels that Phyllis is looking for a reason to get away from her circumstances. Phyllis was willing to leave her father as she felt little love towards him. She disliked the way he behaved towards her. It also may be the case someone showed attention to her for once. Mr. Gould flattered this lonely woman, telling stories of himself to be a fashionable man although he is ‘poor as a crow’. Mr. Gould actually shows no regard to this person he has just asked to marry him. Making an excuse for his ‘pecuniary’ condition, he has left her in the lurch. At home, Phyllis is with her father, this man has come from nowhere asks her to marry her. This woman with nothing really happening in her life is left thinking of happiness that Mr. Gould cannot really deliver.
Though her husband, to be, sends her letters Phyllis says she does not love him in the truest sense. This leads the reader to believe that Phyllis was asking him to get her out of her poor situation. The reader can see how Phyllis’ concentration is quickly turned to the one of the York Hussars. Phyllis sits on the wall outside her house ‘listlessly surveying the pasture’. Her attention was drawn to a ‘solitary figure’. Thus, Phyllis begins an unusual but earnest courtship with Matthäus Tina who is one of the York Hussars, the King’s German Legion. They communicate. There is an effect on her consciousness as Matthäus’ face ‘haunted’ her mind. The reader almost thinks Phyllis is waiting for another man to come along and take her away. There is a contrast between this man and Mr. Gould. Phyllis again is enlightened by the stories of another man; his stories of Germany. Matthäus is her romantic hero. There is no feeling that Phyllis ever thinks of the unpleasant side of leaving her home, and of what might await her. The only thought is for her present relationship with her father that is ‘irksome and painful’.
The tragedy for Phyllis is that she does not know which way to turn. Phyllis does not realise every option she chooses will let her down. Phyllis still believes in her marriage to Gould rather than her love for Matthäus. However, Mr. Gould has a dastardly secret he had married someone else. There is an insensitivity from Mr. Gould towards her feelings. This poor girl has seen a way out of her situation has to hear her husband, to be, telling her he is with another woman. Phyllis goes to her garden for solace just like she was when she saw Matthäus. Phyllis looks over the wall and sees two coffins and a band playing “march of the dead”. A procession of soldiers goes by accompanied by two priests. Matthäus and his friends Christoph were to be executed for desertion. Matthäus and another reached the shores of Jersey, not France. The irony is that Phyllis believed that she could get away from her father. Her dreams of getting away are dashed. Maybe, if Matthäus had been less honorable and Phyllis more daring, their future would have taken a better turn.
Though Phyllis did not leave her house, there could be thought that she might have not got on well being away from her father if she had left and stuck to a country ways. However, she was willing to try. Ironically, Phyllis found out too late. Humphrey Gould planned to set Phyllis free but he had fallen in love with another woman. Matthäus Tina was executed for desertion. Phyllis was destined to be alone and lonely. She was to lead a lonely life of spinsterhood. Phyllis Grove was in a social condition that she had to follow, through lack of choice.
Task Analysis / Educational Objectives 
(1062 words)
Professionals in the teaching field have two main questions concerned with their educational practices: What to teach and how to teach it. Organizing for instruction provides the information that allows the teacher to determine what to teach. It is their analysis of their instruction and tasks involved that contribute to comprehensible education. This means that there are educational objectives that outline what will be learnt and what the students should be able to do at the end of the period of study. With respect to this I will, in this essay, outline what is contributed into this discipline and reflect from what I noticed from an initial assessment of my teaching.
To begin with, I realized that education for each student has to be more than being in just being in school. It is being an active student in life. This means that students become natural learners and recognize not only their role in the learning world, but also the world as a whole. They can gain knowledge in the classroom but how do they apply it outside the classroom. This means that through education, within my objectives, there should be provisions for each individual with opportunities to develop abilities, so that each student is able to demonstrate that he or she can do a specific task to a reasonable standard. However, I must recognize that there are different types of objectives. They can be developed into separate areas. Three such areas exist. Each of the three areas or domains are of human functioning. There is the affective domain which involves feelings, the psychomotor area includes coordination and other physical skills. The cognitive domain includes those activities directly associated with doing academically relevant work. With these three domains each objective shows prominence as observable actions that are what I want to observe after having broadly educated the students.
What is IN a preposition?
Have you ever thought about how prepositions work in a sentence?
Prepositions can have 1. spatial, 2. temporal, or 3. abstract meanings
- I live in a house.
- I left home at 9am.
- Something came across my mind
There is a concept of Space in prepositions. How do we locate an object relative to space?
- John is at the dentist.
- John went to the dentist.
However, the scale is Relative. Look at these two sentences.
- The ant walked across his hand.
- A bus drove across the country.
What is the semantic category/communicative function?
- The balloon passed over the house.
- The balloon passed over.
- The balloon went up. (postulate)
- The balloon went over there. (landmark)
How does Spatial Awareness work?
Think about dimensions: 1D, 2D, and 3D
- John drove down the road. (a line – one dimensional space)
2. The skater twirled on the pond. (the pond is a surface, 2D)
3. The astronaut checked his equipment in the airlock. (a room has 3D and we are placing him inside)
Where is the location of space?
at – (non-directional) Amy ran at the track.
at – (core meaning, denote position) I am at school.
at – (being at a specific point) The intersection of the lines is at co-ordinates 3,4 on the graph.
How does a motion verb work with prepositions?
- John threw the ball at Mary.
- John threw the ball to Mary.
How does the preposition modify the verb?
- (place) John exercised inside the house.
- (path) John stormed inside the house.
What is a phrasal verb?
kick-off
ran into my teacher
ask out
blow up
break-in (interrupt)
break up (relationship)
How does the phrase with a preposition become idiomatic?
hold your hand up
off like a shot
in at the deep end
off the record
in the pink
English can be crazy!
- A house can burn up as it burns down.
- You can fill in a form by filling it out.
- Why is it after dark when it is after light?
Fate in The The Melancholy Hussar of the German Legion 
(438 words)
Thomas Hardy was living at a time of social change when the sense of the old rural order was beginning to break down as people moved away from the land and the economy began to modernise. For Hardy, this was a danger and in his stories, the characters are seen to be fighting against their fate when they attempt to change the established order of their lives. For Hardy fate is a very strong and harsh power and characters who defy this pay the price.
In the story, Phyllis Grove is a girl living alone with her father. In meeting Humphrey Gould, she was pleased with his offer of marriage. In keeping with the local order, her fate might be marrying this local man, living locally, and continuing the pattern of life established by their respective parents. This is not a love match but it is accepted and welcomed by all involved.
When Humphrey is driven to Bath – in itself a break with normal rural life – the arrangement is put under strain. Humphrey becomes involved with the social life of Bath and begins to feel that his link with Phyllis is not as strong as he thought. Phyllis becomes lonely and looks to the German Mattthäus Tina for friendship and comfort.
Phyllis is very attracted by Mattthäus’ description of his life in Germany and the possibilities of escaping her life in England. Mattthäus himself is looking to escape from the army which he finds intolerable. In planning to escape their fate, the characters take on a powerful force and eventually pay a high price.
Mattthäus in his attempts to escape is caught and shot, Phyllis’s punishment is more subtle. When her resolve is finally tested by the appearance of Humphrey just as she is to leave with Mattthäus, she weakens and so betrays him. Believing that she is choosing between Mattthäus and Humphrey. Cruelly this is not the case. Humphrey is in fact only there to give his apologies to her and Phyllis is left alone faced with a lonely future. Further punishment is added when she realises that she might have gained happiness with Mattthäus and also saved his life but has been tricked by the fates.
In this story, I feel that Hardy is warning of the dangers to society of breaking with what he sees as the natural order. He sees this as a balance between man and nature that the forces of nature will fight to preserve. In a similar way to the religious stories, Hardy does not accept. Hardy may be trying to offer a warning in a time of intense change.
