Lesson 1 Week 1 Term 1 - Biggest Belly Boutique!

Remember the picture of the sign outside the shop I showed you in class? I'm sure you can guess where the inspiration for the name of this blog came from. There are many more examples of such ambiguous phrasing, so if you do see one, snap a picture and share it with the rest of us. I think it makes language more fun when we can interpret a sentence in different ways. Wait till you see the puns William Shakespeare wrote into his plays!

(By the way, if you're wondering, a pun occurs when we are confused by the deliberate use of a word or phrase that has several meanings or sounds similar to another word in such a way that it could refer to more than one meaning. Try googling 'puns' and you'll come across many examples!)

Well, I've started this blog as a kind of 'after-class' reflection, and as a kind of lesson summary and record of what we covered in class. Please feel free to add comments and ask questions. Just remember to include your name and class.

I'll start off with a summary of our first official lesson (I actually typed it out on my iPhone on the way home from work):

Lesson 1 Week 1 Term 1

We looked at the picture of the sign outside a shop: Biggest Belly Dancing Boutique, and we discussed how words, phrases and sentences can be ambiguous.

We also started analysing our first passage - Seize The Moment, from our textbook, Essential Non-Fiction. We explored how writers use different techniques to make their writing more effective, such as alternating between long and short sentences, using technical terms / jargon, using connectives and different tenses.

We'll be focusing more on analysing passages and learning strategies that will help us better understand the passages. Knowing the techniques writers use not only helps us understand the passage better, it helps us write better too!

New words / ideas we looked at today:

gist

schema

ambiguous

verisimilitude   (note: not all classes did all the words, so do remind me to cover any word you see here which we didn't cover in class)

Don't forget to start working on your self study exercises! :)

~Mr. Ahmad