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#which is a combination of the matter of fluency as well as different levels of rigidness in literary expectations

marspace · 2 years

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Picture Books

How important are illustrations inside a book?

Do people remember the first book that brought joy to them? The ones they were read to before they could read, or the ones that initially inspired their imagination?

Most of us will recognise our beloved characters or the beautiful setting of our favourite childhood stories. We see the pictures come to life as a result of our thoughts. Picture books are extremely beneficial to children who are just beginning to learn to read. Illustrations displayed with text are excellent resources for developing comprehension, fluency, vocabulary, and other core reading abilities. A picture book's graphics brings the pages to life and serves as a visual guide for the text.

Fig.1: This photo was taken from the Pan Macmillan website.

The introduction to "How Picture Books Work," a book by Maria Nikolajeva and Carole Scott, discusses the unique character of picture books as an art form that is built on the merging of two levels of communication, the visual and the verbal. Picture books communicate using two distinct sets of signs: iconic and common.

Picture books taught me that art might be represented by a single work of art. It piqued my interest in learning how picture books function and how it may help me with other projects. Torben Gregersen, as indicated in the book, took several helpful measures in defining picture book typology.

- the exhibit book: picture dictionary (no narrative)

- the picture narrative ; wordless or with very few words

- the picture book, or picture storybook: text and picture equally important

- the illustrated book: the text can exist independently

Books with lots of images and photos can help you improve your reading comprehension. Here are just a handful of the advantages. Pictures give visual cues that assist us learn more about the story. Images depict expressions, unwritten information, setting, and context, which aid in comparison and contrast. These particulars enable us to examine more intricate aspects of character development.

Fig.2: This photo was taken from the ‘Country Living Magazine’ website.

Illustrations may give significant context and background information based on what is happening in the tale. This allows us to "read between the lines" and discover meaning that is not expressly mentioned in the text.

It has to be mentioned that the subject matter in picture books can introduce social cues and cultural differences that encourage social-emotional development. Books that model social behaviors help hone social language skills and reinforce positive behavior.

To summarize, all of this information about a book is the most important information an illustrator can find, as it helps them understand the importance of the image in the presence of the text. It is very clear that the combination of text and images make it easier to convey emotions or messages to the reader. On the other hand, if the illustrator's work is well thought out and selected, it reaches levels of inclusion, where the reader somehow manages to experience the story he is encountering.

In my opinion, I found this information very helpful as one of my main projects relates to children and books. The content in the book made me help understand the difference between the illustrated book and the picture book.

Reference:

- NIKOLAJEVA, M. & SCOTT, C. (2006); ‘How Picturebooks Work’; 1st pbk. Edn. New York: Routledge.

- NOBEL, A. (1996). ‘Education through art.’ Floris Books. Sweden.

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ecoamerica · 2 months

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youtube

Watch the American Climate Leadership Awards 2024 now: https://youtu.be/bWiW4Rp8vF0?feature=shared

The American Climate Leadership Awards 2024 broadcast recording is now available on ecoAmerica's YouTube channel for viewers to be inspired by active climate leaders. Watch to find out which finalist received the $50,000 grand prize! Hosted by Vanessa Hauc and featuring Bill McKibben and Katharine Hayhoe!

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thenixart · 4 years

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Chapter 5: Book 23--The Rescue

Hork-bajir centric rewrite book Animorphs book 23

Toby Hamee is a ‘seer’, literally: the one who sees far into what is and what may be. One thing she likes about the language of her people is the ability to say a lot using very little breath. Something that she reasoned was an adaption to her ancestors living in high-density groups and the necessity to communicate ideas efficiently as they needed to use the rest of the oxygen in their lungs to power their muscles to flee from the monsters from the deep. Quirks of the language that don’t translate well and actively fight with the standards of grammar in Galard and English.

This was why the humans and the yeerks looked down their beaks at her people. They took it as a sign that they were unintelligent and of less worth. Such strange things aliens placed value on as intelligent. Yet how many languages did the average human speak? The average yeerk? She knew almost as many languages as fingers she possessed: Tree of course and then Galard from her parents and tribemates. The basics of English from them as well polished to fluency from watching television. Conversational Tax and claw-sign from teacher Sssirin. Enough Spanish from Dora la exploradora and Telemundo that she was confident enough to use. Naharan dialect skikar and desbadeen balong from teacher Grath Sha. Were there humans that knew as many different languages? Maybe, but they were likely rare meanwhile pretty much every hork-bajir in the tribe knew just as many even if they skipped the redundant grammar rules.

It understandably made her very angry along with many other things.

Unfortunately, that same anger is what made the council uncertain of her ability to lead.

Which was why after the excitement of her first trial run of leadership had worn off, she was secretly listening to their meeting. Not spying, listening.

The meeting was being held in the big community lodge, a large circular platform built around the upper third of four huge pines. Support beams of living oak formed a loose cage connecting to a ring of eight trees outside of the first circle supported the weight of the platform. The whole thing was roofed and camouflaged from above by a woven mat of more living branches and vines. According to her father, Jara Hamee, this was the kind of structure that new tribes built when they settled into a valley. Over time (and with due diligence) as the trees grow, they would merge together into a proper Tribe tree with the expanded hall as the main community center. Toby had no idea if they could grow these alien trees into such a structure or even if they would have that much time on this world. But her father insisted that they should practice their cultural skills if only to keep them fresh in the mind. And besides, getting everyone to work on a project together was good for building bonds especially when they were effectively the tribal equivalent of a chop-toss salad.

And because she’d been involved in the building process (even if all she did was pass things to her dad as she clung to his back) she knew the best place to eavesdrop that wasn’t in the latrine. Been there, done that, learned from it. Or the eaves either for that matter.

Toby was thankful that she hadn’t yet hit her next growth spurt when she nestled into the nice little crook in the support cage next to the gap in the floorboards under the south room. As it was she could just barely fit in the cavity formed by the moss and wood. Her tail had to dangle out and she had to sit with her legs crossed to avoid jabbing her belly with her knee blades. If she stayed very still the only other people who’d notice her would also be eavesdroppers and they couldn’t snitch without snitching on themselves as well.

“...needs only a z-space transponder.”

“Jara Hamee know part. Cannon have?”

“This one knows not. A likely eventuality.”

“Ket Halpak say let yeerk work more. Get radio part. Get hork-bajir. Make big boom.”

“Aad Wanlo agree with Ket Halpak.”

“Aad Wanlo, Ket Halpak, want know how Toby Hamee do?”

“Aad Wanlo think--”

The sudden shout combined with the knowledge that she was doing something that she shouldn’t activated Toby Hamee’s flight reflex and she’d lept twenty feet away from her perch before her mind clamped down on her instincts. Looking around she spotted her spooker, Bek, hanging by his tail and snickering at her. Frowning she stuck out her tongue at him and shouted SHORT in her head, knowing that he was listening.

Bek, in turn, projected an image of her own bugged out fear face back at her with a smirk.

Then she noticed her dad, her mom, and about half of the other people at the meeting sticking their heads out of the door of the south room. Looking directly at her. Toby could feel her head blades flush dark. Quickly she pretended to be interested in picking pine cones. One by one the adults went back to their meeting, Jara being the last and still most suspicious of her.

She did not need to move her head to see Bek thump against the tree a tail length above her. He climbed down to her level face first, his bloodshot black eyes gleaming with mirth. < Toby Hamee is blushing. >

When he opened his beak to laugh she shoved a pinecone in his mouth. This did not phase Bek who thoughtfully crunched and swallowed the treat. Toby dropped down the length of the tree to the ground and headed for the river. This kept Bek too busy trying to keep up with her to send his thoughts, his short legs meant he had to hop twice as much to match her pace.

By the lake was one of the new recruits and one of Toby’s few new friends, Fal Tagut, experimenting with his bows. Fal’s mother-mother lived in a very steep valley practically on the other side of the world from Toby’s own ancestors. In that narrow valley, a seer spent her life inventing what humans would call archery. Not as a weapon or hunting tool, this was back before Dak shared the discovery of violence, but as a way to get ripe gooba fruit from the trees that were too close to the deep to forage under. These bows and arrows that Fal was making now would be weapons to use against the yeerks because the tribe needed long-distance weapons that didn’t need to be charged with nuclear power like their stolen dracon beams.

Fal Tagut did not stop his carving of arrows from leftover building planks as Toby and Bek approached. He did turn so as to see them with his good eye. The other eye having been put out by her namesake, a human named Tobias who happened to have the body of a bird and was also fighting in the battle against the yeerk slavers.

“Hello, Fal Tagut. How is?”

“Why Toby Hamee dark?”

< Toby Hamee get caught spying. >

She snorted at Bek and flicked his stubby horns that would grow properly if he stopped picking at them. “Bek got Toby Hamee caught!”

To Toby’s annoyance, Fal started laughing at her too. He said smiling, “Toby Hamee need play more hiding/seeking.”

She huffed and gestured at the entirety of Bek’s currently three-foot-tall being, “Bek hears thoughts! How Toby Hamee hide from?!”

Fal and Bek glanced at each other no doubt sharing some joke between them and then turned back to her.

“Easy.” Fal Tagut said.

< Hide thoughts. > Bek finished.

Toby Hamee rolled her eyes at them in the human expression of exasperation that was quickly picking up among both free and enslaved hork-bajir on Father Earth.

Some days she really hated the concept of friendship. Other days she was glad that there were people in the valley who treated her as a peer worthy of ridicule and not just as a kid or as a seer with a great responsibility. And after a while, her embarrassment cooled off as she and Bek helped Fal craft and test different designs of bows and arrows. It was near sundown when her mother found her and both chided her for spying on their meeting and congratulated her on passing Aad Wanlo’s assessment. She would be allowed to lead solo in the next mission.

Toby Hamee celebrated this with a maple syrup mead toast to all of her teachers and her friends and everyone else she learned from.

////

Fal Tagut was the first to notice that Bek is missing.

He’d woken in the middle of the night with the screams from the Yeerk Pool cavern in his head. Brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers and cousins all terror and anger. Sadness and calls for vengeance ringing for a forever in his ears. He could still feel something slithering into his ear. His body would not respond. It scared him. His heart pounded in his chest and slowly he was able to make his body be awake as well.

Still, Fal Tagut was scared.

His mother was not here. His father not here. No mother-brothers. No mother-sisters. No father-brothers. No father-sisters. No cousins. None of the people he’d shared the cages with. Fal Tagut cried from loneliness.

After a bit, he leaped from his perch and sought out his friends.

Bek was not in his favorite tree. Curiosity beat out loneliness in Fal’s head. He was somewhat aware that Bek did not tend to sleep at night. When Bek did sleep he liked to sleep in the mornings far away from everyone in this hollow in this exact big oak.

What did Bek do at night? Fal Tagut had no answer.

Toby Hamee slept closer to where Fal Tagut did than Bek’s tree. But it was easier to go from start to far away to back to near than start to near to far. At least it was as far as Fal was concerned. Toby and her parents had a house in the second-best place in the Ellimist valley (the best place is where the community hall is). There were several houses in the valley, most clustered together in the same area. Jara’s house was the biggest of these and the door faced east to catch sunlight in the morning.

If Bek was here, Bek would whisper to Toby to let her know they were there. So Fal hesitated at the door with indecision. He did not want to wake Toby’s parents.

“Hear you. Smell you. Who is?” Jara Hamee’s voice was quiet. Fal’s horns flushed dark in embarrassment at his lack of stealth.

“Am Fal Tagut.” Fal Tagut answered in a matching whisper.

“Is time for sleep, Fal tagut.”

“Yes.”

A silence stretched out long enough that Fal’s crop started to feel slippery.

“Jara Hamee?”

“Yes, Fal Tagut?”

“Bek is not in tree.”

“Bek wanders when should be sleeping. Will look for when is bright.”

“Ok.”

In the darkness, Fal heard someone shifting on a bed. And then one person’s claws on floorboards. The sound of swallowing.

“Jara Hamee?”

“Yes, Fal Tagut?”

“Fal Tagut has sleep demons. Fal Tagut is alone.”

“Jara Hamee has big house and big bed. Fal Tagut is not alone.”

/////

Bek is lost.

Bek is not surprised by that. He almost never left the Ellimist valley alone. His sense of direction is bad, the rock in his head that should know where North is doesn’t work at all. It was too dark to see clearly and if not for the round moon he would see nothing at all. Bek did not sleep good around other people, especially sleeping ones. Their dreams were loud and kept him awake. Usually, he ended up falling asleep around sunup when everyone else was waking.

When Bek couldn’t sleep he went jumping.

Unfortunately, there were yeerks tied up to die at his favorite place to jump. He did not want to listen to their screaming and feel their fear and hate or the suffering of the yeerks’ prisoners. So he went west to one of the smaller valleys. Except, he miss counted a leap and lost track of Ket Halpak’s directions.

Jara Hamee tells everyone, if not know where is make mark as go. If find mark, then has been before. So Bek made nicks in the bark of the trees as he passed by them. When Bek ran into his marks again, he made new ones and went in a different direction.

When the earth bit him in the foot, causing him to trip and scream, Bek decided that he was going to follow Ket Halpak’s advice. The lost should stay put . As he didn’t know why the ground was biting him, he decided to stay put. Maybe it would get tired of biting and let go? It didn’t seem to be trying to eat him like that bear did.

By morning his wounds were dry and didn’t hurt. He could see what was holding him better, some metal mouth on a chain nailed into the ground. It would be pretty easy to free himself if not for the humans rolling up in their car-thing.

Very loud humans.

Only humans, no yeerks. Bek was good at hearing thoughts and people held hostage by yeerks were very easy for him to tell. The yeerks felt one way and the captives always another. But just because they were not controlled by yeerks did not mean they weren’t scary. Especially not with those weapons pointed at him. Bek was very careful. He’d seen the kinds of wounds guns made, he did not want to be shot.

So he complied when they brought out the cage.

////

Toby would be much much more excited about her first real solo leadership job if the mission wasn’t searching for her missing friend. As it was she put on a brave face and got together a search party. Out of a tribe of twenty-three hork-bajir, nine taxxons, and four humans she had nine of her people, a third of the taxxons, and half of the humans to work with. That meant making about three teams with one taxxon each to track Bek’s scent. The one team without humans could cover a lot more ground especially if she assigned them the smallest of the taxxons. Every team member got a talkie and one map and at least one map reader to a team.

She felt confident about the mission.

That confidence shrunk by the end of that day. It shrank some more at the end of the second day. It withered entirely on the morning of the third day when the taxxon of team two called in.

[“Find blood of the one who is Bek,”] Ssskartaa’s voice clicked calmly over the walkie talkie. [“Days old. Not enough for hork-bajir death. No panic in the dirt, one who is Bek was not scared. In dirt is human shoe prints, smell of gasoline, car prints. Car was heavier leaving than coming.”]

“Did the humans take the one who is Bek?”

[“It is strongly possible.”]

Toby radioed everyone to call off the search and regroup back in the Ellimist valley. She was very very tired and it was up to her to come up with the plan moving forward.

How exactly would they go about it? This wasn’t a mall raid, the humans couldn’t just drive them in the vans to a building in the middle of the night. They had no leads whatsoever about where to start looking. Frankly, Bek could be on the other side of the continent by now. They needed cloaking tech! They needed morphing tech! They needed a miracle!

Toby felt a heavy hand land on her shoulder. Her father bumped his horns against hers.

“Breathe deep.” Jara said calmly.

She did. Inhaling to the bottom of her lungs and after a few seconds, letting that air back out.

“Is good?”

“Is good.” She replied. “Toby Hamee got this.”

And then the “Goooaaahahahah” of the suspicious bird alarm call rang out over the valley. The taxxons vanished into the earth and the humans put on their masks and moved under tree cover. All of the hork-bajir aside from the lookouts filled out into the clearing to greet their visitor.

The timing of it niggled under Toby’s scales, what was the last time any of the morphers visited? Had to be almost a year ago when she’d just started hopping around on her own. The timing was suspiciously good for the current crisis, still she put on a pleasant face for Tobias as he circled on raggedy brown wings.

“Hello, friend Tobias!” Her father shouted at the human trapped in the shape of a bird.

“Good seeing you!” Her mother said as Tobias perched on an overhanging tree branch not more than a ska from where human Darnell was hiding. Ket was practically puffing with pride at how well her hiding lessons were working.

“Your timing couldn’t be better Tobias.” Toby said formally. The entire mood of clearing shifted. Yes, there was still work that needed to be done. Tobias himself seemed to deflate as well.

“One of our young males, Bek, went missing a few days ago. We have reason to believe that he was captured by humans while wandering outside of the valley.” Toby said. “We could use some help in finding him.”

<How do you know that? You’ve left the valley looking for him?> Tobias’ thought voice was surprisingly demanding.

“Yes?” Confusion at the odd question was evident on her father’s face. “Search? Look and look and look.”

“Cry, ‘Bek! Bek!’” Grath Sha added sarcastically. Toby remembered that the teenage hork-bajir once told her to never trust a human that asked very obvious questions. Grath has said something along the lines of, either they think you’re dumb or they’re terrible listeners .

“Find footprint. Find carprint. Find smell.” Her mother, Ket, continued.

“Bek is not in the valley,” Toby repeated incase the human was still confused. “We looked for him. We found his trail. We know that he was captured and taken elsewhere by humans.”

Tobias then said several words that could be nothing else but curses. Several they knew from the cages (or taught by those who’d been in the cages to those who’d not) or from the television movies that only came on late at night. There were a few new ones in there that caught their curiosity but Tobias didn’t want to explain them.

“About three days,” Toby replied.

<Oh, man. I have to get back to the others. We'll start a search. But I don't think our chances are very good.> Then the bird-shaped human stopped still, <Do you think Bek could lead people back here? Would he be able to find his way back? The Ellimist has laid some kind of weird spell on this place.>

“Bek is not good with directions. He’d return to the woods if he were able and if he did we would be able to find him,” Toby said. “But he would have very little reason to lead others here.”

“I highly doubt that the yeerks could get one of their inside him, let alone control him.”

<What?>

“Bek is different. In head.” Jara said sagely. “Not seer, but strange.”

<Sure,> Tobias sighed as he took off. <I’ll tell Jake and the others. To think I came here to get away from my problems...>

The tribe waved goodbye as he flew away.

/////

Bek did not like this place. The wood of the building was clearly rotting. There was dirt and grime building up in the corners and crevices. Terrible smells. All around many animals. And all around was the feeling of sadness. Scribbling thoughts of creatures so bored they were rotting inside. Dripping feelings of lasting pains. Except for the humans that came and went, excited and frightened and happy.

He did not like this cage. There were no perches and the humans hit his fingers and toes when he tried to hang from the top. The dirty dry grass on the floor was too thin to be a good bed. Standing on it long made his joints hurt. The metal bowl of water he had to drink from was slimy. Gross. Looking around the animals in the other cages were in the same situation.

Bek was angry.

He was not big enough or strong enough to cut the metal bars of the cages. And he did not know what to do with the animals but he could tell Toby and their humans who would know more. And he could listen to the lock on his cage, there were lots of small parts he could not see. The humans opened and closed the door after sticking in a small metal twig. The twig made the little parts move. He could make the little parts move by thinking about it. But it was not easy, a puzzle! He needed to move them in the right order!

Days passed.

The humans figured out that he did not eat meat. Bek ate their bad bread crumbles because he was hungry. Bread made of grass and seed, yuck! Bek ate to stay strong. He ate, he slept, he tinkered with tiny metal things, and he watched.

A lesson from the Storyteller, Hruthin, yeerk, human. Similar. All think people who do not speak same or look same is stupid. Very silly. Tell secrets. Pay no attention. Is useful, no?

Bek paid very close attention to the yeerk talking to the human who owned the building. Something was wrong with the yeerk’s host. There was no human thought in the human body.

Strange.

The yeerk was thinking, yes tonight we will take this hork-bajir and make him bait for the tribe . The human was thinking, this strange one with bring me many materials . And further away, out of sight but not range of his thoughts or hearing were people spying.

////

The Tribe’s humans had gone out looking for Bek and came back with pulp leaves dyed with bad-smelling colors. Fal Tagut was told that the scribbles on the ‘paper’ said where to find his friend Bek. Fal believe them.

His other friend Toby decided that they would not wait for the Animorph humans to find Bek. She and he and humans Darnell and Jade would go rescue Bek themselves. With them, they took a few dracon beams and left in the van-type car. The others wished them luck and safety and they gave wishes in return, Ket Halpak and Jara Hamee were leading an attack on the hidden yeerk cannon at nightfall.

Fal Tagut did not like riding in the van. When the van was moving it felt like he was trapped at the top of a leap with the earth below pulling on his insides. Except instead of below the earth pulled him forward, back, side to side. He spent most of the trip trying not to vomit up the good bread that Loro Lok had made for them.

It took some time to get to the place where Bek was. The sun went from four hands until dark to settled under the earth by the time they arrived. There were already sounds of fighting and big animals in one of the buildings.

Toby Hamee said, “Darnell, your our driver. Keep the motor running. Fal Tagut! Jade! Give me cover fire. I’m going to get Bek.”

Toby burst from the back of the van like a seed from an exploding pod. Windows down, he and Jade used stunning dracon shots to clear her path as she flowed like water across the battlefield. Darnell kept pace with her, maneuvering the van around other cars and downed bodies.

Toby leaped onto the building and rounded to the other side. They rounded through the car lot to see Bek! And some strange many-legged creature and a wounded Ket Halpak. Fal Tagut was confused for a bit until he remembered that some of the Animorphs humans had shapes of Ket Halpak and Jara Hamee from when they helped them flee from the yeerks. From the booming voice in his head, Fal guessed that the strange monster was Visser Three.

None of this stumbled Toby as she dropped from the roof, cutting off the Visser’s muzzle in the process. She turned on the spot and cut across the monster’s throat with an elbow blade and chopped the legs from one side of the Visser’s body causing it the flop to the ground. From there she lept for Bek and Fal shot the yeerk-in-human that tried to take aim at her back.

With a mighty triumphant honk, Toby bounded for the van with Bek clinging to her back. The van swung around open back to the fight as the two tumbled in. Using his feet he helped Toby close the van doors.

The ride back was three times as long to avoid leading anyone back to the valley and twice as bouncy with a shot out tire from the fight.

////

Toby Hamee did not relax until she set foot back into the Ellimist valley.

Her plans worked. Her friends were safe. She faced Visser Three in morph in battle and lived to tell of it.

And tell she did. In the light of the bonfire surrounded by her friends and family and tribe. Everyone that had gone out that day taking turns to tell their personal stories about their missions. She spoke of Visser Three’s fear and surprise when she cut into their host’s morphed flesh. Bek talked about his captivity and the minds of the humans and yeerks he encountered. Her mother pantomimed the size and beauty of the yeerk cannon and base exploding. And her father outdid them all with a funny story about how he got the parts for his deep-space radio that involved weaponizing a bunch of bananas of all things.

Eventually, the fire died down and exhaustion snaked into everyone and the party ended. Folks said their goodnights and left for their homes to rest and recover. Bek, of course, stayed the night at her house. And so did Fal Tagut.

The peace of the next morning’s breakfast was broken by the ‘many odd birds’ alarm call.

No one actually dropped what they were doing per se, yesterday had been a long day and people wanted to eat their breakfasts. Her father, in particular, was busy tinkering with the radio at the table. The metaphorical cat was already out of the bag about their human tribemates, who only put on their masks as they continued eating their cooked eggs and soft bread. And the taxxons had discussed it the other night that they might as well reveal themselves before some accident happened and the Animorphs attacked them as enemies. Besides, if she left her oak and maple porridge at the table Bek would absolutely steal it.

Tobias arrived first fluttering around overhead before landing in a nearby tree. The hruthin following soon after on swift legs. And then came the humans with the taller ones easily outpacing the shorter ones.

“Ok, so that was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen!” Rachel said with excitement. She brushed her long yellow mane out of her face and her eyes seemed to be sparkling.

“Where did you guys get a car!” Marco puffed breathlessly. Then his eyes wandered warily to the taxxons who waved greetings with a few of their forelimbs.

“You do know there’s cars everywhere in the city right?” Darnell responded.

Cassie gave him a very long and strange look that Toby did not yet know how to decipher, “You didn’t… steal that van did you?”

“Of course not,” Darnell lied through his teeth with notes of sarcasm, “My uncle Reese let me borrow it.”

“Didn’t know you guys had so many other friends,” Jake said. His mouth a stern frown. “Seems like you didn’t need our help at all.”

“By luck, our own investigation turned up the location of Bek’s imprisonment. Unfortunately, we didn’t have a way to contact you to alert you of recent developments.”

That seemed to placate the Animorphs. And frankly there was no way that Toby was going to tell them about the walkie talkies and the radio project, her parents hadn’t and the humans didn’t ask. The andalite noticed that Jara was building something but didn’t seem fit to ask what. They left soon after anyway, to some other mission and the tribe wished them luck.

The rest of the day went as planned.

Cooks cooked. The doctor made his rounds and taught his students. Parents cared for their children. Workers put their blades to use on building new houses. Everyone keeping busy while waiting for the main show.

Her father finished the deep space radio not one hand from sundown and she and a decent chunk of the adults and taxxons went to another valley (specifically chosen for the caves and signal strength with the regular radios) to use it try to contact other rebel groups out in space. It was a funny sight, chitin and scales effectively crammed together as everyone crowded to watch Jara Hamee hunched over a tiny desk. Everyone waiting with bated breath while he switched stations as he played -here-happy-whole- dozens of times on a small wooden hand drum.

-here-happy-whole-

-here-hap- [-heard-received-welcome-freedom-comrades-]

#thenixkat #animorphs #hork-bajir #taxxons #fanfiction #episode rewrite

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ndscottsummers · 5 years

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[cracks knuckles] okay folks here’s some thoughts on doug ramsey setting out to create a language for mutantkind, mostly ignoring what canon has to say about the matter. i am not a linguist so take what i say here with several grains of salt, but i am a conlanger so, yeah, take what i say here with several grains of salt.

doug seems like someone who probably started conlanging before his mutation manifested and then threw himself into it even more enthusiastically once he started exercising those super-pattern-detection muscles, so i’m assuming he knows what he’s about. no need to worry about him understanding the basics of the craft, we can move on to other things. (also, side note, holy shit i want to see his portfolio. i bet it’s mind-blowing.)

doug also has two huge advantages over anyone else who has ever tried to make a conlang usable in day-to-day life by people from a wide variety of linguistic backgrounds: he has that cool mutation that means he probably has a good grasp on a ridiculous number of communication systems, and there are telepaths around who can download the language from his mind and upload it into other people’s.

there are two major goals for this language:

it should be easily usable by the largest percentage of mutants possible

it should be difficult to interpret for anyone who hasn’t had it uploaded into their brain

(we’d want a signed language as well as a spoken language; i’m not familiar enough with the mechanics of signed languages as a class to know how separate those two would be or if they would be essentially the same language with different mediums of communication. the points i’m going to make should apply to any configuration with appropriate adjustments for the medium; my examples are going to be spoken language-focused bc that’s what i know.)

i don’t really know how the whole telepathic fluency thing works, so here are some assumptions: it may make sound production easier but it won’t bring you up to a native speaker’s level re: phonology, it will give you the rough equivalent of natural fluency in all other areas, and it works as well for writing and reading as it does for speaking and listening.

first things first, we want the phonology to be simple. we want to hit phonemes that appear in lots of different languages families across the globe and we want to avoid sounds that are relatively rare. sorry, huge mass of english vowels! we just want a couple. maybe four. five if we’re feeling adventurous. also say goodbye to /θ/ (the first sound of ‘think’) - that’s a rare one, globally! and, to take the focus away from english, no pharyngeals or clicks either.

we also want to avoid weird consonant clusters that might trip people up, so you know what, let’s just say that the only possible syllable structures are V and CV. no vowel clusters, either; that V syllable can be tacked onto the beginning of a word but nowhere else. if my experience is anything to go by you’re not going to be able to tear diphthongs away from the anglophones but it’s okay for there to be differing accents; we just want everyone to be able to produce + understand the language without much difficulty, and telepathy can smooth over some of the bumps.

so that’s phonology out of the way, and now we’re getting to the good stuff: morphology and syntax. telepathy means we can go absolutely WILD with this. phonology has a lot to do with muscle memory and actual physical ability to move one’s tongue and throat in certain ways, but the rest of grammar is all in the mind and as long as a telepath can put it in your head you are good to go.

sadly i don’t know that i have the experience or linguistic knowledge to propose good ideas here, but you know doug has been sitting on some sweet shit. he’s got a handle on some really obscure grammatical features, he can pull details from language isolates and extinct languages and alien languages holy shit you guys the game is won* and he can make them play nicely together. we want phonology to be simple but we want everything else to be complicated in order to stymie attempts at outside interpretation, and if we can go overboard without damaging people’s abilities to use the language then full steam ahead! (there are going to be some limitations, probably, but still; we can have fun.)

if you can drop a writing system into someone’s head then i’d want to say go logographic, but that does have a muscle memory aspect to it and also poor doug would have to figure out all of those logographs, so maybe not. an alphabet is boring and if you’re doing a 1:1 sound:letter correspondence then it’s not adding much to keeping the language secret; same with an abugida. a featural system would be a step up until part of it is cracked, at which point the dominoes start to fall. canon hoxpox already has a thing going with a combination alphabet/logography which is cool, but i think we’d be better off with a combination syllabary/logography. we’re already doing mostly CV syllables and throwing some logographs in would confuse the situation enough that the number of symbols needed to understand the language would, i think, fall nicely into the ‘learnable but difficult to figure out without a guide’ category.

if we want to go really off-script the language can be highly idiomatic as well; i’m thinking trigedasleng from the 100, which iirc evolved from an english-based code rather than mainstream english. then even if they do figure out your writing system and also somehow figure out translations for individual words, they can’t necessary interpret what it is you’re actually saying. that may or may not be more difficult to get across via telepathy, but if you went too far with it you would end up with longggg average utterances.

anyway those are my opinions on how doug would approach this project! i really, really want to see what he would make of this, wow.

*how many features of the average alien language would be comprehensible to the human mind on a level that would allow even telepathy to bridge fluency gaps? i don’t know but doug** is going to find out

**can doug even do alien languages bc of like, basic cognitive differences? he’s done them in canon but does that make sense? send in your theories

#r: house of x #r: powers of x #doug ramsey #krakoan conlang

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aliachan19-blog · 5 years

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Bilingual Students

STUDENTS WHO ARE BILINGUAL OR HAVE LIMITED-ENGLISH PROFICIENCY

The last area of diversity described in this chapter examines bilingual students or those who have limited English proficiency (LEP). As more cultures assimilate into our communities, students with English as a second language (ESL) are becoming a greater part of our school culture. There are six types of language-ability students:

1. A non-English-speaking student who is monolingual in his/her home language.

2. Limited English speakers who are fluent in a language other than English.

3. A student who speaks both English and another language fluently.

4. Students who are limited in both English and their other language.

5. Students who speak English fluently but are limited in their other language. 6 Students who speak English fluently but no other language. In her book, Adapting Instruction to Accommodate Students in Inclusive Settings, JudyWood (2000) describes key concepts in second language acquisition. Below, nine of these are listed along with the implication for general education teachers.

1. Language acquisition is a process the human brain

Humans are naturally wired to learn a language. This is something we do naturally start at a very early age by being immersed in a language and have meaningful interactions with others. You should immerse your students in the language of the classrooms and create environments that are rich in stimulus and interaction with students and teachers.

2. Students learn a second language in different ways and at different paces

There is not a standard path or set of benchmarks. The pace at which students learn a second language is related to their learning styles, level of education, parents’ level of education, experience and knowledge base.

3. Language acquisition is not easy for children

Children do not learn languages any easier than adults, because they are having to learn new concepts as well as the labels for these concepts. Adults have a knowledge base filled with concepts. It is simply a matter of putting the right label to the right concept. So that ESL students do not fall behind conceptually, encourage them to use and develop their first language.

4. Learning a second language takes time

Students are often learning about a new culture as well as a new language. Oral fluency can take from three to five years. Be patient, provide instruction that promotes English acquisition, and remember that a lack of English proficiency does not necessarily indicate a lack of intelligence.

5. Silence is sometimes needed.

Do not be afraid of silence. Some English language learners go through periods of silence when they are inputting language. Allow your students to experience silence. Also, when they are ready to verbalize, create a risk-free environment where it is okay to experiment and make mistakes.

6. Students need context to learn English

Isolated drills or flash cards do not provide a meaningful context to learn English. In your classroom, work with the ESL teacher to provide a rich context by providing words to study that are part of classes.

7. Students need meaningful interaction with native speakers to learn a second language

Provide opportunities for ESL students to interact with other students by using cooperative learning groups, literacy circles, and other classroom strategies that have students talking and interacting with others.

8. Errors in language production indicate progress

Errors are a necessary stage in language acquisition. Expect mistakes and correct them gently using modeling.

9. Receptive language skills are usually more advanced than productive skills

Students can understand, but cannot always use, written or spoken a language to convey meaning. Consider using group assignments as well as modifying assignments by allowing for pictures of other forms of communication.

Inclusion vs. Mainstreaming

Two terms used in reference to the least restrictive environment provision are mainstreaming and inclusion.

Mainstreaming

assumes there is one mainstream in which all should swim. To mainstream is to help special needs students adapt to the general education classroom curriculum, thereby getting them into this mainstream.

Inclusion

honors the rich diversity of human experiences and conditions by acknowledging that there are many educational streams. Inclusion seeks to adapt the curriculum to meet the diverse learning needs all students, thereby getting each into his or her particular stream. Here, the special education teacher takes the role of an educational specialist to work with the general education teacher to modify and design curriculum and learning experiences that are appropriate for special needs students in a general education classroom. Of the two, inclusion is more in keeping with the philosophy of this text.

SPECIFIC LEARNING DISABILITY

A learning disability is said to exist when there is a discrepancy between a student’s expected ability and his or her achievement in one of seven areas: basic reading skill, reading comprehension, listening comprehension, oral expression, written expression, math calculation, and mathematics reasoning. The US Department of Education’s definition is IN GENERAL- The term'specific learning disability' means a disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or in using language, spoken or written, which disorder may manifest itself in imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell, or do mathematical calculations.

SPECIFIC LEARNING DISABILITY. "Specific learning disability" means a condition within the pupil affecting learning, relative to potential, and is manifested by interference with the acquisition, organization,storage, retrieval, manipulation, or expression of information so that the pupil does not learn at an adequate rate when provided with the usual developmental opportunities and instruction from a regular school environment.

A learning disability is not necessarily a thinking disability. Students with learning disabilities usually can think and reason; however, they often have trouble processing information in a specific academic area. To understand what it might feel like, think of a time when you were a less able learner. It may have been when trying to learn a sport, a musical instrument, a computer program, a financial plan, or some new area of study. What did it feel like? What would you have liked the teacher to do? What strategies could have been used to help you learn? This understanding will assist you in working with students with learning disabilities.

EMOTIONAL OR BEHAVIORAL DISORDERS

An emotional or behavioral disorder exists when one’s emotions or behaviors get in the way of learning and participating in the learning environment. The US Department ofEducation’s definition is in

Emotional or behavioral disorders means an established pattern of one or more of the following emotional or behavioral responses: (a) withdrawal or anxiety, depression, problems with mood, or feelings of self-worth; (b) disordered thought processes with unusual behavior patterns and atypical communication styles; or (c) aggression, hyperactivity, or impulsivity. The established pattern of emotional or behavioral responses must adversely affect educational or developmental performance, including intrapersonal, academic, vocational, or social skills; be significantly different from appropriate age, cultural, or ethnic norms; and be more than temporary, expected responses to stressful events in the environment. The emotional or behavioral responses must be consistently exhibited in at least three different settings, two of which must be educational settings, and one other setting in either the home, child care, or community. The responses must not be primarily the result of intellectual, sensory, or acute or chronic physical health conditions

There are both externalizing and internalizing emotional or behavioral disorders (Vaughn, Bos, & Schumm, 2003). Externalized behaviors include aggression, hitting, inability to pay attention, and impulsivity. Children who display these behaviors are more likely to be noticed and formally identified. Internalized behaviors include shyness, withdrawal, depression, fears/phobias, or anxiety. Children displaying these are less likely to be noticed and identified.

ATTENTION DEFICIT/HYPERACTIVITY DISORDER

Students Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) have a hard time concentrating or focusing. According to the DSM IV-TR (American Psychiatric Association,2000), ADHD is a Disruptive Behavior Disorder characterized by the presence of a set of chronic and impairing behavior patterns that display abnormal levels of inattention, hyperactivity, or their combination. The symptoms for ADHD are listed in:

Five ways to build resilient learners

1. Live-model the creation of the answer

What they really needed was to see, step-by-step, how to create the answer, rather than just seeing the final product.

2. Give feedback using SMART targets

As a student myself, when I was stuck on a task or struggled to come up with an idea, I often heard my teachers come out with comments like “You need to try harder”, or “Just put a little bit more effort in”. This made no sense to me (and made me pretty annoyed too!) because I felt like I was putting maximum

use SMART method to help students overcome their challenges. Feedback should always aim to be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely. By using SMART targets, students will be much more able to find solutions for themselves and will be much less likely to just give up and become disinterested.

3. Give praise for the right things

Giving praise is one of the best ways to develop resilience in your students. After all, who doesn’t get a boost when someone notices that we’ve done a great job and makes a point of saying so? Be careful though. Sometimes we can praise the wrong things, such as high attainment, as opposed to a high level of effort. Whilst high attainment is creditworthy, students can be demotivated when they fail to achieve high marks, or can feel pressured to the only try at things where they are certain they can achieve the end result. I don’t know about you, but I want my students to take risks. By focusing on praising the effort instead of the outcome, students will build their confidence and keep trying new things without as much fear of failure. You can read more on this in an article by Judy Willis, M.D. (@judywillis) here.

4. Develop independent learners

Give students long-term, open-ended projects, rather than heavily prescribed and weekly homework tasks. Then make sure that you give SMART feedback at some point during the process, before they submit their final piece of work. But most crucially, make sure that students take full control of what the end-product looks like so that when they submit it, they can feel as though they have challenged themselves and can fully appreciate that they have earned their marks by overcoming their challenges. Students seeing their hard-won success is key to building resilience.

5. Use motivational quotes

have some motivational quotes and pictures displayed around my classroom to refer to from time to time, whenever students begin to find challenges mounting up. An excellent quote I’ve used in the past, particularly in the run-up to final exams is by William G.T. Shedd: “A ship is safe in harbor, but that’s not what ships are for”. For me, this sums up what resilience is all about – moving away from what is comfortable and towards what helps us grow and show our true potential. It’s short, visual and inspirational. Students can relate to it and in my experience, it works.

6. Know your students!!!

There is one thing that has made the greatest difference in my ability to build resilient students. I get to know them. Regular conversations with the students as they go about their work in the classroom, or when I see them on the corridor at break time helps to build a trusting relationship. Not only does it help with reducing challenging behavior in lessons, but it also gives me an insight into what makes them tick. Being able to see, as a student walks through my classroom door what mood they are in, or knowing that they have exams coming up in other subjects, or that they may have challenges outside of school, enables me to tailor my delivery to their current mindset as well as to their level of knowledge. The key here is playing the long game. There is no silver bullet. But building that positive relationship over time, showing that you can be trusted, pays real dividends.

#BilingualStudents EnglishLearners ADHD Educational

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digitalchandigarh · 3 years

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Top 5 PTE Coaching Classes in Mohali

Top 5 PTE Coaching Classes in Mohali – If you want to get the best PTE Coaching in Mohali, then you must look for the top PTE Institutes in Mohali providing PTE Coaching Classes where you can get all the training you need to perform well in the exam.

The PTE is the world’s driving computer-based test of English for study and emigration abroad. To finish a PTE test, you must go to a safe Pearson test exercise.

Here are the Best Top 5 PTE Coaching Classes in Mohali

1st Out of the Top 5 PTE Coaching Classes in Mohali

ThinkEnglish

ThinkEnglish is the best platform to check good results in Pearson Test of English (PTE). They are a group of exceptionally committed and self-motivated experts who have an unwavering duty to provide the students with the best PTE Coaching in Mohali which empowers them to fulfill their objectives. The students are provided with a real exam-like experience to ensure that they are prepared to take the online test. Students are given the freedom to join the batch as per their convenience of the time

ThinkEnglish offers Spoken English Classes, PTE, IELTS, Personality Development, Interview Preparation Classes in Chandigarh Mohali. It is also counted among the best coaching institutes for PTE, Spoken English Classes, Personality Development, Interview Preparation Classes. We have vast experience and expertise in training students to prepare for IELTS, PTE, Spoken English and Interview.

Contact Details of ThinkEnglish

Address: S.C.O. 113, First Floor, Phase-11 ,Sector- 65, Mohali, Punjab, India

Business Phone Number: 95777-05000

Email: [email protected]

2nd Out of the Top 5 PTE Coaching Classes in Mohali

Touchstone Institute

The best thing about this PTE Coaching Institute in Mohali is that mock tests are conducted every Saturday in an environment similar to the real PTE exam.

Touchstone is a group of self-motivated, exceptionally dedicated experts with a determined spotlight to engage our students with the best PTE training in Mohali that empowers them to meet their objectives.

The mission of this PTE Institute is to develop students’ achievement by building world-wide standard capabilities of English correspondence, leading to self-satisfaction and intensity in a worldwide society.

Contact Details of Touchstone Institute

Address: SCF 94 Level 2, Phase 3B2, Mohali, Punjab, India

Business Phone Number: +91 172 500 0060

3rd Out of the Top 5 PTE Coaching Classes in Mohali

Grey Matters

Grey Matters, is one of the top institutes in Chandigarh which provides coaching for study abroad courses, IELTS, GMAT training, GRE, SAT, TOEFL Training. It is renowned institute in Chandigarh for its results. It is one stop solution for aspirants of GRE,IELTS. The faculty is well experienced. The overall success ratings of the institute is up to the mark. The students who enroll at Grey Matters, have an extra edge on others. The institute gives brilliant ground to the students. With the excellence in teaching methods, It is become the Top best Institute in Chandigarh. There are highly qualified teachers with professional teaching with regular tests that are going to help you to evaluate your regular performance. the highly qualified teachers teaches with the great teaching methodology, there are also doubt counters which help you to clear your doubts and get ahead of the confused students.

Contact Details of Grey Matters

Address: SCO:89, near KFC, Phase 3B2, Punjab 160060, India

Business Phone Number: 099888 92548

4th Out of the Top 5 PTE Coaching Classes in Mohali

Dolphin Head Hunters

Dolphin Head Hunters entered the education industry in the year of 2009 and eventually started offering the best IELTS Coaching in Chandigarh. Over a period of a decade, the reforms helped transform this institution into a big brand.

Carrying on from the legacy, Dolphins started the success rate in IELTS industry by giving top results in IELTS exam. Our sole aim is to provide the best IELTS coaching which can help the students to get their desired band score. We never hesitate to deliver what we promise.

We have hired highly experienced and renowned intellectuals for the post of IELTS Instructors who are also certified by IELTS testing authorities. Along with this, our range of facilities is tailored to the individual needs of each and every aspirant taking IELTS coaching here.

Based on the efforts rendered, our faculty has been awarded with many awards for providing holistic development to prepare all IELTS test modules with ease.

Contact Details of Dolphin Head Hunters

Address: SCO: 85-86, 2nd Floor, Sector 34-A, Chandigarh, 160022, Punjab, India

Business Phone Number: 0172-4005567 , 9780754465

Email: [email protected]

5th Out of the Top 5 PTE Coaching Classes in Mohali

British Career Group

This institute is one of the best centers for PTE coaching in Mohali, mainly because it stresses on all PTE based tasks such as grammar, rhythm, intonation and correct speech. The modules of the test are given individually and then combined the test as a whole. The students will also be required to solve online mock test series to gain a proper feel of the test.

Contact Details of British Career Group

Address: SCF – 54, 2nd Floor, Sector 61, Mohali, Punjab, India

Business Phone Number: 099889 22775

What is PTE?

PTE Academic is a computer-based academic English language test aimed at non-native English speakers studying abroad. It tests reading, listening and speaking and writing.

Questions often test 2 skills at once, such as listening and reading or reading and speaking. The entire test is done in a single session lasting 3 hours and is taken sitting at the computer in a secure testing environment. The speaking part of the exam is done on computer. Your voice is recorded and sent for marking.

PTE Exam Types

There are three types of PTE Exam

PTE Academic

This exam can be taken throughout the year as per the convenience of the examinee and the dates available. The reading, writing, speaking and listening skills of the candidate are tested in this exam format. The test is given on a computer at a secure test center. The validity of marks is 2 years.

PTE General

This test can be taken 3 times a year. May, June and December. You can check the available dates from the official website of PTE. This test consists of two parts: a written paper and an interview-like spoken test, where both parts evaluate the test taker’s reading, writing, speaking and listening skills with a more realistic approach. The test format includes six different proficiency levels designed to test and validate the test taker’s general English language abilities. The score is valid for a lifetime.

PTE young learners

This test is designed for children 6 to 13 years old. It includes story writing, picture matching, group speaking section and board game. It is a fun test

Incorporating real life scenarios to assess the English language skills of children in a stress free manner. The score is valid for a lifetime.

Format of PTE Exam

The PTE exam format is designed to assess the speaking, writing, listening and reading skills of the candidates in the English language. The PTE exam consists of three main parts – Speaking and Writing, Reading and Listening, which the candidates need to complete in 3 hours with a 10-minute break that alternates between the reading and listening parts. Various questions are asked in PTE exam from multiple choice, essay writing to information of interpretation. Given below is the detailed PTE Exam Pattern.

Speaking & Writing

This section tests a candidate’s spoken English as well as English writing skills in an academic environment. Candidates need to use correct grammar and spelling while writing the answers to the given questions. This part of PTE Academic Exam is divided into several smaller sections as mentioned in the above table. Candidates are given 77 to 93 minutes to complete the Speaking and Writing section.

Reading

This section assesses the reading skills of the candidates with a set of different questions such as multiple choice, rearranging paragraphs and filling in the blanks. The Reading section of the Pearson Test of English is 32 to 41 minutes long and evaluates a candidate’s understanding of written information in the English language. Candidates are advised to read the questions carefully and answer accordingly.

Listening

Listening is the last section of the PTE exam. Divided into various smaller parts, this section tests the candidate’s ability to understand spoken English. The questions covered in this section are based on an audio or video clip played only once for the candidates taking the test. So, they need to listen to the clip very carefully and make notes. The audio or video clips are generally of 60-90 seconds and candidates get 10 minutes to write their response in 50-70 words.

PTE Scoring

The PTE Score Report provides an overall score which is subsequently divided into two main categories: Communication Skills and Competent Skills. There are four contributors to your communication skills, namely listening, reading, speaking and writing. Your enabling skills made up of grammar, verbal fluency, pronunciation, spelling, vocabulary and written discourse.

To get a 20 score to immigrate to Australia, you must have an average score of 79 with a skill score of not less than 79. Let us see how the computer calculates the overall score of your PTE test score.

First, they add up all the scores of the enabling skill. Then, the sum is divided by 6 which is the number of items added. This number, which is the average sum of the enabling skills, becomes the fifth contributing factor along with the other four communication skills in the overall calculation of the PTE score. In other words, your enabling skills can indirectly help you raise your average. For example, I had a student who had no less than 79 skills, but had an average of 78. This meant that he could only claim 10 points instead of 20 as his average was not 79. Therefore, enabling skills can be decisive if your communication skill scores are borderline.

The overall score is usually rounded up, and once the average is above 88, it will be rounded up to 90 and the enabling skill average is automatically disregarded. PTE can see in the report card.

So let’s test this hypothesis by computing the average of some score reports. So first this one is: so I add up the enabling skill and then divide it by 6 and the result is 37.5. It will be the fifth contributor to the calculation of the overall score and the sum of communication skills plus competent skills average will be 189.5. When divided by 5, this sum will be 37.9 which will be rounded off to 38.

Now some shocking cases that don’t really add up and I haven’t found any explanation for them.

So here as you can see without even using the calculator you can see that the average of communication skills is 74ish and if you add 6 enabling skills, you will have 453 and dividing it by six You will get 75.5. Now if you add this figure to the above sum and divide it by 5, you will get an overage of 74.5. But as you can see here the total score by computer is 72.

Benefits of PTE

Global acceptance

PTE score is accepted and recognised by more than 6000 organisations around the globe. These organisations include educational institutions, immigration agencies, governments, and employers. Hence, it’s an ideal option for students to earn an English proficiency certificate for different purposes.

Quick exam results

The PTE exam has set a world record in 2013 to deliver more than 70 percent test results within three days. Usually, PTE provides the score within five business days of the exam date. Hence, PTE is an excellent option for students to apply for admission in foreign universities to avoid waiting for results.

Fair scoring

Automated software is used to check the answers of the candidates. No human interference is allowed in the examination or checking of grading. Hence there is no possibility of bias or bias in the examination.

No ambiguous questions

The questions found in the test are taken from real life examples and educational material. For example, short essays and multiple choice questions are useful in daily life.

Conclusion

Here are the Best Top 5 PTE Coaching Classes in Mohali. Nowadays, IELTS, TOEFL and PTE are some of the most popular English proficiency tests available in the market. The Pearson Test of English (PTE) is the latest entrance in the English Testing Department. Interestingly, PTE has gained popularity among the students in a very short span of time. The major factors in the popularity of the exam are safety, quick results and reliability. The PTE score is accepted for study, immigration and work in English-speaking countries.

The post Top 5 PTE Coaching Classes in Mohali appeared first on Digital Chandigarh.

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ecoamerica · 1 month

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youtube

Watch the 2024 American Climate Leadership Awards for High School Students now: https://youtu.be/5C-bb9PoRLc

The recording is now available on ecoAmerica's YouTube channel for viewers to be inspired by student climate leaders! Join Aishah-Nyeta Brown & Jerome Foster II and be inspired by student climate leaders as we recognize the High School Student finalists. Watch now to find out which student received the $25,000 grand prize and top recognition!

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emptymanuscript · 6 years

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Day 16: Magic

Magic is a little funny in All that Lies in Shadow. It can be divided into three basic types. Extrinsic Magic, Living Magic, Tongues of the Dead.

Extrinsic Magic is magic that is not native to humanity. This is magic that is gifted to an individual. Fae magic or demonic magic or a spell stolen from the place of a god’s power. Most magic that is gifted expires with the human but every so often that’s not a limitation that was set and the ghost of the human keeps the power. Sometimes it is even a ghost themselves that manages to get the power themselves but that is rare.

Living Magic, like Extrinsic Magic, is magic that comes from outside the world of the dead. It is mostly based on a ghost’s pre-death experience with magic. An alchemist like James does not instantly lose the knowledge of how to cast a spell or how to make a potion upon death. But the world of the dead is significantly less reactive than even our own low magic environment. So spellwork tends to be deeply muted in the underworld. Almost smothered. The main exception is clairvoyantl spells that seem to actually work a little better. Those who know any spells that are still powerful are usually taken right to the Demon Palace and given a place in the heirarchy where their skills can be used for the Empire’s benefit. Mostly ways that will keep the Empire under control.

The native magic of the dead, though, is their languages. Which they are reborn into the world of the dead babbling like a baby. Through trial and error or being taught, they develop their languages into significant powers. The Tongue of the Dead that almost everyone can use at good facility almost no one even recognizes is a power. It’s literally their ability to communicate with everyone. The dead assume they speak the language they spoke when they were alive but what they actually speak is a sort of ur language comprensible to everyone and they “speak” it just as well when they are listening as when they are talking. Their language gives them the ability to understand everyone as well as to speak to everyone.

Some other Tongues:

The Daughter’s Tongue: Allows the ghost to fly. And other aerial actions. At more sophisticated levels it is using the force of UP as opposed to the eternal pull of Down.

The Regretful Tongue: Allows the ghost to interact with the living world.

The Sharpest Tongue: Allows the ghost to wound, cut, and drive. It allows the division of one thing from another.

The Godlike Tongue: Almost exclusively known to the Emperor, this is the power to command with so much force that it requires obedience. Not just from people but also from things.

The Mighty Tongue (also called the Father’s Tongue): Gives the ghost vastly greater strength and physical abilities.

The Lover’s Tongue: Allows the ghost to keep tabs on other people, like always being able to know the direction they’re in.

The Skeining Tongue: Allows the ghost to trace connections between people and / or things.

The Prodding Tongue: Allows the ghost to force another’s memories, emotions, or sensations to the surface.

The Beholder’s Tongue: Allows the ghost to look like anything they want.

The Falling Tongue: Allows the ghost to lure other things into the world of the dead.

The Urging Tongue: Allows the ghosts to give others ideas to act on without absolutely forcing the matter.

The Canibal’s Tongue: Allows a ghost to consume the memories and sensations of another.

The Empathizer’s Tongue: Allows a ghost to interact with ruins and detritus as if they too were ghosts.

The Cleaving Tongue: Mostly the province of the Faceters, this allows the ghost to divide some part of a ghost’s personality/memory complex from the rest. Non-Faceters can do an immense amount of damage, even destroying by amateur mistakes without Faceter training.

The Bitter Tongue: Allows the ghost to batter the world directly with their feelings. Those who speak both some Regretful Tongue and some Bitter Tongue have what it takes to be a poltergeist.

The Venerable Tongue: JJ actually uses a ton of this without ever knowing about it. Discussions of it are generally limited to full citizens. This allows the ghost to cultivate and draw power from the emotions of others. When there seems to just be someone unseen participating in your life, that’s a ghost using this tongue.

The Crone’s Tongue: Allows the ghost to strengthen the natural forces of the underworld and Down, causing things to age and decay. Or to turn a victim’s hair old age white from fear.

The Slaver’s Tongue: Funnily enough, employed primarily by the Slavers Guild. The ability to dominate, control, and possess another. Slavers are, for the most part, forbidden from possessing the living.

The Gardener’s Tongue: Allows the ghost to bend and alter how the dead world grows from the living world, cultivating the multidimensionality of the space to their specifications.

The Counterfeiter’s Tongue: Allows the ghost to make objects out of their memories. This can be a marginal activity like pulling a penny out of your memory to pay your fair and minimal taxes with. It can also get hellishly nasty as fluency increases and a speaker can rip significant objects from another ghost, causing severe injury to enrich themselves with desired objects. It’s also possible to kill easily with this power. Taking someone’s wedding ring is likely to rip out significant and necessary chunks of their existence because all the connected memories go with the ring to make it real.

The Threshing Tongue or the Thieving Tongue: Most are not aware that this is the same magical language because the two types of groups that use it have significantly different goals. This is all about passage, ideally safe passage. Those who use it as the Threshing Tongue use it to master the safe paths through the underworld. Those who use it as the Thieving Tongue use it to find safe breaks in the armor of the veil between the worlds to quickly snatch objects from the living world.

The tongues are living things, like any language, but they change exceptionally slowly because the speakers tend not to switch over very quickly. They tend to evolve from the young accidentally stumbling on a new (or lost) method for implementing a tongue. But that rarely overrides the experts simply because most users aren’t very adept at any of their tongues. Without purposeful training they are using it like children. Most just speak a small smattering of a bunch of the tongues, enough to get by without doing anything impressive. Modern American ghosts are even worse than average because of the low incidence of multilingualism, so they are lacking part of the basic underlying mental skill that lets them use their powers. Even if you don’t say anything, the Tongues are linguistic in terms of how they have to be thought out to be used.

Tongues can be combined to some degree. The closer the syntax, the easier it is to just drop words in together. But mostly it is using one sentence in one language followed up by another sentence in another language and bouncing back and forth that way. Some more obscure languages are also constructed as daughter languages of two languages that were both useful to a single group. And they spent a long time figuring out a language that would work with both concepts. Those sorts of languages are very rare and usually the deep secret teachings of whatever guild or guild sect that developed the language.

As an example, there is the Absconder’s Tongue which bridges the Regretful Tongue and the Bitter Tongue and is really only useful for acting like a poltergeist. It was made by a small group in one of the Harvester Guilds who were using it to force fear out of living people to use as food. The Empire was not entirely pleased and killed most of the group but a few who towed the line and agreed to shift more directly under imperial control were allowed to form their own guild, The Chain Harvesters Guild, and still, carefully, practice the language. They do not teach any of it to outsiders, and will come after people they think have witnessed anything that would let them make some of it out. This isn’t just secretiveness on their part, this is also part of their agreement with the Empire, to keep it under wraps as the best way to keep it under control.

#wbj #wbj 2018 #world building #worldbuilding #The Knights of Day #the kingdom of all that lies in shadow

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maxxblog357 · 3 years

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Morphology And Syntaxchâu Thông Phan

This is the first of a sequence of lectures discussing various levels of linguistic analysis.

We'll start with morphology, which deals with morphemes (the minimal units of linguistic form and meaning), and how they make up words.

We'll then discuss phonology, which deals with phonemes (the meaningless elements that 'spell out' the sound of morphemes), and phonetics, which studies the way language is embodied in the activity of speaking, the resulting physical sounds, and the process of speech perception.

Syntax Object Gap Relative Clauses Overgeneralization Morphological Structures Coordin-ation Inflectional Words Compound words Center Emebedded Clauses MLU Bound Morpheme Index of Productive Syntax Right Branching Relative Clauses Morphological and Syntactic Development Sentences. Tips for Applying Morphology: Teach reading, writing, and meaning of sight words: Many high frequency words fall into the group of closed morphemes, words that do not change spelling in different contexts. Teach and continually practice with ELLs, to help with reading fluency, word solving, and writing. Morphology and syntax are an integral part of linguistics. They are subdivisions of the study of languages and together with phonetics, semantics and phonology contribute to the understanding of how a language is formed. Morphology deals with the understanding of how words are formed while syntax is focused on the way sentences are developed.

Then we'll look at syntax, which deals with the way that words are combined into phrases and sentences. Finally, we'll take up two aspects of meaning, namely semantics, which deals with how sentences are connected with things in the world outside of language, and pragmatics, which deals with how people use all the levels of language to communicate.

The peculiar nature of morphology

From a logical point of view, morphology is the oddest of the levels of linguistic analysis. Whenever I give this lecture to an introductory class, I'm always reminded of what the particle physicist Isidor Rabi said when he learned about the discovery of the muon: 'Who ordered that?' By serendipity, this morning's New York TImes has a review of a new book, 'The Hunting of the Quark', that tells the story:

In the fifth century B.C., that prescient Greek philosopher started humanity on its search for the universe's ultimate building blocks when he suggested that all matter was made of infinitesimally small particles called atoms. In 1897, the British physicist J. J. Thomson complicated the issue when he discovered the first subatomic particle, the electron. Later, others recognized the proton and neutron. As atom smashers grew in the next few decades, myriads of ephemeral particles appeared in the debris, a veritable Greek alphabet soup of lambdas, sigmas and pions. 'Who ordered that?' exclaimed the theorist Isidor I. Rabi when the muon was identified.

Given the basic design of human spoken language, the levels of phonology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics are arguably unavoidable. They needn't look exactly the way that they do, perhaps, but there has to be something to do the work of each of these levels.

But morphology is basically gratuitous, as well as complex and irregular: anything that a language does with morphology, it usually can also do more straightforwardly with syntax; and there is always some other language that does the same thing with syntax.

For instance, English morphology inflects nouns to specify plurality: thus dogs means 'more than one dog'. This inflection lets us be specific, in a compact way, about the distinction between one and more-than-one. Of course, we could always say the same thing in a more elaborated way, using the resources of syntax rather than morphology: more than one dog. If we want to be vague, we have to be long winded: one or more dogs.

Modern Standard Chinese (also known as 'Mandarin' or 'Putonghua') makes exactly the opposite choice: there is no morphological marking for plurality, so we can be succinctly vague about whether we mean one or more of something, while we need to be more long-winded if we want to be specific. Thus (in Pinyin orthography with tone numbers after each syllable):

1.na4er5you3gou3therehavedog'there's a dog or dogs there.'2.na4er5you3 ji3zhi1gou3therehaveseveralCLASSIFIERdog'there's dogs there'

As an example of another kind of morphological packaging, English can make iconify from icon and -ify, meaning 'make into an icon.' Perhaps it's nice to have a single word for it, but we could always have said 'make into an icon.' And many languages lack any general way to turn a noun X into a verb meaning 'to make into (an) X', and so must use the longer-winded mode of expression. Indeed, the process in English is rather erratic: we say vaporize not *vaporify, and emulsify not *emulsionify, and so on.

In fact, one of the ways that morphology typically differs from syntax is its combinatoric irregularity. Words are mostly combined logically and systematically. So when you exchange money for something you can be said to 'buy' it or to 'purchase' it -- we'd be surprised if (say) groceries, telephones and timepieces could only be 'purchased,' while clothing, automobiles and pencils could only be 'bought,' and things denoted by words of one syllable could only be 'acquired in exchange for money.'

Yet irrational combinatoric nonsense of this type happens all the time in morphology. Consider the adjectival forms of the names of countries or regions in English. There are at least a half a dozen different endings, and also many variations in how much of the name of the country is retained before the ending is added:

-eseBhutanese, Chinese, Guyanese, Japanese, Lebanese, Maltese, Portuguese, Taiwanese-anAfrican, Alaskan, American, Angolan, Cuban, Jamaican, Mexican, Nicaraguan-ianArgentinian, Armenian, Australian, Brazilian, Canadian, Egyptian, Ethiopian, Iranian, Jordanian, Palestinian, Serbian-ishIrish, British, Flemish, Polish, Scottish, Swedish-iAfghani, Iraqi, Israeli, Kuwaiti, Pakistani-?French, German, Greek

And you can't mix 'n match stems and endings here: *Taiwanian, *Egyptese, and so on just don't work.

To make it worse, the word for citizen of Xand the general adjectival form meaning associated with locality X are usually but not always the same. Exceptions include Pole/Polish, Swede/Swedish, Scot/Scottish, Greenlandic/Greenlander. And there are some oddities about pluralization: we talk about 'the French' and 'the Chinese' but 'the Greeks' and 'the Canadians'. The plural forms 'the Frenches' and 'the Chineses' are not even possible, and the singular forms 'the Greek' and 'the Canadian' mean something entirely different.

What a mess!

It's worse in some ways than having to memorize a completely different word in every case (like 'The Netherlands' and 'Dutch'), because there are just enough partial regularities to be confusing.

This brings up George W. Bush. For years, there has been a web feature at Slate magazine devoted to 'Bushisms', many if not most of them arising from his individual approach to English morphology. Some of the early and famous examples, from the 1999 presidential campaign, focus on the particular case under discussion here:

'If the East Timorians decide to revolt, I'm sure I'll have a statement.' Quoted by Maureen Dowd in the New YorkTimes, June 16, 1999

'Keep good relations with the Grecians.'Quoted in the Economist, June 12, 1999

'Kosovians can move back in.'CNN Inside Politics, April 9, 1999

President Bush, if these quotes are accurate, quite sensibly decided that -ian should be the default ending, after deletion of a final vowel if present. This follows the common model of Brazil::Brazilians and Canada::Canadians, and gives Bush's East Timor::East Timorians, Greece::Grecians and Kosovo::Kosovians, instead of the correct (but unpredictable) forms East Timorese, Greeks and Kosovars. And why not? The President's method is more logical than the way the English language handles it.

Despite these derivational anfractuosities, English morphology is simple and regular compared to the morphological systems of many other languages. One question we need to ask ourselves is: why do languages inflict morphology on their users -- and their politicians?

What is a word?

We've started talking blithely about words and morphemes as if it were obvious that these categories exist and that we know them when we see them. This assumption comes naturally to literate speakers of English, because we've learned through reading and writing where white space goes, which defines word boundaries for us; and we soon see many cases where English words have internal parts with separate meanings or grammatical functions, which must be morphemes.

In some languages, the application of these terms is even clearer. In languages like Latin, for example, words can usually be 'scrambled' into nearly any order in a phrase. As Allen and Greenough's New Latin Grammar says, 'In connected discourse the word most prominent in the speaker's mind comes first, and so on in order of prominence.'

Thus the simple two-word sentence facis amice'you act kindly'also occurs asamice facis with essentially the same meaning, but some difference in emphasis. However, the morphemes that make up each of these two words must occur in a fixed order and without anything inserted between them. The word amice combines the stem /amic-/ 'loving, friendly, kind' and the adverbial ending /-e/; we can't change the order of these, or put another word in between them. Likewise the verb stem /fac-/ 'do, make, act' and the inflectional ending /-is/ (second person singular present tense active) are fixed in their relationship in the word facis, and can't be reordered or separated.

Among many others, the modern Slavic languages such as Czech and Russian show a similar contrast between words freely circulating within phrases, and morphemes rigidly arranged within words. In such languages, the basic concepts of word and morpheme are natural and inevitable analytic categories.

In a language like English, where word order is much less free, we can still find evidence of a similar kind for the distinction between morphemes and words. For example, between two words we can usually insert some other words (without changing the basic meaning and relationship of the originals), while between two morphemes we usually can't.

Thus in the phrase 'she has arrived', we treat she and has as separate words, while the /-ed/ ending of arrived is treated as part of a larger word. In accordance with this, we can introduce other material into the white space between the words: 'she apparently has already arrived.' But there is no way to put anything at all in between /arrive/ and /-ed/. And there are other forms of the sentence in which the word order is different -- 'has she arrived?'; 'arrived, has she?' -- but no form in which the morphemes in arrived are re-ordered.

Tests of this kind don't entirely agree with the conventions of English writing. For example, we can't really stick other words in the middle of compound words like swim team and picture frame, at least not while maintaining the meanings and relationships of the words we started with. In this sense they are not very different from the morphemes in complex words like re+calibrate or consumer+ism, which we write 'solid', i.e. without spaces. A recent (and controversial) official spelling reform of German make changes in both directions splitting some compounds orthographically while merging others: old radfahren became new Rad fahren, but old Samstag morgen became new Samstagmorgen.

As this change emphasizes, the question of whether a morpheme sequence is written 'solid' is largely a matter of orthographic convention, and in any case may be variable even in a particular writing system. English speakers feel that many noun-noun compounds are words, even though they clearly contain other words, and may often be written with a space or a hyphen between them: 'sparkplug', 'shot glass'. These are common combinations with a meaning that is not entirely predictable from the meanings of their parts, and therefore they can be found as entries in most English dictionaries. But where should we draw the line? are all noun compounds to be considered words, including those where compounds are compounded? What about (say) government tobacco price support program? In ordinary usage, we'd be more inclined to call this a phrase, though it is technically correct to call it a 'compound noun' and thus in some sense a single -- though complex -- word. Of course, in German, the corresponding compound would probably be written solid, making its 'wordhood' plainer.

There are a number of interesting theories out there about why morphology exists, and why it has the properties that it does. If these theories turn out to be correct, then maybe linguistics will be as lucky with the complexities of morphology as physics was with 'Greek alphabet soup' of elementary particles discovered in the fifties and sixties, which turned out to be complex composites of quarks and leptons, composed according to the elegant laws of quantum chromodynamics.

Universality of the concepts 'word' and 'morpheme'

Do the concepts of word and morpheme then apply in all languages? The answer is '(probably) yes'. Certainly the concept of morpheme -- the minimal unit of form and meaning -- arises naturally in the analysis of every language.

The concept of word is trickier. There are at least two troublesome issues: making the distinction between words and phrases, and the status of certain grammatical formatives known as clitics.

Words vs. phrases

Since words can be made up of several morphemes, and may include several other words, it is easy to find cases where a particular sequence of elements might arguably be considered either a word or a phrase. We've already looked at the case of compounds in English.

In some languages, this boundary is even harder to draw. In the case of Chinese, the eminent linguist Y.R. Chao (1968: 136) says, 'Not every language has a kind of unit which behaves in most (not to speak all) respects as does the unit called 'word' . . . It is therefore a matter of fiat and not a question of fact whether to apply the word 'word' to a type of subunit in the Chinese sentence.' On the other hand, other linguists have argued that the distinction between words and phrases is both definable and useful in Chinese grammar. The Chinese writing system has no tradition of using spaces or other delimiters to mark word boundaries; and in fact the whole issue of how (and whether) to define 'words' in Chinese does not seem to have arisen until 1907, although the Chinese grammatical tradition goes back a couple of millennia.

Status of clitics

In most languages, there is a set of elements whose status as separate words seems ambiguous. Examples in English include the 'd (reduced form of 'would'), the infinitival to, and the article a, in I'd like to buy a dog. These forms certainly can't 'stand alone as a complete utterance', as some definitions of wordwould have it. The sound pattern of these 'little words' is also usually extremely reduced, in a way that makes them act like part of the words adjacent to them. There isn't any difference in pronunciation between the noun phrase a tack and the verb attack. However, these forms are like separate words in some other ways, especially in terms of how they combine with other words.

Members of this class of 'little words' are known as clitics. Their peculiar properties can be explained by assuming that they are independent elements at the syntactic level of analysis, but not at the phonological level. In other words, they both are and are not words. Some languages write clitics as separate words, while others write them together with their adjacent 'host' words. English writes most clitics separate, but uses the special 'apostrophe' separator for some clitics, such as the reduced forms of is, have and would ('s 've 'd), and possessive 's.

The possessive 's in English is an instructive example, because we can contrast its behavior with that of the plural s. These two morphemes are pronounced in exactly the same variable way, dependent on the sounds that precede them:

NounNoun + s (plural)Noun + s (possessive)Pronunciation (both) thrushthrushesthrush'siztoytoystoy'szblockblocksblock'ss

And neither the plural nor the possessive can be used by itself. So from this point of view, the possessive acts like a part of the noun, just as the plural does. However, the plural and possessive behave very differently in some other ways:

If we add a following modifier to a noun, the possessive follows the modifier, but the plural sticks with the head noun:

Morpheme stays with head nounMorpheme follows modifierPluralThe toys I bought yesterday were on sale.*The toy I bought yesterdays were on sale.Possessive *The toy's I bought yesterday price was special.The toy I bought yesterday's price was special.

In other words, the plural continues like part of the noun, but the possessive acts like a separate word, which follows the whole phrase containing the noun (even though it is merged in terms of sound with the last word of that noun phrase).

There are lots of nouns with irregular plurals, but none with irregular possessives:

Plural (irregular in these cases)Possessive (always regular)oxenox'sspectraspectrum'smicemouse's

Actually, English does have few irregular possessives: his,her, my, your, their. But these exceptions prove the rule: these pronominal possessives act like inflections, so that the possessor is always the referent of the pronoun itself, not of some larger phrase that it happens to be at the end of.

So the possessive 's in English is like a word in some ways, and like an inflectional morpheme in some others. This kind of mixed status is commonly found with words that express grammatical functions. It is one of the ways that morphology develops historically. As a historical matter, a clitic is likely to start out as a fully separate word, and then 'weaken' so as to merge phonologically with its hosts. In many cases, inflectional affixes may have been clitics at an earlier historical stage, and then lost their syntactic independence.

(A book that used to be the course text for LING001 lists the English possessive 's as an inflectional affix, and last year's version of these lecture notes followed the text in this regard. This is an easy mistake to make: in most languages with possessive morphemes, they behave like inflections, and it's natural to think of 's as analogous to (say) the Latin genitive case. Nevertheless, it's clear that English possessive 's is a clitic and not an inflectional affix.)

Words nevertheless useful

Important distinctions are often difficult to define for cases near the boundary. This is among the reasons that we have lawyers and courts. The relative difficulty of making a distinction is not a strong argument, one way or the other, for the value of that distinction: it's not always easy, for example, to distinguish homicide from other (and less serious) kinds of involvement in someone's death. Despite the difficulties of distinguishing word from phrase on one side and from morpheme on the other, most linguists find the concept of word useful and even essential in analyzing most languages.

In the end, we wind up with two definitions of word: the ordinary usage, where that exists (as it does for English or Spanish, and does not for Chinese); and a technical definition, emerging from a particular theory about language structure as applied to a specific language.

Relationship between words and morphemes

What is the relationship between words and morphemes? It's a hierarchical one: a word is made up of one or more morphemes. Most commonly, these morphemes are strung together, or concatenated, in a line. However, it is not uncommon to find non-concatenative morphemes. Thus the Arabic root /ktb/ 'write' has (among many other forms)

katabpefective activekutibperfective passiveaktubimperfective activeuktabimperfective passive

The three consonants of the root are not simply concatenated with other morphemes meaning things like 'imperfective' or 'passive', but rather are shuffled among the vowels and syllable positions that define the various forms. Still, a given word is still made up of a set of morphemes, it's just that the set is not combined by simple concatenation in all cases.

Simpler examples of non-concatenative morphology include infixes, like the insertion of emphatic words in English cases like 'un-frigging-believable', or Tagalog

bili'buy'binili'bought'basa'read'binasa'read' (past)sulat'write'sinulat'wrote'

Categories and subcategories of words and morphemes

The different types of words are variously called parts of speech, word classes, or lexical categories. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language gives this list of 8 for English:

noun pronoun verb adjective adverb conjunction preposition interjection

This set might be further subdivided: here is a list of 36 part-of-speech tags used in the Penn TreeBank project. Most of the increase (from 8 to 36) is by subdivision (e.g. 'noun' divided into 'singular common noun,' 'plural common noun,' 'singular proper noun,' 'plural proper noun,' etc., but there are a few extra odds and ends, such as 'cardinal number.'

Other descriptions of English have used slightly different ways of dividing the pie, but it is generally easy to see how one scheme translates into another. Looking across languages, we can see somewhat greater differences. For instance, some languages don't really distinguish between verbs and adjectives. In such languages, we can think of adjectives as a kind of verb: 'the grass greens,' rather than 'the grass is green.' Other differences reflect different structural choices. For instance, English words like in, on, under, with are called prepositions, and this name makes sense given that they precede the noun phrase they introduce: with a stick. In many languages, the words that correspond to English prepositions follow their noun phrase rather than preceding it, and are thus more properly called postpositions, as in the following Hindi example:

Ram cari-se kutte-ko mara Ram stick-with dog hit 'Ram hit the dog with an stick.'

Types of morphemes:

Bound Morphemes: cannot occur on their own, e.g. de- in detoxify, -tion in creation, -s in dogs, cran- in cranberry.

Free Morphemes: can occur as separate words, e.g. car, yes.

In a morphologically complex word -- a word composed of more than one morpheme -- one constituent may be considered as the basic one, the core of the form, with the others treated as being added on. The basic or core morpheme in such cases is referred to as the stem, root, or base, while the add-ons are affixes. Affixes that precede the stem are of course prefixes, while those that follow the stem are suffixes. Thus in rearranged, re- is a prefix, arrange is a stem, and -d is a suffix. Morphemes can also be infixes, which are inserted within another form. English doesn't really have any infixes, except perhaps for certain expletives in expressions like un-effing-believable or Kalama-effing-zoo.

Prefixes and suffixes are almost always bound, but what about the stems? Are they always free? In English, some stems that occur with negative prefixes are not free, such as -kemptand -sheveled. Bad jokes about some of these missing bound morphemes have become so frequent that they may re-enter common usage.

Morphemes can also be divided into the two categories of content and function morphemes, a distinction that is conceptually distinct from the free-bound distinction but that partially overlaps with it in practice.

The idea behind thisdistinction is that some morphemes express some general sort of referential or informational content, in a way that is as independent as possible of the grammatical system of a particular language -- while other morphemes are heavily tied to a grammatical function, expressing syntactic relationships between units in a sentence, or obligatorily-marked categories such as number or tense.

Thus (the stems of) nouns, verbs, adjectives are typically content morphemes: 'throw,' 'green,' 'Kim,' and 'sand' are all English content morphemes. Content morphemes are also often called open-class morphemes, because they belong to categories that are open to the invention of arbitrary new items. People are always making up or borrowing new morphemes in these categories.: 'smurf,' 'nuke,' 'byte,' 'grok.'

By contrast, prepositions ('to', 'by'), articles ('the', 'a'), pronouns ('she', 'his'), and conjunctions are typically function morphemes, since they either serve to tie elements together grammatically ('hit by a truck,' 'Kim and Leslie,' 'Lee saw his dog'), or express obligatory (in a given language!) morphological features like definiteness ('she found a table' or 'she found the table' but not '*she found table'). Function morphemes are also called 'closed-class' morphemes, because they belong to categories that are essentially closed to invention or borrowing -- it is very difficult to add a new preposition, article or pronoun.

For years, some people have tried to introduce non-gendered pronouns into English, for instance 'sie' (meaning either 'he' or 'she', but not 'it'). This is much harder to do than to get people to adopt a new noun or verb.

Try making up a new article. For instance, we could try to borrow from the Manding languages an article (written 'le') that means something like 'I'm focusing on this phrase as opposed to anything else I could have mentioned.' We'll just slip in this new article after the definite or indefinite 'the' or 'a' -- that's where it goes in Manding, though the rest of the order is completely different. Thus we would say 'Kim bought an apple at the-le fruit stand,' meaning 'it's the fruit stand (as opposed to anyplace else) where Kim bought an apple;' or 'Kim bought an-le apple at the fruit stand,' meaning 'it's an apple (as opposed to any other kind of fruit) that Kim bought at the fruit stand.'

This is a perfectly sensible kind of morpheme to have. Millions of West Africans use it every day. However, the chances of persuading the rest of the English-speaking community to adopt it are negligible.

In some ways the open/closed terminology is clearer than content/function, since obviously function morphemes also always have some content!

The concept of the morpheme does not directly map onto the units of sound that represent morphemes in speech. To do this, linguists developed the concept of the allomorph. Here is the definition given in a well-known linguistic workbook:

Allomorphs: Nondistinctive realizations of a particular morpheme that have the same function and are phonetically similar. For example, the English plural morpheme can appear as (s) as in cats, (z) as in dogs, or ('z) as in churches. Each of these three pronunciations is said to be an allomorph of the same morpheme.

Inflectional vs. Derivational Morphology

Another common distinction is the one between derivational and inflectional affixes.

Derivational morphemes makes new words from old ones. Thus creation is formed from create by adding a morpheme that makes nouns out of (some) verbs.

Derivational morphemes generally

change the part of speech or the basic meaning of a word. Thus -ment added to a verb forms a noun (judg-ment). re-activate means 'activate again.'

are not required by syntactic relations outside the word. Thus un-kind combines un- and kind into a single new word, but has no particular syntactic connections outside the word -- we can say he is unkind or he is kind or they are unkind or they are kind, depending on what we mean.

are often not productive or regular in form or meaning -- derivational morphemes can be selective about what they'll combine with, and may also have erratic effects on meaning. Thus the suffix -hood occurs with just a few nouns such as brother, neighbor, and knight, but not with most others. e.g., *friendhood, *daughterhood, or *candlehood. Furthermore 'brotherhood' can mean 'the state or relationship of being brothers,' but 'neighborhood' cannot mean 'the state or relationship of being neighbors.' Note however that some derivational affixes are quite regular in form and meaning, e.g. -ism.

typically occur 'inside' any inflectional affixes. Thus in governments, -ment, a derivational suffix, precedes -s, an inflectional suffix.

in English, may appear either as prefixes or suffixes: pre-arrange, arrange-ment.

Inflectional morphemes vary (or 'inflect') the form of words in order to express the grammatical features that a given language chooses, such as singular/plural or past/present tense.Thus Boy and boys, for example, are two different forms of the 'same' word. In English, we must choose the singular form or the plural form; if we choose the basic form with no affix, we have chosen the singular.

Inflectional Morphemes generally:

do not change basic syntactic category: thus big, bigg-er, bigg-est are all adjectives.

express grammatically-required features or indicate relations between different words in the sentence. Thus in Lee love-s Kim, -s marks the 3rd person singular present form of the verb, and also relates it to the 3rd singular subject Lee.

occur outside any derivational morphemes. Thus in ration-al-iz-ation-s the final -s is inflectional, and appears at the very end of the word, outside the derivational morphemes -al, -iz,-ation.

In English, are suffixes only.

Some examples of English derivational and inflectional morphemes:

derivational inflectional -ation -s Plural -ize -ed Past -ic -ing Progressive -y -er Comparative -ous -est Superlative

Properties of some derivational affixes in English:

-ationis added to a verbto give a nounfinalize confirm finalization confirmation un-is added to a verbto give a verbtie wind untie unwind un-is added to an adjectiveto give an adjectivehappy wise unhappy unwise -alis added to a nounto give an adjectiveinstitution universe institutional universal -izeis added to an adjectiveto give a verbconcrete solar concretize solarize

Keep in mind that most morphemes are neither derivational nor inflectional! For instance, the English morphemes Melissa, twist, tele-, and ouch.

Also, most linguists feel that the inflectional/derivational distinction is not a fundamental or foundational question at all, but just a sometimes-useful piece of terminology whose definitions involve a somewhat complex combination of more basic properties. Therefore we will not be surprised to find cases for which the application of the distinction is unclear.

For example, the English suffix -ing has several uses that are arguably on the borderline between inflection and derivation (along with other uses that are not).

One very regular use of -ing is to indicate progressive aspect in verbs, following forms of 'to be': She is going; he will be leaving; they had been asking. This use is generally considered an inflectional suffix, part of the system for marking tense and aspect in English verbs.

Another, closely related use is to make present participles of verbs, which are used like adjectives: Falling water; stinking mess; glowing embers. According to the rule that inflection doesn't change the lexical category, this should be a form of morphological derivation, since it changes verbs to adjectives. But in fact it is probably the same process, at least historically as is involved in marking progressive aspect on verbs, since 'being in the process of doing X' is one of the natural meanings of the adjectival form X-ing.

There is another, regular use of -ing to make verbal nouns: Flying can be dangerous; losing is painful. The -ing forms in these cases are often called gerunds. By the 'changes lexical categories' rule, this should also be a derivational affix, since it turns a verb into a noun. However, many people feel that such cases are determined by grammatical context, so that a phrase like Kim peeking around the corner surprised me actually is related to, or derived from, a tenseless form of the sentence Kim peeked around the corner. On this view, the affix -ing is a kind of inflection, since it creates a form of the verb appropriate for a particular grammatical situation, rather than making a new, independent word. Thus the decision about whether -ing is an inflection in this case depends on your analysis of the syntactic relationships involved.

It's for reasons like this that the distinction between inflectional and derivational affixes is just a sometimes-convenient descriptive one, and not a basic distinction in theory.

What is the meaning of an affix?

The meanings of derivational affixes are sometimes clear, but often are obscured by changes that occur over time. The following two sets of examples show that the prefix un- is easily interpreted as 'not' when applied to adjectives, and as a reversing action when applied to verbs, but the prefix con- is more opaque.

un- untieunshackleunharnessunhappyuntimelyunthinkableunmentionable

con- constitutionconfessconnectcontractcontendconspirecomplete

Are derivational affixes sensitive to the historical source of the roots they attach to?

Although English is a Germanic language, and most of its basic vocabulary derives from Old English, there is also a sizeable vocabulary that derives from Romance (Latin and French). Some English affixes, such as re-, attach freely to vocabulary from both sources. Other affixes, such as '-ation', are more limited.

ROOT tie consider free form free form Germanic root Latinate root SOURCEOld English tygan, 'to tie' Latin considerare, 'to examine' PREFIX retie reconsider SUFFIX reties reconsiders retyingreconsideration retyingsreconsiderations

The suffix -ize, which some prescriptivists object to in words like hospitalize, has a long and venerable history.

According to Hans Marchand, in The Categories and Types of Present-Day English Word Formation (University of Alabama Press, 1969), the suffix -ize comes originally from the Greek -izo. Many words ending with this suffix passed from Ecclesiastical Greek into Latin, where, by the fourth century, they had become established as verbs with the ending -izare, such as barbarizare, catechizare, christianizare. In Old French we find many such verbs, belonging primarily to the ecclesistical sphere: baptiser (11th c.), canoniser (13th c.), exorciser (14th c.).

The first -ize words to be found in English are loans with both a French and Latin pattern such as baptize (1297), catechize, and organize (both 15th c.) Towards the end of the 16th century, however, we come across many new formations in English, such as bastardize, equalize, popularize, and womanize. The formal and semantic patterns were the same as those from the borrowed French and Latin forms, but owing to the renewed study of Greek, the educated had become more familiar with its vocabulary and used the patterns of Old Greek word formation freely.

Between 1580 and 1700, the disciplines of literature, medicine, natural science and theology introduced a great deal of new terminology into the language. Some of the terms still in use today include criticize, fertilize, humanize, naturalize, satirize, sterilize, and symbolize. The growth of science contributed vast numbers of -ize formations through the 19th century and into the 20th.

The -ize words collected by students in in this class nine years ago show that -ize is almost entirely restricted to Romance vocabulary, the only exceptions we found being womanize and winterize. Even though most contemporary English speakers are not consciously aware of which words in their vocabulary are from which source, they have respected this distinction in coining new words.

Constituent Structure of Words

The constituent morphemes of a word can be organized into a branching or hierarchical structure, sometimes called a tree structure. Consider the word unusable. It contains three morphemes:

prefix 'un-'

verb stem 'use'

suffix '-able'

What is the structure? Is it first 'use' + '-able' to make 'usable', then combined with 'un-' to make 'unusable'? or is it first 'un-' + 'use' to make 'unuse', then combined with '-able' to make 'unusable'? Since 'unuse' doesn't exist in English, while 'usable' does, we prefer the first structure, which corresponds to the tree shown below.

This analysis is supported by the general behavior of these affixes. There is a prefix 'un-' that attaches to adjectives to make adjectives with a negative meaning ('unhurt', 'untrue', 'unhandy', etc.). And there is a suffix '-able' that attaches to verbs and forms adjectives ('believable', 'fixable', 'readable'). This gives us the analysis pictured above. There is no way to combine a prefix 'un-' directly with the verb 'use', so the other logically-possible structure won't work.

Now let's consider the word 'unlockable'. This also consists of three morphemes:

prefix 'un-'

verb stem 'lock'

suffix '-able'

This time, though, a little thought shows us that there are two different meanings for this word: one corresponding to the left-hand figure, meaning 'not lockable,' and a second one corresponding to the right-hand figure, meaning 'able to be unlocked.'

In fact, un- can indeed attach to (some) verbs: untie, unbutton, uncover, uncage, unwrap.. Larry Horn (1988) points out that the verbs that permit prefixation with un- are those that effect a change in state in some object, the form with un- denoting the undoing (!)of that change.

This lets us account for the two senses of 'unlockable'. We can combine the suffix -able with the verb lock to form an adjective lockable, and then combine the prefix un- with lockable to make a new adjective unlockable, meaning 'not able to be locked'. Or we can combine the prefix un- with the verb lock to form a new verb unlock, and the combine the suffix -able with unlock to form an adjective unlockable, meaning 'able to be unlocked'.

Morphology And Syntaxch&acirc U Th&ocirc Ng Phan Mem

By making explicit the different possible hierarchies for a single word, we can better understand why its meaning might be ambiguous.

Morphology FAQ

These questions and answers are based on some patterns of error observed in homeworks and exams in previous years.

Can a word = a morpheme?

Yes, at least in the sense that a word may contain exactly one morpheme:

Word (=Morpheme) Word Class car noun thank verb true adjective succotash noun gosh interjection under preposition she pronoun so conjunction often adverb

Are there morphemes that are not words?

Yes, none of the following morphemes is a word:

Morpheme Category un- prefix dis- prefix -ness suffix -s suffix kempt (as in unkempt)bound morpheme

Can a word = a syllable?

Yes, at least in the sense that a word may consist of exactly one syllable:

Word Word Class car noun work verb in preposition whoops interjection

Are there morphemes that are not syllables?

Yes, some of the following morphemes consist of more than one syllable; some of them are less than a syllable:

Morpheme Word Class under preposition (> syll.) spider noun (> syll.) -s 'plural' (< syll.)

Are there syllables that are not morphemes?

Yes, many syllables are 'less' than morphemes. Just because youcan break a word into two or more syllables does not mean it must consistof more than one morpheme!

Word Syllables Comments kayak (ka.yak) neither ka nor yak is a morpheme broccoli (bro.ko.li) or (brok.li) neither bro nor brok nor ko nor liis a morpheme angle (ang.gle) neither ang nor gle is a morpheme jungle (jung.gle) neither jung nor gle is a morpheme

So (if you were wondering -- and yes, some people have trouble with this) there is no necessary relationship between syllables, morphemes, and words. Each is an independent unit of structure.

What are the major differences between derivational and inflectional affixes?

First, it's worth saying that most linguists today consider this distinction as a piece of convenient descriptive terminology, without any fundamental theoretical status. Then we can point to the basic meanings of the terms: derivational affixes 'derive' new words from old ones, while inflectional affixes 'inflect' words for certain grammatical or semantic properties.

derivational inflectional position closer to stem further from stem addable on to? yes not in Englishmeaning?(often) unpredictablepredictablechanges word class?maybeno

Are clitics inflectional or derivational morphemes?

The answer would depend on your definitions -- and as we explained earlier, the categories of 'inflection' and 'derivation' are descriptive terms that really don't have a strong theoretical basis. However, based on comparison to typical examples of inflectional and derivational affixes, the answer seems to be 'neither', in that clitics are not really lexical affixes at all.

This is the first of a sequence of lectures discussing various levels of linguistic analysis.

We'll start with morphology, which deals with morphemes (the minimal units of linguistic form and meaning), and how they make up words.

The peculiar nature of morphology

1.na4er5you3gou3therehavedog'there's a dog or dogs there.'2.na4er5you3 ji3zhi1gou3therehaveseveralCLASSIFIERdog'there's dogs there'

And you can't mix 'n match stems and endings here: *Taiwanian, *Egyptese, and so on just don't work.

What a mess!

It's worse in some ways than having to memorize a completely different word in every case (like 'The Netherlands' and 'Dutch'), because there are just enough partial regularities to be confusing.

'If the East Timorians decide to revolt, I'm sure I'll have a statement.' Quoted by Maureen Dowd in the New YorkTimes, June 16, 1999

'Keep good relations with the Grecians.'Quoted in the Economist, June 12, 1999

'Kosovians can move back in.'CNN Inside Politics, April 9, 1999

What is a word?

Morphology And Syntaxch&acirc U Th&ocirc Ng Phan Thiet

Universality of the concepts 'word' and 'morpheme'

The concept of word is trickier. There are at least two troublesome issues: making the distinction between words and phrases, and the status of certain grammatical formatives known as clitics.

Words vs. phrases

Status of clitics

In most languages, there is a set of elements whose status as separate words seems ambiguous. Examples in English include the 'd (reduced form of 'would'), the infinitival to, and the article a, in I'd like to buy a dog. These forms certainly can't 'stand alone as a complete utterance', as some definitions of wordwould have it. Best app for voip sennheiser macro. The sound pattern of these 'little words' is also usually extremely reduced, in a way that makes them act like part of the words adjacent to them. There isn't any difference in pronunciation between the noun phrase a tack and the verb attack. However, these forms are like separate words in some other ways, especially in terms of how they combine with other words.

NounNoun + s (plural)Noun + s (possessive)Pronunciation (both) thrushthrushesthrush'siztoytoystoy'szblockblocksblock'ss

If we add a following modifier to a noun, the possessive follows the modifier, but the plural sticks with the head noun:

There are lots of nouns with irregular plurals, but none with irregular possessives:

Plural (irregular in these cases)Possessive (always regular)oxenox'sspectraspectrum'smicemouse's

Words nevertheless useful

In the end, we wind up with two definitions of word Download gun disassembly 2 for macvirtuallasopa. : the ordinary usage, where that exists (as it does for English or Spanish, and does not for Chinese); and a technical definition, emerging from a particular theory about language structure as applied to a specific language.

Relationship between words and morphemes

katabpefective activekutibperfective passiveaktubimperfective activeuktabimperfective passive

Simpler examples of non-concatenative morphology include infixes, like the insertion of emphatic words in English cases like 'un-frigging-believable', or Tagalog

bili'buy'binili'bought'basa'read'binasa'read' (past)sulat'write'sinulat'wrote'

Categories and subcategories of words and morphemes

The different types of words are variously called parts of speech, word classes, or lexical categories. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language gives this list of 8 for English:

noun pronoun verb adjective adverb conjunction preposition interjection

Ram cari-se kutte-ko mara Ram stick-with dog hit 'Ram hit the dog with an stick.'

Types of morphemes:

Bound Morphemes: cannot occur on their own, e.g. de- in detoxify, -tion in creation, -s in dogs, cran- in cranberry.

Free Morphemes: can occur as separate words, e.g. car, yes.

In some ways the open/closed terminology is clearer than content/function, since obviously function morphemes also always have some content!

Inflectional vs. Derivational Morphology

Another common distinction is the one between derivational and inflectional affixes.

Derivational morphemes makes new words from old ones. Thus creation is formed from create by adding a morpheme that makes nouns out of (some) verbs.

Derivational morphemes generally

change the part of speech or the basic meaning of a word. Thus -ment added to a verb forms a noun (judg-ment). re-activate means 'activate again.'

typically occur 'inside' any inflectional affixes. Thus in governments, -ment, a derivational suffix, precedes -s, an inflectional suffix.

in English, may appear either as prefixes or suffixes: pre-arrange, arrange-ment.

Inflectional Morphemes generally:

do not change basic syntactic category: thus big, bigg-er, bigg-est are all adjectives.

occur outside any derivational morphemes. Thus in ration-al-iz-ation-s the final -s is inflectional, and appears at the very end of the word, outside the derivational morphemes -al, -iz,-ation.

In English, are suffixes only.

Some examples of English derivational and inflectional morphemes:

derivational inflectional -ation -s Plural -ize -ed Past -ic -ing Progressive -y -er Comparative -ous -est Superlative

Properties of some derivational affixes in English:

Keep in mind that most morphemes are neither derivational nor inflectional! For instance, the English morphemes Melissa, twist, tele-, and ouch.

For example, the English suffix -ing has several uses that are arguably on the borderline between inflection and derivation (along with other uses that are not).

It's for reasons like this that the distinction between inflectional and derivational affixes is just a sometimes-convenient descriptive one, and not a basic distinction in theory.

What is the meaning of an affix?

un- untieunshackleunharnessunhappyuntimelyunthinkableunmentionable

con- constitutionconfessconnectcontractcontendconspirecomplete

Morphology And Syntaxch&acirc U Th&ocirc Ng Phan Rang

Are derivational affixes sensitive to the historical source of the roots they attach to?

The suffix -ize, which some prescriptivists object to in words like hospitalize, has a long and venerable history.

Constituent Structure of Words

The constituent morphemes of a word can be organized into a branching or hierarchical structure, sometimes called a tree structure. Consider the word unusable. It contains three morphemes:

prefix 'un-'

verb stem 'use'

suffix '-able'

Now let's consider the word 'unlockable'. This also consists of three morphemes:

prefix 'un-'

verb stem 'lock'

suffix '-able'

By making explicit the different possible hierarchies for a single word, we can better understand why its meaning might be ambiguous.

Morphology FAQ

These questions and answers are based on some patterns of error observed in homeworks and exams in previous years.

Can a word = a morpheme?

Yes, at least in the sense that a word may contain exactly one morpheme:

Word (=Morpheme) Word Class car noun thank verb true adjective succotash noun gosh interjection under preposition she pronoun so conjunction often adverb

Morphology And Syntaxch&acirc U Th&ocirc Ng Phantom

Are there morphemes that are not words?

Yes, none of the following morphemes is a word:

Morpheme Category un- prefix dis- prefix -ness suffix -s suffix kempt (as in unkempt)bound morpheme

Can a word = a syllable?

Yes, at least in the sense that a word may consist of exactly one syllable:

Word Word Class car noun work verb in preposition whoops interjection

Are there morphemes that are not syllables?

Yes, some of the following morphemes consist of more than one syllable; some of them are less than a syllable:

Morpheme Word Class under preposition (> syll.) spider noun (> syll.) -s 'plural' (< syll.)

Are there syllables that are not morphemes?

Yes, many syllables are 'less' than morphemes. Just because youcan break a word into two or more syllables does not mean it must consistof more than one morpheme!

So (if you were wondering -- and yes, some people have trouble with this) there is no necessary relationship between syllables, morphemes, and words. Each is an independent unit of structure.

What are the major differences between derivational and inflectional affixes?

derivational inflectional position closer to stem further from stem addable on to? yes not in Englishmeaning?(often) unpredictablepredictablechanges word class?maybeno

Are clitics inflectional or derivational morphemes?

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scifimagpie · 6 years

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Want to Write Better Books? Stop Watching Television

When it comes to storytelling, most of us grow up immersed in visual language. Television and movies and Youtube series can be extremely potent, and tell inspiring stories - but when it comes to translating that storytelling method to the page, they can be a writer's worst enemy.

I can always tell when people have been watching more TV than reading books because there's a similar pattern of errors. Drawing from my own screw-ups and experiences and combining them with things I've learned from reading hundreds of books, I've compiled a useful list intended for newer writers with an eye on publishing.

At the risk of bowing to clickbait with my title, I'd like to make a case for aspiring writers to scale back their television-watching time and spend that on short and long-form fiction. Even fanfiction inspired by TV can help exercise that writing muscle more than watching stories alone, and I've made the reasons why into an easy-to-read list.

1) TV writing is often bad and illogical

There's no good way to put this - the behaviour of characters on Lifetime made-for-TV movies, criminal dramas, and night-time dramas or medical shows is often exaggerated and vastly distant from reality. The best TV shows and movies do have good writing - but let's be honest; we don't always watch the best of the best. That's not a bad thing, but when it comes to writing, 'you are what you eat' is very much an applicable idiom.

It's hard to write emotionally authentic decisions and ethical debates when paranormal teenagers are fighting in the most dramatic ways possible. Because of the narrative constraints of episodic storytelling, which is the norm for continuing TV shows, antagonists are often thinly written and illogical, and characters who conflict with the main cast tend to be cruel, rude, or selfish in ways that an actual human person would not dare to be when confronted or opposed. Villains and antagonists are an important part of every story, and they're usually the biggest letdown, because their actions are often dictated by whatever inflicts the most suffering on main characters. Shows have to compress as much interest in the problem-of-the-week as possible, while still adhering to the (usually more complex) long-term plot.

The thing is, these are really bad habits for writers to pick up. It's taken me a lot of work to unlearn the villain-of-convenience habit. Antagonists and villains need to have strong motivations - even stronger than the protagonist(s)', at times. Otherwise, their actions make no sense on a fundamental level, and the narrative thread of the story will completely unravel. This is not to say that antagonists and villains have to be "evil" per se - in fact, evil is usually a matter of perspective. However, stories are driven by what people want and the people who want things. If they don't have a thing they want that remains somewhat consistent, or has a reason for changing, the story will sputter and its engine will stop turning over.

2) Visual storytelling and literary storytelling are different mediums

This sounds obvious, but hear me out. In working on a recent project, a character went up the stairs after a party, took off her jewelry, texted her friend - and suddenly, her abusive alcoholic father appeared in her room and started threatening her. The scene was clearly patterned after the classic "jump scare" style.

The problem is that jump scares don't work in written fiction. In order to mimic the effect created by a jump scare, we have to break down the scene and the rising tension created by it. A camera panning around and showing the scene, the slow shot of a character walking up the stairs, and the subtle tension created by having a character do ordinary things without realising that they are in danger may not be conveyed by simply saying that character walks up the stairs, takes off their jewelry, and prepares to use the bathroom. Those words don't express the information conveyed by the same camera shots and edits, or by the creeping shriek of violins or synth music in a score. Words can express that tension - but not if writers take what they see on TV (or computer) screens at face value.

Mimicry is not enough. We have to understand why things happen and why we are shown or given certain pieces of information, and why things are portrayed in certain ways. We must learn to see the framing devices used in fiction of all kinds, not accept them as the way the world works.

3) Hide things from the reader

As the audience, we may not realise that storytelling techniques are being used to convey a story, because we're busy reacting to it. That's okay! It's good to watch or read something and just experience the emotions intended, and enjoy the ride of the story. However, if a book has a deep impact on you, and you admire it, it's worth reading the book at least one more time to try and see the places where it was most effective.

For example, in a tense scene, a character might scan a room, looking for a weapon, and the author or narrator may describe the contents of said room.

In a dingy hotel, a bed covered in rumpled sheets, the bolted-down lamps and furniture and a clunky television may not offer much. As the character looks around, they might notice there are some glasses on the bureau or in the bathroom, and pick those up, hoping to throw them at the assailant pounding on their door.

In this vignette, the words 'pounding', 'dingy', and 'rumpled' offer the most descriptive power. However, we don't know what the antagonist on the other side of the door looks like, what kind of weapons they have, if any, or even what their name is. While there might be a little more context in a book, the very limited scope of this one scene shows that using immediacy and restricting the view and information available to the reader can create more tension.

I often see this problem in longer-form works as well - and I've certainly made the mistake myself: the error of trying to cram in too much exposition in the first few chapters. It's hard not to worry that an audience will get lost or miss something, but audiences just don't need as much information to enjoy a story as authors do to write it.

4) All books are not created equal

Some books are designed to convey a story as efficiently as possible, often to meet the reader's emotional needs - this is the case for most commercial fiction. Some books are intended to please the reader's intellect or evoke more complex emotions, and often take their time in the storytelling or break rules - this is often the case for literary fiction. Upmarket fiction combines both of these needs. That's not to say that commercial fiction can't have moments of beauty, or that literary fiction can't be fun to read, but it's important to know that these two broad types of fiction have different goals - and that both have their advantages and disadvantages.

It's important to know which markets your book is destined for, and to be honest about it with yourself. Do you write weird fiction that kind of straddles genres and has little philosophical narrative kicks? Do you secretly just want to write fun books about sex and guns? Do you like writing about kissing and emotional drama, but crave a good plot to complicate things? There are readers who want books like each of these, and looking for similar books to yours can help you figure out who will want to read it.

It's vitally important not to confuse the people you want to impress with the people who will probably read your book. I've made this mistake. It's hard not to want to change the world with a book, but you're more likely to achieve that goal if you get the book into the hands of people who will like it in the first place - enthusiastic readers will share what they like, and word of mouth is still the oldest and strongest form of marketing.

5) If you're working in a medium, engage with it

Having a good vocabulary is essential. This seems like a daunting task - how do we learn more words? Where do we even get the words? How do we know which words are better to use? However, it's not as bad as it sounds. Reading non-fiction news articles in one's Facebook feed can help; honestly, just snatching everything with written words in it and picking it up to read it, even warning signs in bathroom stalls or advertisements at bus stops, can make a difference.

Of course, books and short stories are an ideal place to start. Short stories and short story collections can be a great way to work more fiction into your diet. Ideally, it's best to read a wide variety of books. Having favorite authors is fine, and having favorite genres is fine, but both a) reading widely within your genre and b) reading widely in general will help you try new things and expose you to different ideas and inspirations. Have you ever read a western? An old Harlequin bodice-ripper? A modern romance novel? Women's fiction? A techno-thriller? African-American literary fiction? A gay coming-of-age tale? Grab something off the shelf with your eyes closed and start reading - you don't even have to start from the beginning, if you really don't want to, but try to give the strange new book a chance.

The more you read, the more comfortable your brain will become with the storytelling methods, conventions, and styles that authors use. It's not about copying people or being 'unoriginal', although those are okay for practice techniques - it's about fluency. Writing well is very difficult if you don't read!

6) Emotions are important

Just putting in a description of a character's actions doesn't convey their mood, emotions, or what's going on inside their heads. It can - but it's essential to think about why a character is doing something, and which life experiences have contributed to the decision they're undertaking in that moment. People never just do things - and stopping to consider why a character grabs a wire hanger to fight back, whether they'd cower or flee, and whether they'd be able to speak their thoughts honestly are all vital to communication.

In daily life, we may hesitate to speak or act frankly, and that's not always a bad thing. There's something to be said for honesty, but there's also something to be said for respecting the feelings and desires or needs of others. For example, if Manpreet and Cynthia are friends, and Cynthia is wearing a new sweater she just finished knitting, Manpreet may want to tell her the sweater is ugly. But then Manpreet's desire for validation of her opinion will conflict with Cynthia's need for validation of her efforts. There's nothing wrong with these conflicts, nor with learning when to hold one's tongue or put something carefully, and expressing that characters are going through those steps is a great way to show conflict and emotion in a work of fiction.

7) Traditional literature may not be for you

Frankly, I think more authors should try different storytelling formats just to see if they find one that's a better fit. Books tend to be the default for creative storytelling, but honestly, they're just not for everyone because they don't always skew to people's internal storytelling style. Sometimes books just don't play to people's strengths. People who are dialogue-oriented may find that plays do the trick. People who like visuals that are continuous may want to try out writing screenplays of various kinds. Still others may want to try writing graphic novels, and either hiring illustrators or illustrating work themselves. The trick is to figure out how you think - in pictures? In moments? In words? - and find the medium that expresses your feelings and thoughts most adequately.

Telling a story is an act of communication, and to communicate well requires a lot of effort, practice, and study. New authors should consider this before rushing to publish their first work, because the enthusiasm and fire of the story experience inside an author's head may be different from the experience of the reader from going through content on the page.

Ultimately, writing is hard. There's a reason that career authors, amateurs, and aspiring writers often despair over it. And honestly, that's okay. There's a joy to the process of learning techniques, to finding the right word. Anything worth doing is worth doing well, because it's easier to get appreciation from others if your work is careful and shows skill.

8) Writing a good book means creating a book to be read

This is always the hardest part of storytelling. Do we, as writers, craft stories we want to read and tell, or for our audience? Sometimes a weird cross-genre story works, and sometimes a story pulls from so many different genres and influences and goes in so many directions that it's hard to see who will pick up on it. Many of us may dream of adulation or praise from masses of readers, but putting faces on those masses is the important part. It's okay to want that - but wanting it alone is not enough to grant it, and merely creating something is not enough to deserve fame and praise.

It's not about 'that mediocre book that's doing so well! I could write better!' - it's about writing better than yourself. It's hard, during the honeymoon phase of completing a project, not to feel like it's the apex of creative works in one's native language. If I sound sarcastic, it's because I know this euphoric high, and I know the unfortunate consequences of trusting it too blithely. Simply put, the problem is not even bad reviews - it's crickets. Unless a book is waterproofed beyond the 'good enough' state, it may not be worth reading.

All creative works are risks, and to attain the prizes of money and positive attention, it's worth making sure a book makes sense from an external perspective, and is a satisfying read. Of course, not every friend or person you know will be an ideal member of your reading audience, so finding anonymous or professional beta readers can be very helpful - even if just for the sake of seeing how a book comes across to someone who knows very little about it. You may find that your book is very appealing for a reason you totally did not anticipate.

Above all, writing the book isn't about you. It's about the audience, the characters, or the story itself.

9) Publishing is scary and hard

It's okay to be overwhelmed from time to time. It's not even that I'm trying to discourage people from putting their books out for mass consumption - it's that I want to help people make sure the books they put out are as good as possible. There's no such thing as a bad book, just an imperfect book; 99.99% of books that have issues can be saved with a good editor or editors, multiple sets of eyes, and a willingness to tweak and revise.

Drafting books is a process. It took me years to get over the idea that one draft was enough, and that I'd get every idea and nuance down in one go-through. That isn't the case, and it rarely is for many authors! Eventually, realising that I just had to get down a skeleton, and that I could modify and elaborate on things when I had the patience for them, was tremendously freeing. Not only have I stopped hating revisions, I look forward to them. When you know in your bones that the scene and the story feels right, few experiences compare to that.

Publishing, however, is a lot of work - getting used to learning about advertising, knowing where to find information about advertising, buying a cover, researching genres, writing a good blurb, finding people to hire for these various services - it can really add up to an ordeal. Still, doing all that work is a little easier and a lot more rewarding if you feel a rock-hard certainty about the quality of the book in the first place - and it can even make the other stuff easier, because you know what to draw from and what to look at.

10) If all else fails, Google is your friend

Just going for a Google safari or searching around on Amazon isn't something most of us do anymore - our 'wasted time' on the internet usually involves going to a website we already know or frequent regularly, clicking through content, and scrolling through various newsfeeds. However, these habitual paths may not yield as much information when preparing to publish. Simply going to Amazon or Google as if you were looking for a new book and entering various keywords in the search bar - things associated with your book or genre, like 'science', 'scientist', 'adventure', 'comet', 'asteroid', 'crash', 'aliens', or other pertinent terms - can be surprisingly fruitful.

You can also look up books (or shows) you admire and see what people read after reading or watching them. The more books you have to compare to, the more readers will understand your book's place in the market or library. Referencing shows and movies in a blurb is not ideal.

At he end of the day, I'm glad so many people take the leap into trying to write, and finishing projects, but actually trying to sell a book to readers isn't the same thing as merely writing for the satisfaction of it. And writing privately for satisfaction is fine! It's just that when a book hits either an editor's desk or the market, it should be as ready for readers' eyes as possible, and thoroughly vetted - even if it's been self-published.

*** Michelle Browne is a sci fi/fantasy writer. She lives in Lethbridge, AB with her partner-in-crime and their cat. Her days revolve around freelance editing, knitting, jewelry, and nightmares, as well as social justice issues. She is currently working on the next books in her series, other people's manuscripts, and drinking as much tea as humanly possible. Catch up with Michelle's news on the mailing list. Her books are available on Amazon, and she is also active on Medium, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Tumblr, and the original blog.

#writing #how to #write #writers #new writer #new author #publishing #tv #television #books #book #how to publish #ya

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jlslipakauthorthriller · 6 years

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1. Too many American children don’t read well Thirty-three percent of American fourth graders read below the “basic” level on the National Assessment of Educational Progress reading test. The “basic” level is defined as “partial mastery of the prerequisite knowledge and skills that are fundamental for proficient work at each grade.” (NAEP Reading Report Card)

2. An achievement gaps exists Many students enter kindergarten performing below their peers and remain behind as they move through the grades. Differences in language, exposure to print and background experiences multiply as students confront more challenging reading material in the upper grades. There is a well-established correlation between prior knowledge and reading comprehension: students who have it, get it. Students who don’t, don’t. The differences are quantifiable as early as age 3 (Hart & Risley, 2003). For some subgroups of students, the reading failure rate is even higher than their same-age peers: 52% of black students, 51% of Hispanic students, and 49% of students in poverty all scored Below Basic on the NAEP assessment. High-need students have chronic difficulty in the classroom, and teachers must be prepared to meet the challenges they face.

3. Learning to read is complex Reading is a complex process that draws upon many skills that need to be developed at the same time. Marilyn Adams (1990) compares the operation of the reading system to the operation of a car. Unlike drivers, though, readers also need to: Build the car (develop the mechanical systems for identifying words) Maintain the car (fuel it with print, fix up problems along the way, and make sure it runs smoothly). And, most importantly, drive the car (which requires us to be motivated, strategic, and mindful of the route we’re taking). Cars are built by assembling the parts separately and fastening them together. “In contrast, the parts of the reading system are not discrete. We cannot proceed by completing each individual sub-system and then fastening it to one another. Rather, the parts of the reading system must grow together. They must grow to one another and from one another.”(Adams et al., 1990, pp.20-21). The ultimate goal of reading is to make meaning from print, and a vehicle in good working order is required to help us reach that goal.

4. Teachers should teach with the end goal in mind Because learning to read is complex, the most accomplished teachers learn to teach with the end goal of readers and learners in mind. Teachers working with young children learn to balance the various components of reading, including phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension in their every day teaching. The very best teachers integrate the components while fostering a love of books, words, and stories.

5. Kids who struggle usually have problems sounding out words Difficulties in decoding and word recognition are at the core of most reading difficulties. Poor readers have difficulty understanding that sounds in words are linked to certain letters and letter patterns. This is called the “alphabetic principle.” The reason many poor readers don’t attain the alphabetic principle is because they haven’t developed phonemic awareness — being aware that words are made up of speech sounds, or phonemes (Lyon, 1997). When word recognition isn’t automatic, reading isn’t fluent, and comprehension suffers.

6. What happens before school matters a lot What preschoolers know before they enter school is strongly related to how easily they learn to read in first grade. Three predictors of reading achievement that children learn before they get to school are: The ability to recognize and name letters of the alphabet General knowledge about print (understanding, for example, which is the front of the book and which is the back and how to turn the pages of a book). Awareness of phonemes (the sounds in words). Reading aloud together builds these knowledge and skills. As a result, reading aloud with children is the single most important activity for parents and caregivers to do to prepare children to learn to read. (Adams, 1990).

7. Learning to read is closely tied to learning to talk and listen Families and caregivers need to talk and listen to young children in order to help them learn a lot of the skills they will need for reading. When a child says "cook" and her father says, “Would you like a cookie?” he is building her knowledge of vocabulary, sentence structure, syntax, and purposes for communication — all of which will help her become a reader in later years. When a caregiver sings rhymes and plays word games with the children she cares for, she is helping them recognize the sounds in words (phonemic awareness). Children with language, hearing, or speech problems need to be identified early so they can receive the help they need to prevent later reading difficulties.

8. Without help, struggling readers continue to struggle Many children learn to read by first grade regardless of the type of instruction they receive. The children who don’t learn, however, don’t seem able to catch up on their own. More than 88 percent of children who have difficulty reading at the end of first grade display similar difficulties at the end of fourth grade (Juel, 1988). And three-quarters of students who are poor readers in third grade will remain poor readers in high school (Shaywitz et al., 1997). These facts highlight the importance of providing a strong foundation for reading birth through age five.

9. With help, struggling readers can succeed For 85 to 90 percent of poor readers, prevention and early intervention programs can increase reading skills to average reading levels. These programs, however, need to combine instruction in phoneme awareness, phonics, spelling, reading fluency, and reading comprehension strategies, and must be provided by well-trained teachers (Lyon, 1997). As many as two-thirds of reading disabled children can become average or above-average readers if they are identified early and taught appropriately (Vellutino et al., 1996; Fletcher & Lyon, 1998). These facts underscore the value of having a highly trained teacher in every classroom.

10. Teaching kids to read is a team effort Parents, teachers, caregivers, and members of the community must recognize the important role they can play in helping children learn to read. The research shows that what families do makes a difference, what teachers do makes a difference, and what community programs do makes a difference. It’s time for all those who work with children to work together to ensure that every child learns to read. It is our shared responsibility.

10 Things You Should Know About Reading, by Reading Rockets 1. Too many American children don't read well Thirty-three percent of American fourth graders read below the "basic" level on the National Assessment of Educational Progress reading test.

#books #child #children&039;s books #educational #learning #Middle grade #preschoolers #read #reader #reading #reading aloud #toddlers

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olla-village · 4 years

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Language biography -My Chinese adventure

1. Here I am 18 years old

So, here I am, 18 years old confused monolingual… Finished my community college just to realize that I hate spending so much time in front of computer screens, writing code at nights, powered by coffee and greasy junk food.

18 years old meant that I was an adult, at least both I and law of the country agreed on that… I could buy cigarettes, alcohol and tickets to other countries even if my parents were against it. I didn’t need to ask anyone’s permission. It felt like freedom. Freedom comes with responsibility, but that’s the whole different story.

2. It was time for something big It was time for something big.But for what? When I was younger I liked to travel to nearby cities by busses and hitchhiking. It was a mixture of being lost, on purpose… and finding something new after every trip. Traveling was my form of learning and escaping from problems at the same time.

This time I was really lost.No direction. Hitchhiking for a week didn’t help. Yes, I tried. I needed a new medicine. I tried, like many of us nowadays, to find the answer online. Almighty Google knows it all.I didn’t know what to ask. So I decided to look at my bookmarks.

There was a website I read for more than 4 years. Or so. I guess. It is called Magazeta. They also do a podcast. Not some goofy cast, but LaowaiCast. They discuss everything about China through the eyes of laowais, speak Chinese fluently and seem to have all kinds of fun there in the mysterious country.

3. I decided to join them

I decided to become one of them, join this strange tribe. To become a laowai. A proper living in China laowai. And not an expat, who just hangs out with westerners, but a Chinese-speaking laowai. I figured out how much money I needed to study Chinese for a year, found 2 jobs that’d allow me to earn enough in 3 months. June, July and August. I became a taxi-driver, and began to work at a construction site. Not bad for a guy who majored in programming, eh? At least, there were no computers.At all. No screens, not even sunscreen. None of that, nada! I kept researching my new dreamland, China. Almighty Google told me that for my budget and for language learning Top2 options were Tianjin because Mandarin there is very standard, but it is cheaper than Beijing and Shenzhen, the most Mandarin-speaking city in Guangdong. I chose Shenzhen. It’s tropical and close to Hong Kong. I watched many Hong Kong movies as a kid and was interested in Kung Fu.

After working for 14 hours a day for 3 months I hated my jobs enough and was ready to fly to my dreamland. So I did. I kissed my parents and my girlfriend good bye and started my new scary laowai adventure. 4. I didn’t learn Chinese before went to China I didn’t learn any Chinese before I went to Shenzhen because I read online that it’d destroy my pronunciation forever. So I followed advice of someone Almighty Google led me too. I was proud that I would’t learn broken pronunciation. Stupid. After a few, quite a few days of trains and planes, I arrived in Shenzhen. It was another planet. Humid, incomprehensible, green, terrifying and extremely friendly. No Kung Fu skills required. Beginner friendly.

I ordered a service of an interpreter who would meet me in the airport and help me to get to the hotel, the first and the last time in my life. He was quite surprised when I asked if he has a knife or at least keys when we got to an ATM. It was hard to explain why I sewed my bank-card in my pocket, but he understood that in my country people like to pick pockets. Not the best advertisement for a country, but I was determined and didn’t want to let thieves destroy my plan. 5. Soon I didn’t go to lessons at all So I got a dorm room, figure out where I can buy pillow and started to learn Chinese in class, but soon I found that I was not able to say tones right and I was late for my writing classes on purpose, to skip that annoying dictation where I’d make a mistake in every character. Soon I didn’t go to lessons at all. I joined Wing Chun classes and hung out with other laowais and Chinese folks instead. My roommate also taught me some Chinese, especially survival kind of stuff or how to ask for cigarettes on the street, his teaching skills were particularly awesome when he was drunk. Sometimes when I met my classmates in campus they asked me why I gave up on learning Chinese, I said that I don’t go to classes, but I still learn Chinese. I hated that one guy who said he learns Chinese just to read stuff and that he doesn’t care about speaking since there’s no reason to talk with Chinese people, what a prick! I don’t hate him anymore. At that time I called my approach “just learn”. It meant learning without homework and tone drills. 6. Laowai life was fun I spent 4 months like this. I was so busy practicing wing chun, playing football, buying fake shoes, hanging out and exploring Shenzhen that sometimes I forgot to eat for 2 or 3 days. That’s why I sometimes stole my roommate’s sushi that he’d get for free every night. Thanks to well-cooking people who lived in the girls’ dormitory, I was never hungry. I think I looked so skinny they just wanted to feed me on the level of instincts… Long story short, laowai life was fun, colorful and cheap for those who lived in campus. At least, it was for me. For 4 months or so. And then it was over. The End. Game over. I had to go back home for what I call family reasons. I didn’t finish my 1 year Mandarin course. It was also hard to get my deposit money back, but I did. It was really good for my Mandarin skills. My WeChat was full of contacts. I packed all the tea, gifts I got from strangers in my friend’s dorm and stinky clothes. I was and wasn’t ready to leave. I told my friends that I’d be back for sure, which I doubted.

The END or To be Continued? That is the question. At that moment, I connected language to living in that country. 7. I missed China and Chinese Don’t live in China = don’t learn Chinese. So, obviously I gave up learning languages and broke up with my girlfriend. Luckily, I found a lazy job where I could play my phone almost all the time. For several months I just lived in my memories about China and felt some hole growing inside me. I didn’t understand where it was coming from. One cannot go and live abroad and then come back to the farm and pretend it didn’t happen. It is going to change anyone, no matter how hard this naïve person is trying to ignore it. I needed to fill that emptiness. I tried a few things. They didn’t work. Until one day I saw an ad about learning Chinese just by listening. Like literally sitting on my bottom, which I was already doing, I was even getting paid for that, and learning… Chinese! The language of my dream/nostalgia land. I was nowhere near fluency at that moment. Upperbeginner at best. I missed China and Chinese Pod became my new way to connect to the land of rice and cuteness. That emptiness inside was filled. Except for … it wasn’t. But things were getting better, way better. I felt alive again. Or maybe it was that nice Turkish coffee I was drinking while I listened to Chinese Pod? Then I thought that just listening, even good listening was not enough for that hole somewhere inside me. So I thought I need… people! But I still wanna sit on my bottom so if I find people online, I don’t need to spend extra time after job. Multitasking for the win. 8. I started my new job I found hellotalk and some similar apps with similar names. Hellotalk was the best one, but at that time it was slow, sometimes a message was sent 4 hours or a day later, so I stole people from there by asking their whatsApp number. I started to realize that the missing ingredient in my life, besides people, was Chinese language. I also realized that escapism and dreaming about faraway lands was not an ideal solution. In search of a perfect combination of people and languages, I decided to join a university. I wanted to study Chinese, but they told me that they have teachers, but not so many students want to learn Chinese. Interpretation was not available that year. What a weird year! The only choice was teaching English, which sounded tasty at that moment, since I also wanted to change my job at that moment. I asked for all the details about exams and stuff. It was nice except for the fact that that stinking girl tricked me and I was preparing for master degree entrance exams instead of what I really needed because I was the first one who wanted to join that university that year and she didn’t really know what to tell me. It was a surprise, but I passed it super well, like top2 or something. Probably because I prepared for something way more difficult, thanks to that stinking girl. My score was a big surprise for me, since I’ve never been a top student. At the same time I started my new job. I was a tutor. Teaching kids English.1 on 1. Learning my major by practice. It was awesome. Language became my bread and peanut butter. 9. I found my jam. It was olla. But I still needed jelly! Peanut butter sandwiches are fine, but they’re nothing like peanut butter jelly ones!

That Sunday I planned to have some rest for my brain and body. So I got a lot of nesquik and scrolled mindlessly through countless web pages full of memes and stupid videos. Until I saw an ad for a language learning app on some page where people who learn English hang out. In comments I read that most users were Chinese. These comments were written in a negative tone, but for me it was pure treasure. Here, I found my jam. It was olla. By that time, hellotalk and its clones were deleted and forgotten for a long time, but I gave olla as much of my precious SD storage and space on the screen as it wanted. I liked it for no particular reason, as I thought back then. Now I do understand that other apps couldn’t provide this kind of sense of community as olla did. It was alive, lively and vivid.

10. It was addictive

It was a perfect place for me to practice my languages. My way to do it was to provoke people, often it meant arguing with them. I learned to be provocative in many languages. I also learned to pretend to be from different countries. The most difficult one was Australia. Controversy and gossip were my fuel. It was not just any drama, it was international. Better than Argentinian TV series! I tried many ways to catch attention, I hope that psychologists and my future employers don’t read how much of an attention seeker and drama queen I was. A few times I deleted an app and said it was shitty publically, while actually I loved it but was busy studying in my university and knew that I don’t have enough will power to keep studying while olla was still on my phone, it’d be too much of a distraction. It was addictive. Before I deleted it, I posted my email on olla plaza. Jessica was worried or surprised or something of this nature and wrote me an email. She helped me to deliver my messages to my biggest language buddy. It was one directional isolation and made me way more mysterious than I’ve ever been before. Because of me being such a d... dumbass, many people hated me, but many liked me. Many mentioned that they missed me, I knew it through gossip and screenshots. Imagine the size of my ego at that moment… After a while, I realized what other apps lacked completely and why they didn’t deserve my storage and screen space. Sense of community + drama, gossip and controversy (people crave it) + many people from different countries in the same room. Cultures don’t merge this way in 1 on 1 conversations. Other platforms also have many people from different countries,but they try to find you a match, a perfect partner. Perfect is boring. In olla people didn’t match perfectly and it was beautiful. It was colorful. It was my home anywhere I went. 11. I couldn’t stay like this forever I couldn’t stay like this forever. All of us eventually get boring, also known as serious. I was a university student after all. Gotta be pretentious and stuff. They call it professional. I started to read a lot of SLA (Second Language Acquisition) research, just like people read news or comics. As a result, I realized that my“just learning” intuitive approach to languages was actually consistent with research. Even gossip and drama. But mostly community and compelling input. It is kind of the same thing.

Not only I pretty much filled that emptiness by languages, I also came to the point where my experience met science\research. Like yin and yang.

12. I started to plan to get back to China After that, I decided to get my life together again and I started to plan how to get back to China. I didn’t get any good idea how to do it, but I started to save money and told my classmates and buddies that most probably I will go to China again. Fake it till you make it works every time. I also told some folks on olla about my plan. I really do consider olla to be my hometown and I did find real life friends there. I think it’s safe to say that I spent more time on olla than with my real life friends. I also spent a lot of time with my offline friends, but they can be less available than something tiny in my cheap phonethat opens the door to my friends. Wait, olla is real, so it’s also real life. People there are real. Language learning there is real as well. Wrong dichotomy. So I spent more time in my olla hometown than in another one because it felt warmer and closer.

My best language buddy who already became my friend decided to help me make my second laowai life happen much faster than I imagined and invited me to join olla team. I pretended that I am so cool and need to think for 1 day or so, like it is not a big deal, when in reality it was dreams come true type of deal, at that moment I was already packing my small backpack and getting ready for the second chapter of China. This time it was Guangzhou.

To be continued.

You can read my language buddy’s story here

(my story https://wordpress.com/block-editor/post/ollaolla.home.blog/40)

Bear

2019/10/1

#olla #natural learning #olla talking #easy way to learn Chinese #chinese adventure #story #Language biography

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engineerbabuinc · 4 years

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How to Set Up an Offshore Development Center in India?

Are you a technology firm looking forward to expand and focus on the global market with an offshore development center? You definitely must have come across the saying for young and ambitious people that “West is Best”.

It’s very confusing to decide whether or not to go for an offshore development center when majority of the people believe that California is the place for entrepreneurs to begin at. Especially those working in technology, seeking funding and network connections.

But are you for some reason, not able to start in the Silicon Valley?

For any business, growth and scalability are essential. If you’re an entrepreneur in IT, always take this fact as a given that you might have to expand your team in the near future. And expanding your team is a costly yet inevitable venture. The challenges of finding economically feasible options in the Valley are well known in the industry.

An offshore development center in India is the right solution for you! It completely makes sense for you to explore the options for hiring the right group of software developers and experts

Is India a Right Destination for an Offshore Development Center?

Did you know that there are 25 unicorns in India so far, where 15 have been from 2018 alone! The list includes Zomato, Shopclues, Udaan, Swiggy, OYO, Paytm Mall, Freshworks, Billdesk, Byju’s, Ola Cabs, PolicyBazaar and more.

It’s not a secret that Indian Developers work at a fraction of salary as compared to counterparts from other parts of the world. It’s a pretty huge country with a massive young population that has IT professionals and Computer Science majors in abundance.

More than 50% of the Indian developers are working on a yearly salary of less than $10,000.

We found some really interesting stats about the average annual salary of Developers in India:

2.5 times lesser than that of developers all over the world,

5 times lesser than the average salary in the US,

4 times lesser than the average salary in the UK, and

3 times lesser than the average salary in Germany.

How important is Customer Satisfaction in the Indian Information Technology (IT) Service Industry?

Imagine getting a cake baked for your Boss’s birthday and the baker messing up with what goes up on it. A bad code is exactly like that. You cannot risk writing a bad code. Web/app development requires immense attention in managing operations and resources. Every customer is very particular about what problems their IT solution/product would be catering to.

A lot of Indian IT firms keep customer satisfaction as their utmost priority. And it shows in the various practices they’ve implemented in their working culture. India hosts a huge pool of talented developers who offer budget-friendly solutions. While looking for somebody from India, time-zones and communication will not become an issue. Along with a tailor-made hiring process, you get 24*7 support and a highly productive team.

How efficient are Indian Developers?

The pricing is not the only deciding factor for hiring developers. Specially for setting up an offshore development center! If you want to hire, your first priority is somebody who knows how to write a good code.

There’s plenty of myths around Indian developers. But the truth is that the Indian job market for junior developer roles is incredibly crowded. They are no doubt paid lesser than the more experienced roles, but it makes them competitive for entry-level jobs.

What it takes is the right people. If you could get the right ten thousand people to move from Silicon Valley to Buffalo, Buffalo would become Silicon Valley.

–Paul Graham (Founder, Y Combinator)

A domain matters a lot when it comes to app/web development. Domain specialty increases the success rate exponentially. Teams holding expertise in developing social media websites will not deliver the same results for developing an e-commerce portal. Just look for the right team to outsource your project, and you will not be disappointed.

Introducing you to the commercial capital of Central India, Indore

The Silicon Valley of Central India

Everybody across the globe knows that Bangalore is the Silicon Valley of India. But Indore is catching up to the startup culture at its slow, but steady speed. It is still in its development stage. So if you are planning to set up an offshore development center in Indore, this is the best time for it.

When we think of Tier-2 cities as a potential market, Indore is a little different from all the others.

According to market research platform Tracxn, Indore has 461 tech startups! This list includes WittyFeed and ShopKirana.

The latter recently got a funding worth $10 million in Series B Funding. Prior to this round, the company had raised $2.1 Mn. The fresh funds will be used to expand the company’s presence in major Tier 2 cities.

As per India’s first ever ‘Ease of Living‘ index, Indore ranks 8th on the list of Top Ten Livable Cities. Indore also stood on the position 5th in identify and culture, 8th in health, 4th in economy and employment and 7th in power supply categories. (Source)

Good Connectivity, Educational and Employment Opportunities:

Access to a good startup ecosystem, talent, presence of venture capitalists and financial institutions are a must for making a city a Startup Capital. Indore has been witnessing a massive growth in every sector- be it educational or commercial.

The Tier-2 city has great road, rail and air connectivity. City boasts of its International Airport and Super Corridor: a 250 ft wide connecting the airport to the city. This road is a budding place for MNCs and companies like TCS and Infosys. Also, the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor is nearby. Impetus, Yash Technologies, CSC and Infobeans already have a presence in Indore.

The market is dynamic and almost all inexpensive to international brands already have ventured here, which is a plus point. Force Motors, M&M, Cipla, Lupin, Glenmark, Bridgestone, Volvo, Eicher Motors, and various other brands are operating in Indore.

Also, Indore is the only city in India that has both IIM and IIT. Along with that, there’s SGSITS, NMIMS and various reputed B-schools as well.

There’s literally next to no traffic jams!

Unlike Bangalore, Indore doesn’t face the issue of traffic clogged streets and roads. It will not take you more than an hour to travel from any given point of Indore to the other!

It’s true. Indorians really do love their jobs!

The inter-city travel is extremely convenient and affordable because of the iBus service. It’s a government-funded service and all the buses are operated by a semi-government agency AICTSL. In addition to that, several local transport startups like Ola Cabs, Uber, Jugnoo, etc also operate in the city.

How to set up an Offshore Development Center in Indore?

Building and managing a tech team is cumbersome. Founders usually end up wasting a lot of time, effort and money. Offshoring a development process simply means, relocating the part of business to some other place. There are several IT companies in India facilitating the same. However, as mentioned earlier, you have to be very careful when choosing one for your project.

EngineerBabu, Indore

EngineerBabu is an IT services company based in Indore, specialized in building MVP (Minimum Viable Product) for startups and enterprises. With our extremely innovative, dedicated & experienced team of 50+ geeks, we have developed robust & scalable solutions that help our clients to overcome their technical hurdles, and launch amazing products and services.

In the last 5 years, we have worked with more than 700 startups, and many of them have got massive funding (including latest $30MN in Bankopen). We are a profitable startup making a $70,000 monthly recurring revenue!

Two of our clients’ products have been selected in Y-combinator and MIT DeltaV. Also, Harvard Innovation Lab Startups are also a part of our portfolio.

Our clients include reputed brands like Samsung, YourStory, FrankGreen, IBM, BankOpen, Honeywell, Uber and HSBC bank, to name a few. Profitable startups like ZoomCar, Ondoor, Justride, MaalGaadi, Thrillophilia, Tooreest, Jokaamo, etc are some others. We have developed mobile apps for several other sectors like- Grocery Delivery, EduTech, Business Networking, FinTech, Service Providers, etc. Check out our complete portfolio here.

Pros of setting up an Offshore Development Center with EngineerBabu

We are very particular about thorough assessment of all candidates to take skills assessment tests. We do this to ensure that we’re hiring the best. And when you hire our development teams, they will be 100% dedicated to you and the project. It means that you’ll be in control of the team and product, till you get the desired results.

Just decide when to reduce or increase the size of the development team. All we’ll need from you is a 30 days notice. Our team’s schedule will always be in sync with your schedule. And each employee gets assessed for english language fluency for effective communication with you and your team. No more headache about the offshore development team not being aligned to your process and workflow!

We have been featured by YourStory for having a great culture! We don’t have any designated chairs for our employees, and neither does the boss!

A beautiful office where our employees are happy. Without worrying about anything, they just focus on creating the best products for you!

We provide every team member with laptops, fiber internet, and all the necessary tools and equipment to effectively do the job.

Also, in case you need to make a visit personally, we will be taking care of all the accommodation arrangements for you. We will take care of all the legal hassles. And you don’t have to worry about signing long term contracts with us. Everything is going to be mutually discussed and agreed upon!

Events and Initiatives at EngineerBabu:

We are known for running a conventional business in very unconventional ways. We keep hosting and organizing learning Saturdays and more such events for our employees on weekends regularly. They’re even open to outsiders with nominal or no charges.

Here’s the pictures of the most recent event hosted at EngineerBabu: “Startup Weekend Indore“.

So much happens in just 54 hours! It was a great concept that helped budding entrepreneurs to know the realities of the startup world before starting up. There were winners as young as students from Class XII! A lot of innovation and good ideas came out of the that lasted for just 54 hours- One weekend!

Do you have any prior experience working with offshore development centers based in India? Let us know how was your experience, and what could’ve made the process even smoother for you and your team.

We hope this was worth value to you in helping you decide about the pros and cons of an offshore development center in India. If there’s any further queries, you can drop a comment in the comment section below. You can also simply shoot an email to us at [email protected].

Still not convinced about setting up your offshore development center in India? Don’t worry. We’re just one click away!

Talk to Us

#offshore development center #work from home developers

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cecillewhite · 5 years

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Podcast 29: Growing an Online Training Business – With the Co-Founder of DataCamp

WELCOME TO EPISODE 29 OF THE TALENTED LEARNING SHOW

To learn more about this podcast series or to see the full collection of episodes visit The Talented Learning Show main page.

EPISODE 29 – TOPIC SUMMARY AND GUEST:

Today we welcome Martijn Theuwissen, Co-Founder of DataCamp, a company devoted to making data science education accessible to all.

Martijn Theuwissen, DataCamp Co-Founder

Martijn’s story is instructive for multiple reasons:

He knows first-hand what it takes to grow a successful online training business.

He works on the frontlines of the skills gap, helping individuals and employers prepare to compete in an increasingly data-driven economy.

He’s committed to a broader mission – empowering people from all walks of life to develop data fluency.

I think you’ll agree, this interview offers useful advice for every learning professional.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

Demand for data science education is exploding, as organizations around the world strive to become more data-driven.

In a fast-moving market like data science, online training providers can gain a competitive advantage by accelerating their content development speed.

Other factors also contribute to the success of online training ventures. At DataCamp, those factors include a scalable business model, a smart technology strategy, high-quality instruction and customer feedback loops that drive continuous improvement.

Q&A HIGHLIGHTS:

Martijn, could you start by telling us about your background?

Sure. I’m from Belgium and I have a degree in finance and accounting. Actually, I have only one year of corporate experience, working in sales and marketing at The Coca-Cola Company.

But soon after I started at Coca-Cola, I discovered that I’m much better suited to an entrepreneurial environment than a large corporation. So, around six years ago, I co-founded DataCamp.

Wow. It took me 20 years to reach that point. What inspired you to go into online training?

Well, to be honest, it was a very lucky accident.

The best kind of accident…

Actually, multiple elements came into play:

I’ve always had a passion for education. Since I was about 12 years old, I’ve been involved with student boards, student unions and education nonprofits.

When I was looking for startup opportunities in 2014, my co-founder was teaching statistics at university.

And coincidentally, that was the year of the MOOC (massively open online course), with platforms like edX and Coursera getting a lot of traction.

Right…

So, this combination of factors became the foundation of DataCamp:

Our entrepreneurial drive

Passion for improving data science education, and

Interest in developing innovative technology.

Why did you specialize in data analytics?

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Online training companies like Codecademy (programming skills) and Duolingo (language skills) were using digital technology to provide a better learning experience for specialized training.

So we decided to create something similar for statistics and data science because we understand that domain.

Mm-hmm…

We envisioned an environment where people get individualized feedback based on the mistakes they make while they’re actually typing in code. This provides a much more engaging learning experience with much higher completion rates.

Great. So how do you define data science?

Data science is basically everything involved with analyzing data.

There are many different definitions. But in my opinion, the moment you start playing around with data, you’re doing some form of data science. And by organizing and analyzing data effectively, you can make better decisions.

How big is the market for data science education?

These days, data is tracked and stored everywhere. Demand is growing very rapidly for people with data science skills who can analyze all of this available data. It touches every industry and function.

For example, HR professionals use machine learning to screen profiles when hiring. That requires data science expertise.

Or think of digital advertising platforms like Facebook or Google. They provide a bunch of data that you can analyze to optimize online marketing campaigns. This requires data fluency.

We’re also seeing an enormous uptick in consulting firms that play a key role in helping companies facilitate full-scale digital transformation.

How wide is the gap between the need for data science skills and the availability of competent people? Is that why so many consultancies are springing up?

Yeah, there is definitely a gap. In the past, data lived in the IT department. Now every department has access to a massive amount of data. But unfortunately, many business people don’t have enough knowledge to work with all the data that’s available to them.

In fact, about three years ago, McKinsey published an excellent study about the need for analytics talent. Even then, there was a shortage of 1.5 million data-savvy people.

Actually, everyone benefits from at least a basic level of data literacy. That’s why we like to say that data science skills are no longer only for data scientists. The same way that writing skills aren’t just for authors.

Good point. You talk a lot about the need to democratize data science. What do you mean by that?

It’s really about getting essential data skills in the hands of everyone who needs it. We’re trying to do this at a reasonable price point.

It’s also important for people to learn wherever and whenever they want – especially when they work full-time or have other commitments.

We want to empower everyone – students, employees and independent professionals – to develop basic data fluency or even the expertise to work as full-time data scientists.

Nice…

That’s important for business because data scientists are often located in their own department or in IT. This makes communication more difficult and creates bottlenecks when others need help from an analyst.

But if everyone has data science knowledge, you can dramatically improve communication. Also, when individuals across your organization are empowered to do their own basic analysis, your data scientists can focus on more complex issues.

So democratizing data science is beneficial for individuals, as well as their organizations.

How does your online training business help close that data skills gap?

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DataCamp is a solution that helps anyone learn data science skills in an online interactive environment.

Our goal was to create a very engaging environment for people to develop the basic skills of data analytics and data science, over time. And since our launch in 2014, our customer base has grown to more than 4 million learners.

Impressive!

Yeah. Lots of people want to learn this. So we serve individuals as well as businesses. We started by focusing on individuals who use it to upskill or prepare for a career shift.

And lately, we’re seeing a lot of traction with enterprise businesses as well. Over 1500 B2B customers now use DataCamp, mostly to upskill or reskill their workforce.

Amazing. How did you grow to 4 million users in just 5 short years?

It’s been a wild journey. I think DataCamp’s success comes from a combination of things.

The timing was good. But it’s also the product, itself. We’ve focused on data science from the start, which created traction in our core community.

Makes sense…

We started with one language, which was R. That’s basically an open-source programming language used in data analysis.

Then we added more and more languages. Python. And then SQL. Now we even have courses without any coding requirements, such as fundamental data science courses and spreadsheet skills.

That kind of incremental expansion is a smart strategy…

We were lucky to start the company when data science was just beginning its massive growth. Plus, online training has been going through a significant transformation, itself. So we were there at the right time to scale.

Yep…

And every course is created by a team of internal and external subject matter experts. We now have more than 270 instructors, who are known and respected in their domain. That also draws people to our platform.

So those are the reasons why we’ve grown to more than 4 million learners in such a short time.

Outstanding! That’s great to get 270 industry experts to contribute as instructors.

Yes…

What about the content itself? How is it organized?

Our philosophy is, “Learn, practice, apply.” In other words, you:

Learn with our courses

Practice with repeatable exercises you can access through your mobile phone or on your desktop, and

Apply with real-life projects you complete in the cloud.

What does this online training content look like? Do you integrate video? How do interactive elements work?

Each course takes around 4 hours to complete.

For every hour of content, there are about 15 minutes of passive learning through videos. That’s necessary because data science has such a strong mathematical foundation, and we’ve found that videos are the best way to explain those concepts.

During the other 45 minutes, you’re hands-on, doing interactive exercises. That’s because we believe in active learning.

So you’re typing in code at your keyboard. And if you make a mistake, you get relevant real-time feedback.

Excellent. You said that you have about 1500 B2B clients. Who’s your typical business buyer – IT departments or business units?

We see three primary scenarios:

Data science departments that want advanced courses or are switching technologies.

Business units – usually marketing or finance – that want to improve data-based decisions.

Company-wide digital transformation initiatives to drive the shift toward a more data-literate culture. That’s when L&D folks come in.

Excellent. So how do you run this large-scale online training operation on the back end? Did you build your own learning management system?

We build everything in-house. Our platform is built to provide the best learning experience specifically for data science. That required us to start from scratch.

The technology we use for interactive feedback isn’t available anywhere else. That’s why we needed to develop it ourselves.

Interesting. How about content development? Is that also done with your own proprietary tools? Or do you use commercial solutions?

REPLAY THE WEBINAR NOW!

We built our own authoring environment, as well. That’s because we realized very quickly that speed in developing content is a major competitive advantage.

So although we have multiple teams focused on the learner experience, we also have a team focused on the instructor experience.

For example, how can we make it as easy as possible for an instructor to create an interactive course? That’s different from creating a video course.

They need to learn new technologies and embrace the unique pedagogical aspects of this process. So we developed the authoring environment to make it as easy as possible.

We also do the entire translation (for lack of a better word) to interactivity behind-the-scenes in an automatic way.

Wow. You might want to sell your platform to other verticals that may have a similar kind of need.

True.

So how did you convince 270 instructors to sign-up? How did you find them? And how do you compensate them? Everybody struggles with this…

Our model is similar to a book publisher. We have a wish list of courses we want to develop. Our curriculum team identifies courses we want to develop in the coming months. Then they start researching and contacting subject matter experts.

Our contracts are based on revenue sharing, where instructors are paid based on the number of times their course is completed. Not started, but completed. This way, there’s an incentive to create high-quality content that engages students from start to finish.

Great strategy. So do you ask them to follow a specific instructional model? Or do instructors bring their own approach and you adapt?

It’s a bit of both.

We ask our instructors to follow a framework. Because with so many courses, we want to make sure that they feel consistent and coherent for learners. So if you start one course on DataCamp, and then start a second course, both will have the same level of quality and engagement.

Our framework is based on a list of rules. For example, you can’t use more than 15 minutes of video in any one-hour of content. You can’t include too many multiple-choice questions. And so forth.

These rules tie back to our authoring interface, which automatically checks to verify that instructors are holding themselves to that framework. This makes the online training content development process fairly easy. And it gives authors various ways to be creative, as well.

Nice. So let’s talk about some real-world examples. How are corporations using data science education to improve their business…?

…FOR COMPLETE ANSWERS TO THIS QUESTION AND MORE, LISTEN TO THE FULL 30-MINUTE PODCAST!

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Bridging the Learning Analytics Gap: How Guided Insights Lead to Better Results

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Even with cutting-edge measurement tools, many struggle to find enough time and expertise to generate useful learning insights. How can you bridge this critical analytics gap?

Join John Leh, CEO and Lead Analyst at Talented Learning, and Tamer Ali, Co-Founder and Director at Authentic Learning Labs. You’ll discover:

Top learning analytics challenges

How AI-driven data visualization tools are transforming learning insights

How to define and interpret relevant metrics

Practical examples of AI-based analytics in action

How to build a convincing case for guided analytics

REPLAY THE WEBINAR NOW!

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udemy-gift-coupon-blog · 5 years

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Pronunciation Mastery ##UdemyFreeCoupons ##UdemyFreeCourses #Mastery #Pronunciation Pronunciation Mastery According to decades of top linguistic research, if you want to learn Chinese (or ANY language, for that matter), you MUST start with pronunciation. The big problem is, high-quality (and not mind-numbingly boring) Chinese pronunciation training is VERY difficult to find. This is why we decided to not only to create an incredibly easy-to-follow video course jam-packed with everything you need to know to develop INCREDIBLE Mandarin Chinese pronunciation, we have also decided to make it FREE for everyone. Pronunciation Mastery is the perfect start to Chinese: Everything you need to know to develop incredible Mandarin Chinese pronunciation packed into one video course! As 2 westerners with a combined 16 years both learning and teaching Mandarin Chinese, we know exactly what you need to know to sound like a native, and you will learn all of the inside knowledge from us here, and it's going to save you many hours of frustration. Contents and overview This course contains over 178 lectures and 8 hours of video. Although primarily for beginners, pronunciation is an aspect that even advanced learners often need improvement on, so it's well worth a look for all levels. Pronunciation consists of three key aspects: Producing, Understanding and Reading. In Pronunciation Mastery, We you will learn how to produce, understand and read every one of the 409 syllable that exists in Mandarin, as well as the 5 tones. We will also supply all of the review materials (PDFs and digital flashcards) you need to practice everything either on your own or with a tutor. 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Just as a flutter of butterfly wings in the east can cause a tidal wave in the west, solid pronunciation early on will start a chain reaction that will get you to fluency a lot faster, and with less stress along the way. Everything you need to know to develop incredible Mandarin Chinese pronunciation and hundreds of survival words and phrases packed into one video course! Get started today FREE! Who this course is for: Anybody who wants to start learning Mandarin Chinese Anybody currently learning Mandarin Chinese 👉 Activate Udemy Coupon 👈 Free Tutorials Udemy Review Real Discount Udemy Free Courses Udemy Coupon Udemy Francais Coupon Udemy gratuit Coursera and Edx ELearningFree Course Free Online Training Udemy Udemy Free Coupons Udemy Free Discount Coupons Udemy Online Course Udemy Online Training 100% FREE Udemy Discount Coupons https://www.couponudemy.com/blog/pronunciation-mastery/

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captured-moments1-blog · 7 years

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Personal Statement

(This is what my personal statement would look like use for examples)

I chose to apply for this course because I feel it will enable me to immerse myself into the world of animation. I believe that the knowledge I will gain from the course will help me to pursue a career in 3D animation working on game and film based Projects. I hope to one day have my own animation company so I can create my own works of art.

My love for animation came to be when I was introduced to the art form of anime through Corpse Party; it’s a very dark anime but the drawings and fluency of the animation intrigued me and the freedom of this art fascinated me. I could make any scene, scenario or situation that I wanted with no limits or boundaries. At first I was practicing 2D flash stick figure animations while I worked on developing my drawing skills (an area I will continue to develop throughout my education and career). After a few years my interests expanded to 3D animations through anime related games such as Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm. The movement, style and design of these games inspired me to learn how to make life like 3D animations and I believe this course can give me the skills I need to achieve my career, dreams and goals.

I believe I am suitable for this course because I have many of the skills required to pursue my dream and I am willing to learn new skills which I can use as efficiently as possible. I have dedicated a huge amount of time to animating in order for my work to be at the highest possible standard; I am very critical about my creations and will not stop until they are up to a standard that I see is perfect. Alongside that I can work well in a team especially when my team are as motivated as me in this subject. I have experience with Adobe Flash and 2D animations and have begun learning Maya but I want to expand my knowledge and ability to make my animations the best they can be. I also have knowledge using Illustrator, Photoshop, After Effects and Premier (the Adobe package).

The course I am doing is Interactive Media and Games level 3 and this is a course that focuses on all aspects of game creation from marketing to scripting and has enabled me to concentrate on and develop my animating skills. On this course I’ve learned valuable skills that will help me to complete the course you offer and my knowledge and practical abilities are still growing and expanding. I have personally looked into animation more deeply as that is the area of my course that I want to pursue and I am always willing to learn new methods and shortcuts to better and further my animations.

I have made my own animations at home to help practice my trade. I have also made a few animations for others for their own clips and projects that they do. Most of the animations used stick figures as they are the easiest and quickest characters to animate and I feel that that allows me to focus on the fluency and style of the animation which I had to adapt and change for the benefit of the people I have animated for.

I myself, other than animation, have a few skills which will help me with university life. First of all I have the ability to learn and understand software’s, speech and more, quicker than most. Secondly my social skills are at a point where I can work and make friends with others. I can pick up new skills and methods easily and put them into my own style and work. I can pick out when and where an animation is jumpy or doesn’t have realistic feel that a professional animation should do.

My unique ability is to keep calm, not panic and focus on the matter at hand. I rarely get stressed because I am able to keep on top of my work. I don’t get frustrated when something doesn’t go my way instead I look at different methods which will help further my projects and this can be applied to my work and personal life as well.

I’ve worked in retail and fast food. These particular jobs don’t focus on the subject at hand but it has allowed me to learn how to talk to other people effectively and it gives me experience in the working environment. I apply this new skill set to my everyday life and I believe it will help my rise through the animation industry.

When I finish this course I want to be able to go into a career in animated films and games if the opportunity should arise. My dream is to have my own animation company that combines Japanese animation stories to the 3D animated world. I aim to do this because the stories shown in these anime’s are gripping and effective but 3D animations are more accepted and viewed in the western world.

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neptunecreek · 4 years

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Guitar Villain? Ubisoft Patents Basic Teaching Techniques

In 2012, Ubisoft launched an educational video game called Rocksmith. The idea was simple: why get good at playing a toy guitar, as in games like “Guitar Hero,” when you can use—and learn to play—the real thing? Their game helps beginner musicians identify the skills they need to work on, and then helps them improve those skills by providing gradually more complex songs and exercises.

These steps will sound familiar to anyone who has tried to learn an instrument. A teacher offers exercises, evaluates your performance, and adjusts the difficulty of the lesson to match your ability—keeping you from being bored or overwhelmed. This cycle of feedback is an example of a well-established teaching technique that many educational programs use to help users hone other skills, from language fluency to typing proficiency. Educational games, like Mario Teaches Typing (1992), have been using many of these techniques for several decades. Is adding a guitar to the picture really that innovative?

According to Ubisoft, one of the world’s largest game developers, this idea is so innovative that it’s worthy of a patent. The company managed to claim this idea in US Patent No. 9,839,852, titled "Interactive Guitar Game,” even though the date of Ubisoft’s supposed “invention” was November 21, 2008—three years after Guitar Hero was released.

Ubisoft’s patent says the claimed invention offers benefits beyond other learning materials like CDs, books, or even private instructors. But these benefits require seriously understating the efficacy of those well-established teaching materials. For example, the patent slams music books as “necessarily static” materials that “provide a limited instructional capability,” and private instructors as so “limited in both time and depth” that learning from them “may limit the student’s creativity and spontaneity.” Even if these statements were true, they are irrelevant: benefits like flexibility and limitless capacity are benefits that come from advances to computer and networking technology—not anything Ubisoft developed for its particular game.

The claims of Ubisoft’s patent don’t include anything that could be inventive. The first claim is for a computer program that performs basic steps: it presents fingering notations on a display device, receives signals back from a guitar input device that a user plays, assesses the user’s performance of the song, changes the difficulty level, and generates “at least one mini-game.” That’s it.

This program sounds like most educational video games—it evaluates a player's performance and generates engaging ways to improve. While using your actual guitar to play some kicking ska bops sounds totally rad, Ubisoft’s patent doesn’t say anything about how to do that. It just combines old teaching techniques with old video game technology. Is this really something that can be patented?

That question was raised in 2018 when Ubisoft sued a Finnish startup called Yousician Oy, which develops a phone app for learning to play musical instruments. Ubisoft, an industry giant with over $1 billion in revenue, claimed that Yousician's learning software infringed their "interactive guitar game" patent. If Yousician lost the suit, the company would have been required to pay damages to Ubisoft, and could have been required to cease offering interactive guitar lessons altogether. Yousician countered that the case should be dismissed because the patent’s subject matter was not eligible for protection under Section 101 of the U.S. Patent Act.

Section 101 may be familiar to readers of our Stupid Patent of the Month posts. This part of the Patent Act helps ensure the patent system promotes innovation by limiting what can be patented. Section 101 prohibits patents on laws of nature, things that exist in nature, and abstract ideas. These are basic building blocks of science that no one could have invented, and all of us need to fuel further innovation.

These limitations are powerful weapons against software patent trolls. Software patents often claim an old idea in very broad terms, and add something non-abstract in technical jargon that effectively means “on a general-purpose computer.” Many of these patents should never have been granted, but trolls earn money from them anyway. In part, that’s because so many companies—especially smaller ones without deep pockets— settle out of court rather than risk losing more money in legal fees by challenging a patent. In 2014’s Alice v. CLS Bank decision, the Supreme Court made clear that courts can reject patents under Section 101 early in a case before the expensive discovery stage of litigation begins. That has made it possible for many small businesses to fight back, including many who have shared their experiences in our Saved by Alice project.

The Ubisoft case shows how Section 101 can also protect smaller companies and consumers from bogus monopolies the patent system would otherwise create.

On August 9th of last year, the U.S. District Court for Eastern District of North Carolina agreed with Yousician, holding that the Ubisoft patent doesn’t claim patent-eligible subject matter. Ubisoft appealed this decision, arguing the court had oversimplified the patent, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld the decision this June, and the district court closed the case on July 20th.

The Federal Circuit rejected Ubisoft’s attempt to patent old teaching techniques by putting them into a video game. "Here, the claims recite nothing more than a process of gathering, analyzing, and displaying certain results," wrote the three-judge panel. "The mini-game generation step is ... no different from the ordinary mental processes of a guitar instructor teaching a student how to play the guitar."

Cases like this are important in ensuring the U.S. patent system actually does what is meant to do—promote the advancement of knowledge and ensure its accessibility to the public. In the past year, we’ve fought back against patent trolls, powerful interest groups, and big pharma companies, all of whom are seeking to weaken Section 101 so they can monopolize and profit from knowledge that is, and should remain, available to us all. The patent system is supposed to benefit the public as a whole, not be a bludgeon for powerful entities trying to amass and maintain monopolies. When the patent system puts the preferences of patent owners above the public’s interest, we lose options as consumers as well as the freedom to create, tinker, and play. That's why EFF will keep fighting for a robust, strong Section 101. Let's ensure that companies can't monopolize old ideas by just waving their hands at basic computer technology the public has used for decades.

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