Well done guys you have survived the first term of year 12.

Term 2 will involve you sitting 2 SACS, one on Language Analysis and one on Encountering Conflict. Your first one will be in week 3 on Language Analysis.

My advice to you these holidays is to rest up and eat plenty of chocolate- it is Easter after all- but to do lots of reading, especially the newspapers. Be looking for issues and continually reading them and identifying the authors contentions and the types of techniques they are using. The second reason you should be reading newspapers is for Encountering Conflict. You will need lots of outside sources to supplement your writing so be looking for events that are happening that relate to the them Encountering Conflict, think about how the conflict occured, who was involved and how it all ended. It does not matter what it is in relation to if you think it is good it may be just the example you need to include in your writing that makes you a little different to the rest of the state.

To the right hand side of this blog you will see sites to do with Omagh and Encountering Conflict make sure you look at them all. You need to understand everything to do with Ireland’s history so do yourself a favour and read up! It is also good advice to go to the library and take home for the holidays the site and password to be able to look up the Age and The Herald Sun.

If you scroll down the blog site you will see there are old blog pages on Omagh and Encountering Conflict, please read those as it will explain to you ‘how’ we are looking at the topic for term 2.

Have a good break guys, please contact me via the blog/ facebook or email if you need anything…..no question is dumb!

Rosey

As we are doing Analysis we also need to be doing some work on Encountering Conflict, this will stop the stress of Analysis and help prepare you for your Context Writing. NOTE to the side that your date for your Context writing has changed…one week earlier guys…!

 I want you to watch the following clips. One will be Kevin Rudd’s speech to Parliament where he says ’sorry’ to the stolen generation and while the other main one is Wayne Carey’s interview with Andrew Denton there is also some others on there that are the media’s responses to their interview.

Please note that you are to watch these in S drive at school S:\ Student\Senior\De Scott English as that will cost you nothing, and use the links on the blogs at home.

As you are watching I want you to list down any words that you think will be useful for writing under the theme ‘encountering conflict’. You are also to look at the ways in which the types of conflict they are referring to are ‘encountered’ by everyone they mention.

http://www.abc.net.au/tv/enoughrope/video/default.htm?program=enoughrope&pres=20080331&story=1  (Denton with Wayne Carey)

http://video.google.com.au:80/videoplay?docid=-1837691888335307622&q=kevin+rudd+sorry+speech&total=22&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=6 (Kevin Rudd in Parliament).

http://video.google.com.au/videoplay?docid=8330437847529003524&q=wayne+carey&total=1095&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=1 (media response to Denton interview).

Once you have watched these and listed some words down, you are to hop on the blog and list 6 of your best words so that we can create ‘a bunch of words’ together.  After you list your words, in one sentence you are to state how Kevin Rudd’s apology and Wayne Carey are good examples to use for the theme ‘encountering conflict’. We will be looking at these interview further in class but for now we are just building a word bank and becoming familiar with them.

Euphemisms are also excellent to use in your writing see if you can add one each to the blog site as well that we can use in Encountering Conflict. A good site for looking at these:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphemism#Common_examples 

Your homework for today is that you are to find one newspaper article or picture each that you think brings up some form of conflict. You may do this on the computer using the College’s Issues research or through hard copies. In our following double you are going to present your article or picture to the class in a persuasive manner suitable to your article or picture..eg. a speech to a group of people, a letter to the editor. Remember to use some persuassive techniques and a ‘bunch’ of new words we have just learnt that relates to conflict and encountering. 

Scotty

                                          

                                        In the Lake of the Woods.

                                              By Tim o’Brien

 In the Lake of the Woods is a disturbing tale which vividly confronts the reader

with the dark side of human nature. Set in the state of Minnesota, USA, near

the town of Angle Inlet, the tale evolves as a compelling mystery. The story

opens with a married couple, John and Kathy Wade, sharing an idyllic cabin in

the woods by a lake. John Wade is recovering from losing election to the

United States Senate, a goal he and Kathy had set their sights on achieving.

They had given up everything to attain this prize, including a home and family

and are devastated by the loss. In trying to rebuild their lives they examine

what went wrong and try to convince each other that things will improve.

Thirty-six hours after the novel opens, Kathy Wade disappears amid strange

circumstances. The search for Kathy uncovers the secret life of John Wade,

‘the Sorcerer’, who has lived a life of deception and deceit in an effort to

conceal a terrible secret.

 

Some central ideas

● the portrait of a marriage where the aspirations and dreams of one partner

dictate life for both, and where now the relationship is in crisis

● the devastating consequences of trying to hide the past

● the study of childhood influences which later shape the adult person

● the horror of war and its terrible consequences for those who return

damaged by their experiences

● the power of the mind and the poignant realisation of the fine line between

sanity and madness

● the darkness of the human heart and what real or imagined horrors people

are capable of committing

● the nature of politics, its manipulation and deceit

● the structure of the novel – narrative in the present, flashbacks to Vietnam,

hypothesis, evidence.

 

This novel is your next assessment and final one in class for the year. You will be writing a text response on it and it is vital that you have an understanding of the Vietnam War and an image of the Lake of the Woods . 

                                                                     

 

 

             THE CRUCIBLE

                                             By Arthur Miller

“Arthur Miller’s classic parable of mass hysteria draws a chilling parallel between the Salem witch- hunt of 1692-’one of the strangest and most awful chapters in human history’- and the McCarthyism which gripped America in the 1950’s. The story of how the small community of Salem is stirred into madness by superstition, paranoia and malice, culmintating in a violent climax, is a savage attack on the evils of mindless persecution and the terrifying power of false accusations.” (penguin classics).

Before you begin reading it pays to know about:

The Cold War

The Cold War refers to a period of conflict, tension and competition between the western countries such as the United States (US) and Great Britain and the Soviet Union (USSR) and the Eastern bloc countries such as East Germany and Bulgaria. It began after the hostilities of WW II and continued until the early 1990’s. This cold war tension was the result of the West’s growing fear of communism – the economic system put in place in the USSR after the Russian Revolution in 1917 (Russia became the USSR after this Revolution). The tension heightened as the Soviet Union took control of most of Eastern Europe during the latter stages of World War II and sought to spread communism in other parts of the world.

 While there was never a direct military engagement between them the two sides differed on how to reconstruct the post war world even before the end of the war. The US sought to stop communism and formed alliances while the Soviet Union was seeking to establish puppet Marxist regimes. The Cold War drew to a close in the late 1980’s when Ronald Regan negotiated with Mikhail Gorbachev. USSR’s economy was failing putting huge internal and external pressures on the country, the Soviet Union eventually collapsed in 1991, giving independence Eastern bloc countries.

Joseph McCarthy

Joseph McCarthy was a Republican (a major US political party founded in 1854 by anti-slavery activists and modernizers) and US Senator from 1947 – 1957. In 1950 McCarthy became the most visible public face of a period of intense anti- communist suspicion inspired by the tensions of the Cold War. He made a speech stating he had a list of ‘member s of the Communist Party and members of a spy ring’ who were employed in the State Department of the US. These were seen as sensational charges that could not be substantiated but helped him form the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) which for its time became a powerful and influential government organisation. Throughout his time in Congress he made many unsubstantiated accusations and attacked a number of politicians and other individuals inside and outside the government. After highly publicised hearings McCarthy’s support and popularity began to fade and in 1954 the Senate voted to censure  Senator McCarthy and his support and influence fell away.

McCarthyism

is the general term used for the ‘witch hunts’ that took place during the late 40’s and into the late 50’s, as Senator McCarthy and his followers sought to find communists and Soviet spies in America. The primary targets of his suspicions were government employees, members of the entertainment industry, educators and trade union activists. Many were subjects or aggressive investigations and questioning before government or private industry panels, committees or agencies.

 

Arthur Miller

Miller wrote The Crucible against the backdrop of the Cold War. The parallels between the events in Salem in 1692 and this conflict are strongly emphasised.

Despite his reworking of these contemporary events into another historical time and place Miller was accused of being a ‘communist sympathiser’ and was blacklisted and instructed to appear before the HUAC in 1956. He refused to name names, which is a trait we see in The Crucible.

Miller’s play highlights the conflict that can occur in society when dominant values and ideas are questioned and challenged. The Crucible is Millers way of making veiled comments about the contemporary events of ‘his’ America and his introduction explicitly connects these two different eras of history. “They [the pilgrims] believed, in short, that they held in the steady hands the candle that would light the world. We have inherited this belief, and it has helped and hurt us” (P15). The suggestion is that society has not learnt from past mistakes and is therefore doomed to continue to repeat this destructive behaviour when conflict is encountered.

 Remember to be up with all the news over the holidays so you have some new outside sources to relate to and most of all happy reading over the holidays and keep up that Language Analysis…

Scotty.

Well we have all watched the film now and regardless of what you think about it you now have to respond to it. So please make sure that you are aware of the history of Ireland or you never really will grasp the political  and personal conflict involved.

Make yourself become familiar with all of the terms used in the film and start creating a ‘bunch’ of words to do with ‘encountering’ and ‘conflict’

These are the ‘BIG IDEAS’ you are about to work with under our context writing.

·         CONFLICTS INVOLVE A CLASH OF IDEAS, INTERESTS AND EXPECTATIONS

·         PEOPLE’S RESPONSES TO CONFLICT VARY

·         CONFLICT OCCURS BETWEEN THE POWERFUL AND THE POWERLESS

·         CONFLICT MAY BE DIFFICULT TO RESOLVE

·         CONFLICT CAN BE A CATALYST FOR CHANGE

You will be expected to understand and write about not only OMAGH under these headings but also to think of outside sources that suit these ‘big ideas’ as well. We will go through some in class, but if you want to end up with good scores you will extend yourselves and start finding news/history/pictorial articles of your own to include in all your writing.

Each week we will be doing lots of writing and discussing especially of the ‘Big Ideas’, but only looking at doing expository and persuasive writing for your first SAC.

So start collecting as much information as you can that links to the ‘big ideas’ above.

Scotty.