Reading Journal and Book Reviews

Just a reminder ladies: you have to keep track of your reading in this class. I've posted a copy of the reading journal on Blackboard and you should update it whenever you read something - every day.

Also, when you finish a book from the LEC, there are 2 things you have to do. 1) Write a book review and post it to your blog. This will be a part of your reading grade for this class. 2) Then go and get another book.

For the book review, you need to do the following:

1) Title and author
2) Type of story (comedy, horror, drama, etc...)
3) Main characters - names and brief descriptions
4) Setting - where and when does the story take place?
5) Summary - what happens in the story?
6) Your opinion of the story - did you like it? Why or why not?

Since you've all read at least one book by now, you have to post your first book review for Sunday, November 22. You will have to submit two book reports to me in the last week of class.

Happy reading.

Next blog writing task

For your next blog post, write about superstitions. What are some Emirati superstitions? Are you a superstitious person? Google 'superstition' and see if you can find any interesting ones from other countries.

Blog Task: Writing a problem/solution essay

Hi ladies, many of you have posted an introduction to your essay on your blogs, and I've given comments for most of you. If you haven't yet, bali-bali! If you have, great. Now, go write a conclusion and post that. Tomorrow we'll be working on the body paragraphs. As I said in class today, on Thursday we will take the four paragraphs you'll have written and put them together as an essay, and I'll read it and give you some feedback before your test on Wednesday.

Eid Al Ahda message from Dr. Sulaiman

Here's the message from Dr. Sulaiman regarding our break during Eid Al Ahda:

Dear Faculty, Staff and Students,

I am pleased to attached the holiday schedule for Eid Al Adha which will be celebrated in a few weeks. We have again been able to arrange an extended holiday period so that you and your families can have some special time together.

Note we will have classes on Wednesday, November 25th. The holiday period will begin on Thursday, November 26th until Thursday, December 3rd. Classes will be resumed on Sunday December 6th

Any make up days will be announced after the official announcement of the Eid holidays.

I wish to extend to all of you my very best wishes for Eid Al Adha.

Dr. Sulaiman Al Jassim

Vice President

Japanese video

In North America, game shows usually test your knowledge or skill. In Japan, they get the contestants to do crazy stuff. Here's the link to the video we watched yesterday. If you find any other videos that you think our class might enjoy, send me the link.

Too Many Babies

Here's a fun story. I'd read about this guy over the summer and can't imagine what his house must be like. 86 KIDS!!!! Incredible.

So, my question for you is, what happens if your (future) husband decides that he needs to break the record? How many kids do you plan to have? Do you think people will have big families in the future or is that aspect of Emirati culture changing?
My favorite part:

Mr Juma’a has had 12 wives: three from Egypt, six from India and three from the UAE. Two from the UAE died and one was divorced.

“You had five from India,” protests his son Omar.

“No, six,” says Mr Juma’a. “I divorced three.” And it is settled.

Mr Juma’a did not divorce his wives to have more children but because, he admits, he was strong-willed in his younger days.

“If the wife does not hear my words I will seek another obedient wife,” he says. “She was not respecting me, maybe she is defaming me through a long tongue. Some wives shouted at me and told me to shut up.”

Another interesting aspect of this story is the number of wives these guys have had, and their ideas about romantic love (it's bad). So, how about you? What's better: a love marriage or an arranged marriage? How would you feel about your husband wanting more than one wife?

Exotic (nasty) Food

We read about delicacies this morning and it reminded me of some of the (many) weird/disgusting things I've eaten: snake, dog, turtle, rabbit, pig intestines, porcupine stomach, chicken feet, and silk worm larvae come to mind. Two of my friends beat me though; being good guests, they had to eat cockroach and spider. Disgusting, but they said that there was so much sauce that it was actually pretty good. Ugh.

That said, the point of the discussion isn't to make anyone sick, but to talk about strange or interesting food. I LOVE Korean and Japanese and Thai food, and of course Italian and French are great too. I'm a pretty simple guy, though, and could eat pizza every day and be happy.

How about you? Favorite foods? Best restaurants in Abu Dhabi? Can you cook (without making anyone sick)?

(Images above: chicken feet - disgusting - and dogmeat soup - not so bad, but fatty)

Queens of Spelling - 2.1

Hello ladies,

From our first spelling quiz, here are the top students:

1) Sara, the only perfect score, 32/32. Nice work!
2) Fatima S and Hurra, both with only 1 mistake, 31/32. Very good.
3) Manal, with 2 mistakes, 30/32. Good stuff.

I was pleasantly surprised with the results, as many of you did well with spelling. This will help you with your writing, and be very important for when you take the IELTS exam.

If you didn't do so well, you should talk with me about improving your spelling.

Second Speaking Assessment

Hi ladies, as I said, your second speaking assessment is going to be making a short film and speaking over it. For this, you need to download the software here:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/photostory/default.mspx

If you would rather use movie maker, send me a link for it and I'll check that out.

First Blog Task

Hi ladies, and welcome to our class blog. I'll be posting assignments and homework here, and will include some fun links and videos too. For your first blog task, you need to:

1. set up your blog, which should be done by now
   
2. send me an email (jonathanfulton@gmail.com) including the address of your blog
3. write your first post to introduce yourself
4. update your profile if you want to

I hope you use this often and find it a fun way to work on writing in English.