Starry night

Starry, starry night.
Paint your palette blue and grey,
Look out on a summer's day,
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul.
Shadows on the hills,
Sketch the trees and the daffodils,
Catch the breeze and the winter chills,
In colors on the snowy linen land.

Now I understand what you tried to say to me,
How you suffered for your sanity,
How you tried to set them free.
They would not listen, they did not know how.
Perhaps they'll listen now.

This poem "Starry night" and the video which shows all his paintings, reflects what happened to Vincent Van Goh when he painted. Generally, he based his works in painting people working in the countryside, eating, drinking, sleeping. Trees with or without foliage, flowers like the daffodils, empty halls, landscapes at night where we can see stars being reflect on the lake.

It is a sample of Vincent´s feelings about his life. He made all his paintings absolutely colourful, but not because he was happy. He was depressed, instead.

In conclusion, we can use words or drawings and colours to express our feelings and emotions in any particular moment of our life.

Tales in the sand

Dream Lord, lovely God,
dark water turns light,

love reaches heart,

no matter the says of a bird.

Utopial love, illusion dreamed,

whoever person can be,

man of bone and blood ,

easier to achieve.

Claudia Ferradas´ magnificent conference

Claudia Ferradas is a teacher educational who travels around the world delivering conferences.

In the Cardiff closing plenary session, she talked about different themes such as identity of construction and negotiation, selection of material, intertextuality, indeterminancy and hypotext.

She explained that she is a teacher of literature so when she visited the UK she could say something about Shakespeare but she found it difficult to explain how to drink "mate".

Claudia proposed the use of intercultural approach in the classroom to develop personality and sense of identity.

As regards intertextuality, she showed photos of cafes in Buenos Aires where foreign tourist go. Then she sang " Cafetín de Buenos Aires" and related it with the students who are outside looking in, a great metaphor to caracterize the students who have no possibility of receiving education. She analysed this tango as a text exploring values, gender roles, ownership.

According to Claudia, there are gaps of indeterminancy to be filled; for instance, the necessity of explaining who is Gardel to foreign people.

In conclusion, the conference was absolutely amazing, entertaining and interesting. The way Claudia teaches language with an intercultural selection of material.

Reading and writing



Through writing we can express our feelings, emotions opinions, our mood, and make the reader explore our world of thought.

Reading is the other way round. While we are reading we are lead to different worlds that may or may not be connected with the author’s universe.
Somehow, writing and reading are closely related, since your background as a reader always support your writing. Whenever we write something, our previous knowledge, personal experiences and cultural context are reflected unconsciously in our work.

Interpretation of "The colourful life of Calum McCall"

This is a story of a man, called Calum Mccall, whose life is closely related to colours. It is so curious how he associates every situation that happens during his life with specific colours.
In his early years, he relates winter in Scotland with darkness. He also compares his relationship with his parents with a multicoloured rainbow. When he falls in love, he remembers all the colours from his childhood. After that, he gets married and has children. One of them points to the stars and looks in amazement. But Calum can not see anything so that night he can not sleep thinking about how he has lost his capacity to see.
Colours make reference to different periods of Calum McCal´s life. The loneliness of the streets, the immensity of the sky and the dissapointment of the people are represented in black. The discipline at school and at home are associated with the lack of colours. Love and children are related to the memory of colours in childhood.
Generally we tend to connect many events, situations, feelings and emotions of our life, with colours. Perhaps it is a way of keeping good times in memory and rewind those memories when we want.

A monkey on my back

In these times of quickness, uncertainty and individuality we have even more and more responsabilities every day. Our jobs, businesses, families, houses and so on; make us be stressed and do not let us relax and develop our activities quietly. Y always realize as a student that my obligations increase each year. As I am not so brilliant at writing, I feel as if I had a monkey on my back and I make a great effort to produce a text. Sometimes, it seems that I am running the race of writing with a heavy bag on my back and all my classmates are winning me. How frustrating it can be!
It usually happens to me that I know what I really want to write but not the exact words to use so that the text would be cohesive and coherent.
Despite not being "a writer", I have always been an eight or nine at Language at school. That is why I think that with practice and experience all of us can do whatever we want if we try; and we will be able to take the monkey off our back.

What writing means to me...?

Invitation

If you are a dreamer, come in
If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar,
A hoper-er, a prayer, a magic bean buyer…
If you’re a pretender, come sit by the fire
For we have some flax- golden tales to spin.
Come in!
Come in!

Writing is skin-diving

Every piece of writing represents a door to a new World which means you can be whoever you want and go whenever you want to, since books lead us to an imaginative life.

Writing is a way of expressing emotions, feelings, opinions, desires, etc.; and an opportunity that other people know you.