This event was in Second life on April 4, 2015 inside virtual world Second Life secondlife.com . Marga chose for that day a little bit challenging text.
The strategy of the class is reading the whole text for each person, choosing some words and creating our sentences with them.
Here are some benefits of this method:
- Repeating new words is improving vocabulary. The link to the image of new word might be also useful.
Example:
boarded-window
- If the text difficult repeating reading give us more sense of meaning it. We can see an example which proves this statement in the script of our chat during the class
[22:51] Anatoly Learner: yes I also start to like this story
- We can practice a little bit in writing skills.
- Grammar practice takes place when our sentences are being corrected.
Here is an example when Marga suggested to use singular form of pronoun (this instead of those) and to use more common expressions “pop in” or “show up” instead of appear.
[23:04] Anatoly Learner: Sparse strangers appear in those Sim in Second Life
[23:05] Anatoly Learner: Sparse strangers appear in this Sim in Second Life
[23:05] Marga : pop up
[23:05] Marga : show up
- And the discussion could be fun. For instance when put in the chat my example of using word “indigence”:
[22:58] Anatoly Learner: Indigence and richness are what we need to avoid
Marga noticed that she would be agree to avoid indigence but doesn’t mind to live in richness. :)
Here is the link to Google calendar of this Sim for people who are interested in participating in this event for the future
And the class material is also below in this post:
April 3rd, 2015 Reading #50
Instructions: Please read aloud the short story below and look at the requirements that follow it. Each of you reads the story once. In this reading comprehension activity there are three parts; each part has its own instructions.
*** The Boarded Window***
by Ambrose Bierce (Adapted)
In 1830, only a few miles away from what is now the great city of Cincinnati, lay an immense and almost unbroken forest. The whole region was sparsely settled by people of the frontier--restless souls who lived in homes out of the wilderness and attained to that degree of prosperity which today we would call indigence. They abandoned all and pushed farther westward, to encounter new perils and privations in the effort to regain the comforts which they had voluntarily renounced.
Many of them had already forsaken that region for the remoter settlements, but among those remaining was one who had been of those first arriving. He lived alone in a house of logs surrounded on all sides by the great forest, of whose gloom and silence he seemed a part, for no one had ever known him to smile nor speak a needless word. His simple wants were supplied by the sale or barter of skins of wild animals in the river town, for not a thing did he grow upon the land which, if needful, he might have claimed by right of undisturbed possession. There were evidences of "improvement"--a few acres of ground immediately about the house had once been cleared of its trees, the decayed stumps of which were half concealed by the new growth that had been allowed to repair the ravage worked by the ax.
Apparently the man's zeal for agriculture had burned with a failing flame. The little log house, with its chimney of sticks, its roof of warping clapboards supported and weighted with traversing poles and its "chinking" of clay, had a single door and, directly opposite, a window. The latter, however, was boarded up--nobody could remember a time when it was not. And none knew why it was so closed; certainly not because of the occupant's dislike of light and air, for on those rare occasions when a hunter had passed that lonely spot the recluse had commonly been seen sunning himself on his doorstep if heaven had provided sunshine for his need. I fancy there are few persons living today who ever knew the secret of that window, but I am one, as you shall see.
The man's name was said to be Murlock. He was apparently seventy years old, actually about fifty. Something besides years had had a hand in his aging. His hair and long, full beard were white, his gray, lusterless eyes sunken, his face singularly seamed with wrinkles which appeared to belong to two intersecting systems. In figure he was tall and spare, with a stoop of the shoulders--a burden bearer. I never saw him; these particulars I learned from my grandfather, from whom also I got the man's story when I was a lad. He had known him when living near by in that early day.
One day Murlock was found in his cabin, dead. It was not a time and place for coroners and newspapers, and I suppose it was agreed that he had died from natural causes or I should have been told, and should remember. I know only that with what was probably a sense of the fitness of things the body was buried near the cabin, alongside the grave of his wife, who had preceded him by so many years that local tradition had remember hardly a hint of her existence.
***The End***
Part A: Vocabulary: Please see the list of expressions/words below and try to understand the meaning from the context . After you understand the meaning , please make up your own sentence for each word, write it in the public chat and share it with the group.
• indigence ( noun) - a state of extreme poverty.
• sparse (adjective) - thinly scattered or distributed: not thick or dense; thin
• peril ( noun ) - something that causes or may cause injury, loss, or destruction.
• privation (noun) - lack of the usual comforts or necessaries of life:
• to forsake ( verb) - to quit or leave entirely; to abandon
• gloom ( noun) - total or partial darkness; dimness.
• to conceal ( verb ) - to hide; withdraw or remove from observation; cover or keep from sight
• zeal ( noun) - fervor for a person, cause, or object; eager desire or endeavor; enthusiastic diligence; ardor.
• stoop ( noun) - the act or an instance of stooping; a stooping position or carriage of body ( like bending )
• coroner ( noun) - an officer, as of a county or municipality, whose chief function is to investigate by inquest, as before a jury, any death not clearly resulting from natural causes.
Part B: Reading Comprehension: After reading the story, choose the best answer for each question.
1. As it is used in paragraph one, the word indigence most nearly means…
A. sustenance
B. wealth
C. influence
D. poverty
2. As it is used in paragraph three, the word traversing most nearly means…
A. traveling
B. crossing
C. shifting
D. holding
3. As it is used in paragraph four, the word lusterless most nearly means…
A. dull
B. broken
C. barren
D. alarming
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