Favourite Book

         My favourite book is "Bang Bang You're Dead" by Narinder Dhami. The book is about a girl named Mia. One day, when a mysterious gunman takes a class hostage, the rest of Mia's school is evacuated. However, Mia decided to stayed behind, although she was afraid. She felt that she know who the gunman is, and therefore decided to find out if she is correct. As Mia overcome each and every obstacles that prevent her from "un-masking" the gunman, she soon realises that the gunman is not who she thought would be! And, finally, in the end, an even more interesting fact was revealed! Her "brother" was actually a "spirit" and the Jamie she called brother was actually the split personality of herself!
          The very interesting twist in the ending makes me feel like going "WOW!". That's why I would recommend this book since the words are quite easy to read and it is very interesting.
          The URL of this book on goodreads.com is http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6395967-bang-bang-you-re-dead.

Shel Silverstein's poems

The Little Boy and the Old Man by Shel Silverstein:

Question 1: The relationship between parents and children, is often strained and poor, such as the old man and the little boy being "ignored" by their children and parents respectively. This tells us that we must always be filial  

to our parents.

Question 2: Shel Silverstein used repetition, and since the little boy and the old man's word are almost the same, this creates the image of how similar they are treated.

Messy Room by Shel Silverstein:

Question 1: The character in the poem thought that the messy room was somebody else's, and made many negative comments of the room. However, in the end, the character was told that it was his, and the forgetfulness of the character makes the poem humorous.

Question 2: The aspect of the human character is forgetfulness and untidiness.

Cloony the Clown by Shel Silverstein:


Question 1: Everybody did exactly the opposite of the reaction that Cloony wanted from them. For example, when he is trying to be funny by telling a joke, everybody's hearts were broken.

Question 2: Yes. It showed how tragic one's life could be, when people do not do what you hope they would do, and this might make one's life miserable and become unable to take it anymore and do something silly like committing suicide.

Question 3: The poetic devices are rhyme, repetition and aliteration.

I can identify with the poem Cloony the Clown by Shel Silverstein the most out of the three, since this poem is quite interesting and the way of writing is different from the first two. Also, I can visualise the imagery of the poem the easiest.

Narrative Activity - Answers to Big Fish

1. The phrase is an ironic phrase to me, showing the contrast between the fish and the pond. An example of such a contrast will be an eagle, thinking that it is a chicken and does not try to fly, and in the end, its wings will never be able to let it fly.

2. The purpose is to show he’s affection for his family, his love for his wife and wanting to impress his son.

3. William Bloom was amazed by his father tale and looked up to him as a boy. However, as he gets older, he starts to get unhappy and frustrated at his father for repeating the tale again and again.

4. He wants to improve the relationship between him and his sone by impressing him with the tale.

5. The relationship between Edward and William Bloom became more and more strained as William grew more and more annoyed at his father’s tale.

6. Exaggerated stories match this description. The effect of telling a story in this way might be causing people to not believe it, or suspicious of it.

7. It makes the story more unbelievable, since some parts of the bending or exaggeration might not be realistic and cause suspicion. Therefore, it is much less valid than a straight reportage of the facts.

Ten Short Stories - The hitchhiker

        “Ten Short Stories” is written by Roald Dahl, a famous writer.  One of his short stories is titled “The Hitchhiker”.

        “The Hitchhiker” is a story about the author going to London one day during June on his BMW. On his way, he meets a hitchhiker. After letting the hitchhiker in, the author drove off again. On the way to London, the two men started chatting. Then, they talked about the author’s car. The hitchhiker asked how fast the BMW is. The author states that the car can go up to 129 miles an hour, but the hitchhiker does not believe. Therefore, the author started speeding up. Just when the car reached 120 miles an hour, the deafening sound of the police siren could be heard. Then, a policeman with his police motorcycle stopped them, and after some questioning, the policeman demanded for the author’s driver license. The author obediently handed over his license. After recording both the author and the hitchhiker’s particulars, the policeman drove off. The author and the hitchhiker continued their trip to London. Then, the author asked about the hitchhiker’s job. Finally, the hitchhiker told him that his job is a finger smith, a better word for a pickpocket. The hitchhiker had shown the author the speed of his fingers, which was very fast. Then, at the end, the hitchhiker took out the books in which the policeman had recorded their particulars. The author was very surprised. Finaly, the hitchhiker gave the idea to destroy the books by burning them.

           I feel that the story “The Hitchhiker” is very interesting and a bit of suspense is included in the story. The author keeps pressing the hitchhiker for his job but the hitchhiker refuses to reveal till the end, which will make the readers want to read on. Therefore, I feel that Roald Dahl is very good at writing so he can come up with such an interesting book.

Something valuable that I had learnt so far

    
       In this year, I had learnt much in Language Arts. Firstly, I learnt about poetry. Although poetry is a difficult subject of  Language Arts, I found out that analyzing a poem is not a difficult as it seems to one. We just have to follow the ten-steps rule, which worked most of the time. Also, I think that poems are actually quite interesting when you can try to figure out what the poet is trying to tell his audience.
      Secondly, I learnt about how I can find out the meaning of a word through skills like the context and  finding a the word's root word, etc. This helped me in my comprehension skills, although I did not score well for the vocabulary part this time. I guess what I lack is reading and practise, since practise makes perfect. I target to score at least a 4 out of 5 in the future tests.
      Thirdly and lastly, I learnt about the SEE format for our comprehension's comparison question where we have to compare Passage A and Passage B. I think that it is very effective to use this in any subject, since firstly, we need a sentence, which is the 'S'. Also, we need to give examples/ evidence and the elaboration to complete what the question is asking for.

Poem Analysis

Q2) Snapshotland is a land far away, something magical. It is also a relaxing place about taking photographs.

Q4) People in Snapshotland not growing old, people are always happy

Q5) "Snapshotland is the promised land" - metaphor
       "right" and "sight" - assonance
       "smooth sand", "smile and smile and smile" etc - alliteration

Q6) Description of time freezing is a lot and there are many words that start with 's'

Q7) There is always something about happiness in the poem (every stanza has something about it) and time is like frozen

Q8) The people in Snapshotland are photographs.

Q9a) Third Person

Q9b) General Public

Q9c) Relaxed

Q9d) Relaxed

Q9e) It shows the time of Snapshotland

Q9f) It allows people to feel the happiness in Snapshotland