RFTG Speaking Task (1 Viewer)

[fivebyfive]

Hey everyone. I realise most of you are in half yearly mode at the moment....(I've JUST finished ) so it might be difficult to reply to this. Anyway at the end of our english extension exam, our teachers gave out a speaking task assessment.....and i have ideas for it...however it would be interesting to get other opinions on it, due to the nature of the question....

"Imagine you are a lecturer speaking to Year 12 Extension 1 students who are about to begin their study of the elective "RFTG".
Your aim is to communicate a clear understanding of the concepts underpinning the elective and your enthusiasm for it."

Now the reason I'm finding this difficult is because i myself do not actaully find RFTG anything to get excited about (surprise surprise... ) so i just wanted to get everyone elses thoughts on the topic...and see if i can string something together from that.

Cheers

 

[Rahul]

i'd love that topic!!

you just need to teach rftg, basically. and show how it 'cool'. lol, in other words how its a part of society. give examples.

"enthusiasm"...its telling you how to present it.

 

[glitterfairy]

Well I'm not so sure about "enthusiasm" (I personally appreciate what I'm learning in the module but at the same time, would love nothing better than to kill it with the blunt endge of a baseball bat, you know the feeling?) but here's my briefing on the elective:

What I was told in a nutshell about Retreat from the global was in general, conflicting values between the local and the global.

Local values tend to be more specific (ie Archibald in MacLeod's Lost Salt Gift of Blood story "The Tuning of Perfection") chooses to stay on top of his little mountain and keep up the old traditions) whilst global values tend to be more generalised, ie Archibald's grand daughter laments Archibald's lack of phone.

It encompasses such things as the passing of language (Gaelic Language is very prevalent in MacLeod's short stories), culture, and especially values- for example Quoyle's desire to stay in NewFoundland whilst Tert Card is willing to leave his family behind in pursuit of a higher-paying job (The Shipping News).

Other things to keep in perspective- passing of culture also means history is lost, identity issues, conflicting avenues of thought between older/younger generations (ie classic "Keep the farm!" "No I don't want the farm I want a REAL job!" scenarios), physical labour as opposed to sitting in front of a computer at a deskjob, use of lyrical prose to romanticise harsh living/working conditions etc.

As to how it is presented, take the author's personal and historical contexts into account- for example Proulx actually went to Newfoundland in a time when fishing was at an all-time low due to overfishing by commercial trawlers, she stayed with the local people and was inspired by them. MacLeod is an English teacher, but he also worked as a miner and a logger (huge relation to his story "The Closing Down of Summer') and was brought up in the same kind of setting he bases his stories upon.

(Am stealing much from notes taken in class, I'm really not so clever as to be able to come up with this stuff on my own in case some of you are wondering!)