II Sem BBM MIdsem exam pattern

Christ College, Bangalore

I BBM

II Semester

English

Time: 2hrs Max. Marks: 50

Part A

I. Answer any TWO questions in about 400 words. 2x10=20

Two out of four

II Answer any FOUR of the questions in about 200 words. 4x5=20

Four out of five

Part B

III. Paragraph writing 2x5=10

All Questions Compulsory

--------------------------------------------------------

Portion:

The First Meeting: Sujata Bhatt

Fuelled: Marcie Hans

I have a dream: Martin Luther King

Those People Next Door: A G Gardiner

Asleep : Earnst Jandl

Paragraph Writing

I FEP II Sem Mid Sem exam pattern

Christ College, Bangalore

I BA

II Semester

Applied Phonetics II

Time: 2hrs Max. Marks: 50

I. Transcribe the following words and mark the stress ½x20=10

II. Transcribe the following words and mark their syllable division ½x10=10

III. Rewrite the underlined words in the following sentences and mark the stress according to their function. ½x10=10

IV. Transcribe the following sentences, underline the weak forms and divide the tone groups and mark the intonation. 10x2=20

Hi. All.
You have an essay type question on The Guide and a few short notes. To answer these questions you need to know concepts like modernity and colonialism, post colonialism. At least you should know what is modernity. I have posted a short write up on modernity. Please read and try to understand it. If you apply that explanation to what happens to and in Malgudi you have your answer.

There are also questions on Women’s writing in India by Susie Taru and K Lalitha and ‘Politics of Failure’ by SV Srinivas. I am posting my notes on ‘Politics of Failure’ on the blog. (Vicky, III FEP) typed them for you). My 12-page notes no Women’s writings was typed by Neha Doshi of I FEP but the floppy she gave me the material in doesn’t open. Let me try it again. However, I am leaving two photocopies of that notes on my table you may pick it photocopy and leave it back on my table for others to use. But I must warn you about my handwriting. Reading the manuscript can be injurious to your eyes and brain!

All the best gals and guys!

PS: Very sorry for the delay in posting. I had promised, esp. Shashank to put up the posting by 9 am. Due to the virus threat College has closed the net. I had to search for a cyber cafe. Posting now from Cyber cafe.

Modernity:
Modern, Modernism, Modernity: All these are different concepts. Modern at one level can be used as against traditional. For example: modern house. However, this concept can keep changing. A modern house today may become ancient, old, traditional 25-50 years from now.
Modernism was a reactionary movement especially in the realm of literature, art, architecture that occurred in the early 20 century. It radically questioned the traditional social organisation, morality and traditional concept of human self. E.g. Freud offers a new insight into human self as id, ego, and superego and unravels the libidinal self. Talks of the conscious and subconscious. This conception of man is different from the way religion or the evolution theory gave. DH Laurence talks to new sexual morality unknown to the west. Modernism was a reaction to modernity led by rationalism, scientific thinking etc.

Modernity: modernity was an outlook or frame of mind/thinking shaped by the rapid development in urbanisation, industrialisation, unprecedented development in science and technology that began in the eighteenth century. This is also called enlightenment thinking. Some of the important features of Enlightenment - liberal humanism, rationalism, belief in natural law, deep faith in scientific and technological progress, and linear and evolutionary understanding of history. (Liberal Humanism that we talk about in ‘Politics of Failure’ is a fall out of Enlightenment. The intellectual response or reactionary thinking fostered by enlightenment is Modernity.

Difference between Enlightenment and Modernity: Enlightenment is a philosophical or intellectual movement. Where as modernity is how enlightenment physically manifests in reality. E.g. When the British came to India they came with enlightenment philosophy which believed in rationalism etc (refer to the features of enlightenment mentioned in the previous paragraph) because of that modernity entered India. E.g. Urbanisation, happened, a linear history based on the western model was written which began with the so called Vedic period and ended with the British rule which said from the Vedic period to the British period history has been progressing, evolving. India has been gradually developing and so on. (Many of even today hold these beliefs)

Anil Pinto, Dept of Media Studies, Christ College, Banglaore

Politics of Failure

POLITICS OF FAILURE
S. V Srinivas
-Liberal humanist project of English Departments of elite institutions
-Liberal humanism: A cultural – political position holding up the essential decency of human beings and which promotes democracy, individualism, tolerance, rationality. It glosses over inequalities and differences which are the result of socio-cultural conditions
-Theses English depts exclude and marginalise various categories – of people of texts, of theories. E.g.: for discrepancy between liberal, rhetoric and teaching practice : high failure rate in English courses especially SCST students
- High failure, high dropout converges of two histories :
English in colonial + post colonial India
Post independence education policies
Hence fostere elitism at the expense of primary education
-Purpose of Colonial English education-to create a small class of intermediaries who would then educate the ‘masses’ in the vernacular
-Power + prestige of English created academics and bureaucratic elite
-Postcolonial India. Eng still marker of privilege
-Accessibility to higher education has not increased for people. Governments have perpetuated this condition
-1986 education policy created rural elite
-Much of higher education funding by government goes to central universities
-English language available only to ‘exclusive public schools’ not govt schools.
-As a result Higher education is available only to those not compelled by their economic situation to seek employment
-Present system based on limited accessibility to higher education- compared to the number of students possessing minimum qualification. M.A 50% + required + toppers in entrance test. All this truly selects meritorious students.
-Limited access higher education, ‘merit and excellence’ of individual students + ‘high standards’ of institution a suspect. It shifts states responsibility of its failure in making education more widely available to disadvantaged students. The latter are blamed for their ‘lack of competence’ or lack of interest. In the process, government is absolved of blame for its inadequacy but seen as engaged in positive task of promoting talent and higher standards.
-SC/ST reservation rendered useless by insistence on high standards + hostility of upper class teachers and their administration.
-Obstruction offered to the acquisition of ‘knowledge’ in the discipline by using alienating texts and uncongenial classroom methods. This closes several career options to disadvantaged students like faculty positions. Reserved quota not filled due to non-availability of candidates. This keeps higher education in bureaucratic hands.
-Successful students are to take the blame. The investment is constant despite strength. Successful students internalise the institutions version of individuals excellence and merit and categorise the unsuccessful as ‘uninterested’ or ‘lacking in initiative’
-Legitimate demands of the adversely affected students ignored and few attempts are made to find workable solutions to the problem.
-To break the cycle of exclusion and domination, thus characterises failure. Student should make a sustained intervention.
-Change from within by students who resist authoritarian pedagogies+ teachers of administrators who have to resist their own will to power.
-Shouldn’t our nation prosper.
-Failure not ‘natural’ because of lack of interest but ‘politics’(-power struggle)
-Elitism

Anil Pinto

AnilPinto: Christ college photo

AnilPinto: Christ college photo

testing testing

III FEP/JPE Interaction with Abhay Simha from FTII

Those were the best days of my life?

Christ college photo

HI All
Wanna see Christ College frozen in a pic. Have a looks

III JPEng, FEP notice

Notice to III FEP and JPEng Students

The remaining essays will be taken up in the following order.

The Politics of Failure - 1 hr
On the Abolition of the (sic) English Department - 1 hr
Minutes on Indian Education - 1 hr
Interrogating the Post-Colonial 2 hr
Shall We Leave it to the Experts 2 hrs
Why I am not a Hindu - 1 hr
Marxist Criticism - 3 hrs

All classes will be lecture-cum-discussion based. Hence, please come to class having read the essays.
04.Jan 2006

II BCom 'A' IV Sem Assignment

IV Semester CIA Assignments
II BCom A

CIA-3: Topic: English spoken in Christ College Campus. The analysis may be based on usage, preferred words, slangs, accents, mannerisms that go with certain expression, expressions, mother tongue influences, pronunciation etc.

Evaluation Criteria: Quality of the analysis, presentation, language, creativity.
Date for submission: January 12, 2006

Guidelines for Submission:
• All students should post it on my blog http://anilpinto.blogspot.com A hard copy of the assignment may also may be submitted.
• Please post your assignments at the end of your assignment notice on the blog. Please sign in as anonymous. Remember to type your Full Name, Register No and date of posting.
• The covering sheet of the hard copy assignment should have the following details: Name of the college, assignment code, assignment title, your name, Reg. no, name of the teacher in-charge and date of submission.
• You may use pictures, graphs and illustrations. Please write only on one side of the A4 size paper.
• You are free to take the assignment beyond the expected criteria. Such efforts will be appreciated.
• Do not submit the assignments prior to the date of submission unless you are going to be out of town
• Late submissions will be rejected.
• Avoid copying.
• Remember to give the reference at the end of your assignment of the books, articles and websites that you have referred to. The following pattern may be followed: Author’s name with the last name first, a period, name of the book underlined, a period, Place of Publication, colon, name of publication, year of publication, page no.
o E.g.: Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand, My Experiments with Truth, New Delhi: Penguin, 1998.
o In case of a website give the complete URL of the site referred to.
o If you are directly lifting some lines quote them. If you are using some idea write it in your words but acknowledge it.

Feminism

Feminist Criticism


Feminism is a diverse collection of social theories, political movements, and moral philosophies, largely motivated by or concerning the experiences of women, especially socially, politically, and economically. As a social movement, feminism largely focuses on limiting or eradicating gender inequality and promoting women's rights, interests, and issues in society.

Feminism as a self-aware, concerted approach entered literature in 1960’s. However about two centuries of struggle preceeds it. Beginning with Mary Wollsonecrafts – A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792), Margaret Fuller (Am)- Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845), John Stuart Mill – The Subjection of Women (1869)

Today feminist literary criticism closely linked to movement by political feminists for social, economic and cultural freedom and equality.

Virginia Woolf novelist, an important precursor feminist criticism, wrote numerous essays on women authors and on the cultural, economic, and educational disabilities within ‘patriarchal’ society that have prevented women from realising their creative possibilities. Her important work: A Room of One’s Own (1929)

Simone de Beauvoir (French) in her The Second Sex (1949) presents a critique of cultural identification of women merely as negative object or other to ‘man’ as the defining and dominating ‘subject’ who is assumed to represent humanity in general. She also dealt with great collective myths of women in the works of many male writers.

In US modern feminism began with Mary Ellman’s Thinking about Women (1968) through witty discussion of derogatory stereotypes of women in literature written by men. She also presented alternative, subversive points of view in some writings of women.

Kale Millets – Sexual Politics (1969)- ‘Politics’ – mechanisms that express and enforce the relations of power in society. She discussed how western social arrangements and institutions as covert ways manipulating power to establish and perpetuate the dominance of men and subordination of women. She attacked the male bias in Freud’s psychoanalytic theory and analysed selected passages by D H Lawrence showing how they aggrandise their aggressive phallic selves and degrade selves and degrade women as submissive sexual objects.

Since 1969 there has been explosion of feminist writings unparalleled in the previous history of critical innovation as it displays urgency and excitement of a religious awakening. However, there is no unitary theory of procedures in US, England and France and other countries. There is a lot of variety like psychoanalytic, Marxist and diverse post-structuralist with intense debate within them. Various feminism share assumptions and concepts that constitute common ground for the diverse ways that individual critics explore the factor of sexual differences and privilege in the production, the form and content, the reception and critical analysis and evaluation of works of literature.
o Subtypes of feminism
o Amazon feminism
o Anarcha-Feminism
o Anti-racist feminism
o cultural feminism
o ecofeminism
o equity feminism
o existentialist feminism
o French feminism
o gender feminism
o individualist feminism (also known as libertarian feminism)
o lesbian feminism
o liberal feminism
o male feminism or men's feminism
o Marxist feminism (also known as socialist feminism)
o material feminism
o pop feminism
o post-colonial feminism
o postmodern feminism which includes queer theory
o pro-sex feminism (also known as sexually liberal feminism, sex-positive feminism)
o psychoanalytic feminism
o radical feminism
o separatist feminism
o socialist feminism
o spiritual feminism
o standpoint feminism
o third-world feminism
o transnational feminism
o transfeminism
o womanism
o Certain actions, approaches and people can also be described as proto-feminist or post-feminist.


Common grounds:
1. Western civilisation is pervasively patriarchal – It is male centred, controlled, organised, conducted to subordinate women to men in all cultural domains: familial, religious, political, economic, social, legal, artistic.

Hebrew Bible, Greek philosophy to present: female defined by negative reference, to the male as the human norm hence the other, non-man, by her lack of the identifying male organ, of male powers, and of the male characters traits presumed to have achieved the most important inventions and works of civilisations and culture.
Women socialised to resign to patriarchal ideology (conscious and unconscious presuppositions and male superiority) and conditioned to derogate their own sex and to cooperate in their own subordination. E.g. NDTV ‘We the People’ Dress code.

2. Though sex is determined by anatomy the prevailing concepts of gender- of the traits that constitute what is masculine and what is feminine are largely cultural constructs. Created by the patriarchal biases of the civilisation. Simone de Beauvoir: ‘One is not born, but becomes, a woman … it is civilization as a whole that produces this creature…. which is described as feminine.’
Masculine identified as active, dominating, adventurous, rational, creative; the feminine by systematic opposition to such traits, as passive, acquiescent, timid, emotional, and conventional.

3. The patriarchal/masculinist /andro-centric ideology pervades great literary works mostly written by men. Highly regarded classics focus on male protagonists- Oedipus, Ulysses, Hamlet, Tom Jones, Captain Ahab, Huck Finn- embody masculine traits and ways of feeling and pursue masculine interests in masculine fields of action.

To them female characters are marginal and subordinate, complementary, opposite to masculine desires and enterprises. They lack female role models, are addressed to male readers. They either make woman alien outsider or make her take the position of the male subject, male values, and ways of perceiving, feeling, and acting. Critical theories, traditional aesthetic categories presumed to be objective, disinterested and universal are fused with masculine assumptions, interests and ways of reasoning. Rankings, critical treatments are gender-based.

Feminist critics in English-speaking countries attempt to reconstitute all the ways we deal with literature to do justice to female points of views, concerns and values.
They try to alter ways of reading of the past to make her a Resisting Reader (Judith Fetterley, 1978) to resist the author’s intensions and design in order by a ‘revisionary reading’ bringing to light and countering the sexual biases written into a literary work. To find ‘images of women’ in the novels and poems of men. They fall into two antithetic patterns. One side- idealised projection of men’s desires (the Madonna, the Muse of arts, Dante’s Beatrice, the pure and innocent virgin, the ‘Angel in the House’ that was represented by the Victorian poet Coventry Patmore). The other side: demonic projections of men’s sexual resentments and terrors (Eve and Pandora as the sources of all evil, destructive sensual temptresses such as Delilah and Circe, the malign witch, the castrating mother)
Though some decry literature written by men for its depiction of women as marginal docile and subservient to men’s interests and emotional needs and fears, male writers like Chaucer, Shakespeare, Samuel Richardson, Henrick Ibsen and George Bernard Shaw have managed to raise above the sexual prejudices of their time sufficiently to understand and present the cultural pressures that have shaped the characters of women and forced upon them their negative or subsidiary social roles.

Some feminists are not concerned with woman as reader but gynocriticism. Gynocriticism: Elaine Showalter- criticism concerns itself with developing specifically female framework for dealing with works written by women in terms of production, motivation and analysis, interpretation in all literary forms, including journals and letters.

Important books of this mode:
Patricia Meyer Spacks: The Female Imagination (1975), on major women novelists and poets in England, America, and France;
Elaine Showalter, A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Bronte to Lessing (1977)
Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic (1979) Stresses the psychodynamics of women writers in the 19th century.

The authors propose the ‘anxiety of authorship’ that resulted from the stereotype, that literary creativity is an exclusive male domain, effected in women writers a psychological duplicity that projected a monstrous counter figure to the heroine, typified by Bertha Rochester, the madwoman Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre; such a figure is ‘usually in some sense the author’s double, an image of her own anxiety and rage’.

Concerns of gynocritics-
1. to identify distinctively feminine subject matters in literature written by women – The primary issues e.g. the world of domesticity, the special experiences of gestations, giving birth, and nurturing or mother-daughter and woman-woman relations- in which personal and affectional issues, and not external activism is significant.

2. To uncover in literary history a female tradition expressed by a subcommunity of women writers who were aware of, emulated and found support in earlier women writers, and who in turn provide models and emotional support to their own readers and successors.

3. To show that there is a distinctive feminine mode of experience or ‘subjectivity’ in thinking feeling, valuing and perceiving oneself and the outer world.

4. To attempt to specify the traits of a ‘woman’s language or distinctively feminine style of speech and writing, in sentence structure, types of relations between the elements of a discourse, and characteristic figures and imagery.

Some feminists critically analyse women’s domestic and ‘sentimental’ novels, noted perfunctorily and in derogatory fashion in standard literary histories. These dominated the market for fiction and best sellers in the nineteenth century.
Examples seen in Elaine Showalter, A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Bronte to Lessing (1977) on British writers
Nina Baym Woman’s fiction: A Guide to Novels by and about Women in America 1820-1870 (1978)
Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, No Man’s Land: The Place of the Woman Writer in the Twentieth Century (2 Vols; 1988-89)

Often-asserted role of feminist critics is to enlarge and reorder, displace the literary canon- a set of works which by a cumulative consensus have come to be considered ‘major’ as the chief subjects of literary history, criticism, scholarship, and teaching.

Feminist studies have brought to forefront many of the sidelined women writers: Anne Finch, George Sand, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Elizabeth Gaskell, Christina Rossetti, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, Margaret Cavendish, Aphra Behn Lady, Mary Wortley Montagu, Joanna Baillie, Kate Chopin, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and a number of African-American writers such as Zora Neale Hurston.

Some feminists have concentrated on lesbian writers.


American and English critics have engaged in empirical and thematic studies of writings by and about women. In France prominent critics have occupied themselves with the ‘theory’ of the role of gender in writing within the poststructuralist frame of reference, Lacan’s reworkings of Freudian psychoanalysis in terms of Saussure’s linguistic theory.

English-speaking feminists show demonstrable and specific evidences in which male bias is encoded in our linguistic conventions. E.g. ‘man’, ‘mankind’ for human beings, chairman or spokesman for people of either sex, he and his to refer back to gender neutral nouns like God, human being, child inventor, author, poet.

French feminists argue that all western languages are irredeemably male-gendered, male-constituted and male-dominated. According to Lacan Discourse is ‘phallogocentric’- It is centred and organised throughout by implicit recourse to the phallus (symbolic) both as its supposed ‘logos’ or ground, and as its prime signifier and power-source. Phallogocentrism manifests itself in Western discourse not only in its vocabulary and syntax, rigorous rules of logic, proclivity for fixed classifications and oppositions, and its criteria to choose valid evidence and objective knowledge. The basic problem for French theorists is to establish the very possibility of a woman’s language that will not, when a woman writes, automatically be appropriated into this phallogocentric language for such appropriation forces her into complicity with the linguistic features that impose on females a condition of marginality and subservience, or even of linguistic non-entity.

To evade this dilemma, Helene Cixous posits the existence of an incipient ‘feminine writing’ with its source in the mother, in that stage of the mother-child relation before the child acquires the male-centred verbal language. Thereafter, this prelinguistic potentiality in the unconscious manifests undermine and subvert the fixed signification, the logic, and the ‘closure’ of our phallocentric language, and open out into a joyous freeplay of meanings.

Luce Irigaray posits a ‘woman’s writing’ which evades the male monopoly and the risk of appropriation into the existing system by establishing as its generative principle, in place of monolithic phallus, the diversity, fluidity and multiple possibilities inherent in the structure and erotic functioning of the female sexual organs and in the distinctive nature of female sexual experiences.

Julia Kristeva posits a ‘Chora’, or prelinguistic, pre-oedipal, and unsystematized signifying process, centred on the mother, that she labels ‘semiotic’. This process is repressed as we acquire the father-controlled, syntactically ordered, and logical language that she calls ‘symbolic’. The semiotic process can break out in a revolutionary way as in avant-garde poetry, whether written by a women or by men- as a ‘heterogeneous destructive causality’ that disperses the authoritarian ‘subject’ that strikes free of the oppressive order and rationality of our standard discourse which as the product of the ‘law of the Father’ consigns women to a negative and marginal status.

In recent years a number of feminists have used poststructuralist positions and techniques to question the founding concepts of feminism itself. They point out the existence of differences and adversarial strands within the supposedly monolithic history of patriarchal discourse, and emphasise the inherent linguistic instability in the basic conceptions of ‘woman’ or ‘the feminine’ as well as the diversities within these supposedly universal and uniform female identities that result from differences in race, class, nationality, and historical situation.

The volume of literature both critical and creative as well women’s studies in academia a increasing by the day. The concern with the effects of sexual innovations of the last several decades, the concern with the effects of sexual differences in the writing, interpretation, analysis and assessment of literature seems destined to have the most prominent and enduring effects on literary history, criticism, and academic instruction, as conducted by men as well as women.

Reference:

Abrams, MH. A Glossary of Literary Terms.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism

I BBM ‘A’ Sem. II Assignment - I

I BBM ‘A’ Sem. II Assignment - I
Please read the following poem by Marcie Hans and post your critical comments on this blog. You may consider the following points while commenting: the dichotomy between creation and invention of God and humans respectively, the contribution of the stylistic features of the poems towards enhancing the effect of the poem, the poem as anti-industrial or as a Romantic poem. You may also read the poem against the grain. Minimum word limit is 30. No upper word limit. Please do not give the summary of the poem in your comments. It’s the quality of your comments that matters and not the quantity. At the end of your comments please leave your register no. You may also leave your name (optional).Your comments have to be posted before 30 Nov 2005.

Evaluation: The assignment carries 20 marks. YOu will be marked based on the quality of the response, which includes the language, originality of thought, and the ability to assimilate classroom discussion of the peom with your critical insights of the poem.

Fueled
by a million
man-made
wings of fire –
the rocket tore a tunnel
through the sky –
an
everybody cheered.
Fueled
only by a thought from God –
the seedling
urged its way
through the thickness of black –
and as it pierced
the heavy ceiling of the soil –
and launched itself
up into outer space –
no
one
even
clapped.

I FEP II SEMESTER COURSE PLAN

Department of Media Studies
Christ College, Bangalore

FEP II Semester
Phonetics and Applied Linguistics

Course Plan 2005-06 (sUBJECT TO CHANGE)

Name of the Teacher : Anil Pinto
Semester : II
Total No of sessions : 40
(As per academic Calendar)
Subject : Functional English
Paper : III (Phonetics and Applied Linguistics)
Books Recommended : Balasubramanian, T. A Textbook of English Phonetics for Indian Students. Delhi: Macmillan India, 1981.
Jones, Daniel. English Pronouncing Dictionary. 16 Ed. London: CUP, 2003.
Mortimer, Collin. Elements of Pronunciation: Intensive Practice for Intermediate and more Advanced Students. CUP,1985.
Topic No Topic No of sessions Dates
1 Word accent revision: Functional shift of stress, word with prefixes/suffixes-their stress pattern, accent in compound words, consonant cluster, syllable structure, 02 Nov: 14, 15
2 Contractions 01 Nov: 18
3 Allophonic variants: Plosives, lateral, frictionless continuant. 03 Nov: 21, 22, 25
4 Assimilation: Apocope, syncope. 02 Nov: 28, 29
5 Elision 01 Dec: 2
6 Rhythm: Content words, structure words, stress-timed rhythm, week forms 04 Dec: 5, 6, 12, 13
7 Intonation: Pitch, tone/tune shapes, tone group and tonic, falling tone, rising tone, falling-rising tone, passage transcription 07 Jan: 2, 3, 6, 9, 10, 13,16
8 Accent: General Indian English 03 Jan: 17, 30, 31
9 Accents: US, UK and Australian 04 Feb: 3, 6, 7, 10
10 Voice culture 05 Feb: 13, 14,17, 20, 21
11 Microphone training 03 Feb: 24, 27, 28
12 Effective Reading 06 Mar: 3, 6, 7, 10, 13, 14
13 Effective speaking 06 Mar: 17, 20, 21, 24, 27, 28
14 Feedback 01 Mar: 31

Methodology:
Each lecture-class will begin with exercises for 15 minutes based on the topics discussed in the previous session. Hence, please come to class having done your revision.
BBC, Cambridge, CIEFL audio and video cassettes and CDs will be made use of in the training process. Relevant exercise and reading materials will be provided from time to time. Voice culture classes will be conducted in the open air.
Assignments:
CIA-2a: Speech Analysis: Record a three-minute speech of any student of Christ other than FEP. Analyse the speech in terms of pronunciation, and stress. The assignment should have the subject profile, the speech in regular English orthography, and your analysis of the speech based on the given criteria. No minimum or maximum word limit.
Should possess the audio record of the speech.
Evaluation Criteria: Quality of the analysis, presentation, language.
Date for submission: Nov. 29, 2005
CIA-2b: Analysis of British, US and Australian English. Record three-minute speeches of British, US and Australian English from TV or Radio, for the first two preferably from Voice of America, and BBC Radio respectively. Analyse the three pieces in terms of pronunciation, accent, rhythm, intonation and vocabulary. No minimum or maximum word limit. Should possess the audio record of the three speeches.
Evaluation Criteria: Quality of the analysis, presentation, language.
Date for submission: Jan.13, 2005
CIA-3: Teach Phonetics Project. Choose a person who has not undergone training in pronunciation in English. Teach phonetics in about 20 sessions spread over a period of 20 to 30 days. Submit the report. The report should have the learner profile, sessionwise teaching plan/schedule with dates, continuous analysis of the learner’s progress, your learning and a letter from the leaner as a proof of your teaching the person.
Evaluation Criteria: Quality of the analysis, presentation, language.
Date for submission: Feb. 3, 2005
Guidelines for Submission:
• The covering sheet of the assignment should have the following details: Name of the college, assignment code, assignment title, your name, Reg. no, name of the teacher in-charge and date of submission.
• I prefer handwritten assignments with proper margins. You may use pictures, graphs and illustrations. Please write only on one side of the A4 size paper.
• You are free to take the assignment beyond the expected criteria. Such efforts will be appreciated.
• Do not submit the assignments four days prior to the date of submission unless you are going to be out of town. Those who are going to be out of town can submit the assignment online.
• Assignments submitted late by a day will be accepted. However, such submissions will be penalised. Submissions late by more than a day will be rejected.
• Avoid copying.
• Remember to give the reference at the end of your assignment of the books, articles and websites that you have referred to. The following pattern may be followed: Author’s name with the last name first, a period, name of the book underlined, a period, Place of Publication, colon, name of publication, year of publication, page no
o E.g.: Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand, My Experiments with Truth, New Delhi: Penguin, 1998.
o In case of a website give the complete URL of the site referred to.
o If you are directly lifting some lines quote them. If you are using some idea write it in your words but acknowledge it.
Class test: There will be one written class test. Peer evaluation will be done. However marks obtained will not be considered for CIA.
Mid-semester practical exam: Listening to a passage and transcribing, reading a passage in regular English Orthography, reading a transcribed passage, group discussion.
Mark division:
End-semester theory paper-50
Practical:
End-semester practicals: 25
Mid-semester practicals: 10
Classwork: 10
Record: 05
Continuous Internal Assessment:
CIA-I: 25
CIA-II a, II b, III: 20
Attendance: 05
Total: 150

Note:
 Attendance is compulsory for all the sessions. Please be punctual.
 Sessions on Mondays are of two hours and involve practicals. Rest of the sessions are of 55 minutes.
 Good English pronunciation can be mastered only through continuous practice. Hence, try to speak English phonetically as much as possible in your day-to-day conversation.
 Listen to BBC, CNN, and VOA news on TV or Radio everyday. This will not only help you widen your knowledge but also expose you to good spoken English. (However beware of the politics of these channels)
 Update your record book regularly and submit it on the last working day of every month. You may place it on my table.
 Please take care not to pass comments or react negatively when your friends try to speak English phonetically. It may demotivate them. Instead help each other learn better.
 Please feel free to clarify your doubts, ask questions or give feedback in the class, department or through email. Email: ajpinto42@yahoo.co.in.
 While emailing please mention your name and class.
 Visit my blog for notices and announcements regularly.
 All the best. Let us grow together.

Anil Pinto
Email: ajpinto42@yahoo.co.in
Blog: http://anilpinto.blogspot.com

IBBM Grammar and Prose

This page includes material on the following topics in the order given.
1. Tenses
2. Passive Voice
3. direct-indirect speech
4. prepositions
5. Meeting of the Races: Rabindranath Tagore
6. Refugees

Tenses
Introduction:
Tense and time are two different concepts. Time is a non-linguistic aspect. It has three divisions-past, present and future. Whereas tense is a concept related to language which represents our concept of time with the verb. Tamil, Hindi, Kannada and most of the Indian languages have three tenses. Where as English has only two tenses- past and present. English does not have future tense.

Both the past and present have their respective simple, progressive (continuous), perfect and perfect continuous tenses.

Simple Present
a. Used to talk about general truths
E.g. Earth revolves round the sun.
Two and two make five.
b. To talk about situations instantaneously. E.g. cricket, football commentaries, demonstration of things like functioning of a computer or cookery lessons on your TV.
E.g. Bola passes the ball to Shambu, who heads it to.
Take a glass of water, add some sugar to it….

c. Habitual use: To talk about thing we normally or regularly do.
E.g. I brush my teach everyday.
I come to college by bus.

Note: You can’t say ‘I am coming to college everyday by bus.’ Because it is a regular activity for you.

Simple past:
a. In a narrative to talk about sequence of events.
E.g. Tony Blair came to India, met the Prime Minister, gave an interview to NDTV and returned to England.
b. Major Khatri visited the hospital every day for two years.


Present Progressive
a. To talk about present state that is temporary.
E.g. He is working in the garden.

b. Sporadic repetitions.
E.g. The Children are always breaking windows.
Note: In the instances of ‘b’ above there is implied criticism. Such sentences need to make use of adverbs like always, constantly, forever.

Past Progressive

a. Used to talk about actions going on simultaneously.
E.g. I was watering the plants while my friend was watching the television.

b. to indicate a temporary state in the past.
E.g. I was watching television all evening.
c. For ongoing action in the past.
E.g. I was having ice cream just then.

Note: Stative verbs which indicate a state of being of knowing cannot be used in progressive.
E.g. know, like, prefer, understand, think, want, have, being

However they can be used to talk about something other than their direct meaing.
E.g. I am thinking of going to Chennai tomorrow. (The word thinking here refers to considering and not a mental process of thinking.)

Present Perfect

This is used to refer to an activity that is over in the past but whose impact is still felt or continues.
E.g. I have washed my hand (Meaning, I may have washed a long time ago but they are
still clean.)

Past Perfect

a. To talk about past in the past: where two actions occur in the past, one before the other.
I reached the college at 9.30 am, but the exam had already begun by then.

b. with verbs like hope, expect, think, intend, mean, want, to indicate that a past hope or expectation was not fulfilled.
E.g. He had intended to propose to her
I had hoped to improve my condition.

Present Perfect Progressive
Used to talk about an activity that began in the past and is still continuing.
E.g. I have been reading since 6 pm.


Similar use holds good for Past Perfect Progressive

Future:
The Future can be expressed in English using
- The Simple Present
- The Present Progressive
- Going to form
- ‘Will’ and ‘shall’

The Simple Present is used to talk about fixed programmes.
E.g. The end-sem exam begins on 7 November.
College will start on 14 November
What time does Chennai express arrive?

The Present Progressive is used to talk about personal arrangements for the future.
E.g. I’m seeing the vice-principal tomorrow.

The use of ‘going to’ refers to future based on present circumstances.
She’s going to have a baby. (I can see that she’s pregnant.)
It’s going to rain. (I see dark clouds in the sky.)

‘Will’ and ‘shall’ are used when we predict what we think will happen.
You will never fail if you study for an hour everyday.

To talk about decision at the moment we are making it.
I think I’ll go to bed.

‘Shall’ is used to make suggestions.
E.g. Shall I open the window?

Reference:
Nagaraj, Geetha. Comprehend and Compose. Rev Ed. New Delhi: Foundation Books, 2005.
For more details and exercises please refer to you grammar text book.



Indirect/Reported Speech

When a previously made statement is reported in the speakers own words modifying the original statement it becomes reported speech.
E.g
1. Shambu said, “I met Bola today”.
2. Shambu said that he had met Bola that day.


When we convert a direct sentence to an indirect sentence following changes occur in the indirect sentence.
1. Tense change
2. Punctuation Change
3. Pronoun change
4. Adverbials of time and place, and demonstratives change
5. Reporting verb may change
6. Sentence type may change in the case of interrogative sentences and exclamatory sentences.

Tense Change:
Tense in Direct Speech Tense in indirect speech Examples
Direct speech Indirect speech
Simple present Simple past He said, “My brother cooks breakfast.” He said that his brother cooked breakfast.
Present progressive Past progressive She said, “He is writing a novel.” She said that he was writing a novel.
Present perfect Past perfect They said, “We have seen the Taj Mahal.” They said that they had seen the Taj Mahal.
Present perfect Continuous Past perfect Continuous He said, “Our milkman has been giving us very good milk.” He said that their milkman had been giving them very good milk.
Simple past Past perfect She said, “I heard the news over the radio.” She said that she had heard the news over the radio.
Past perfect continuous Past perfect continuous He said, “We were watching the game.” He said that they had been watching the game.

a. Modal auxiliaries are changed into their past forms
1. He said, “The teacher will help me.”
He said that the teacher would help him.
b. The past perfect and past perfect continuous tenses remain the same when converted into reported speech.
1. He said, “I had waited for an hour for the bus”
c. When we refer to natural laws or eternal truths the tense remains unchanged in reported speech
1. The teacher said, “The earth moves round the sun.”
The teacher said that the earth moves round the sun.
d. If the reporting verb is ‘says’ or ‘will say’ i.e. if the reporting verb is in the present tense form then no change is made in the tense of the verb in the spoken sentence.

Adverbials of time
Demonstratives and adverbials of time and place change when converted to reported speech.
Direct Indirect
This That
These Those
Here There
Now Then
Today That day
This afternoon That afternoon
Tonight That night
Last week The previous week
Tomorrow The next day/ the following day
Yesterday The day before
Ago Earlier, before
Next week/year The following week/year
Two weeks ago Two weeks before


Changes depending on the type of sentence.

Commands and requests are converted into reported speech suing an infinitive phrase, that is ‘to+phrase’. The reporting verb is changed form ‘said’ or ‘told’ to another one that expresses the tone of the sentence.
1. The boy said to the principal, “Please give me a scholarship”.
The requested the principal to give him a scholarship.
2. The king said to his men, “Put this man in prison.”
The king ordered his men to put that man in prison.


Questions:

a. Yes/No questions are converted into reported speech with the following changes.
1. The question is changed into a noun clause or put it simply into a statement.
2. The conjunction ‘whether’ is used.
3. The question mark at the end is omitted.
1. “Is the train late?” the man asked the station master
The man asked he station master whether the train was late.
2. “Can you hear a noise?” he asked me.
He asked me whether I could hear a noise.
b. Wh-question can be converted into reported speech with the following changes.

1. The question is changed into a noun clause, in other words a statement.
2. The noun clause is introduced with the question word in the spoken sentence.
3. The question mark at the end is omitted.
1. Mr Das asked his wife, “Who is coming to dinner?”
Mr Das asked his wife who was coming to dinner.
2. “Which book are you taking?” the librarian asked.
The librarian asked me which book I was taking.

Exclamations
While reporting an exclamation the reporting verb must reflect the spirit of the spoken words.
1. “What a lovely garden!” my friend said.
My friend exclaimed what a lovely garden it was.
2. “Hello! Where are you going?” he asked me.
He greeted me and asked where I was going.


Reporting verbs for commands and requests.

advice, ask, beg, command, desire, forbid, order, request, urge.



Prepositions

Prepositions can be categorised into
a) Space/place prepositions: at, in, on, opposite, below, off, bhind, near, by, beside, under, over etc.
b) Movement/direction propositions: from, to, towards, into, onto, away, from, round, across, along etc
c) Time prepositions: at, in, on, before, during, after, till/until, by, for, since, from, to etc
d) Orientation prepositions: Beyond, across, over, past, through, down etc.
e) Means prepositions: with, by etc
f) Other prepositions: against, as, about, of, for etc.

Prepositions not used:

1. With expressions of time beginning with next, last, this, one, every, each, some, any, all.

See you next Monday.
This lecture is in Room 3 this afternoon.
You can see me any day you like.

2. In expressions with words like heights, width, length, colour, age, shape preposition is not used
She’s the same age as Mala, though she pretends to be younger!
The new Fiat has a very nice shape.
He’s the right height to join the Army.
What colour were his trousers?

Words with fixed preposition
Certain words go with certain fixed prepositions
Agree with
Agree about
Agree on
Agree to
Anxious about
Anxious for
Anxious + to infinitive
Apologise for
Arrive at
Crash into\die of
Difficulty with
Difficulty in
Dream of
Dram about
Example of
Look at
Look after
look for
Shout at
Suffer from
Wrong with
Matter with

Certain prepositions go before certain nouns in a fixed pattern.
At – the cinema, the theatre, a party, university
Come/go -for a walk, a swim, a drive, a run
In - pencil, pen
In – the rain, the snow
In - a loud voice, a whisper
In – a suit, a sari, a shirt, a raincoat
In – the end, ( of a story)
At - the end, ( of the street)
In – time
On – time
In – my opinion
On – the radio, TV, the telephone

Reference:
Nagaraj, Geetha. Comprehend and Compose. Rev Ed. New Delhi: Foundation Books, 2005.
For more details and exercises please refer to you grammar text book.



The Meeting of the Races
By Rabindranath Tagore

“In this essay Rabindranath Tagore discusses the external influences on the spirit of humanity. He says that violence creeps into humanity because of the cloistered nature of the spirit. If the spirit can free itself and when man can adapt himself according to the changing time, he would be most suited to a happy existence. Everything outside man must function in order to help him live better and happily. Otherwise, there will be chaos.”

Tagore says that what is central to humans is the freedom of the soul. But owing to geographical condition they developed selfish mentality. They developed racist mentality, and shut their gods in temples and scriptures and remained far away from the true God. Now that the civilisation and races have been brought closer by technology and political changes, Tagore says, time has come to unite. The humankind can never again hide in their exclusive citadels of religion, race and nation. They must come out of their cozy narrow domestic mentalities and negotiate changes. Otherwise they may be forced to extinction.

According to him to enable the unification of the humanity they must be able to give up their cultural specificities however dearer they may be to them, if they come on the way of unification. In the animal world species that clung to their advantages have been completely wiped out at a later stage. Human society today is full of greed, selfishness hatred and suspicion. If it does not resolve these and the racial problem then it will drag them to death. When their existing resources get exhausted they will be forced to seek a deeper alliance of their soul with some other power.

Humans require spiritual power more than ever wherein lies their safety. In this chaotic world they need to yield to the freedom of spirit.

Tagore asks the people of simple faith to recognise humanity above all distinctions and unite. The demonic powers like fire gave way to life as they were doomed because of their very exaggerations. Therefore the dreamers of a unified world should keep their faith firm in life that creates and not in machines that construct.

Anil Pinto
Dept of Media Studies
Christ College.


Refugees
By K A Abbas


The story Refugee is based on the India-Pakistan partition in 1947. The Indo- Pak partition resulted in one of the biggest displacement of people in the history of humankind. No time in history perhaps people have moved from one place to another as during the time of this partition. The story tries to throw light on the human side of the story where innocent humans who had nothing to do with the political developments suffered.

This story deals with the life of Manji first in Rawalpindi and then in Bombay. We find that in the story even though she was a land lady with servants around in Rawalpindi, here in Bombay though she undergoes a lot of emotional turmoil, she still remains hospitable. She does not lose her human nature in spite of having suffered much.

In Rawalpindi Manji lived in her double-storied house. She had given the lower floor on rent tenanted by mostly Muslim shopkeepers and artisans. (By the way Rawalpindi is in present-day Pakistan) She had a close bond with all the neighbours- Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs. The Muslim women called her Behenji and while the younger ones called her Maanji.

Manji loved Rawalpindi and all that Rawalpindi had to offer. So when newspapers published about the partition, it did not alarm her. She preferred to stay in Rawalpindi, and her Muslim neighbours promised to protect her and her property. But her faith was shaken when a group of people killed a tonga wallah along with his horse on the open street because he was Hindu.

She left her house just as it was, locked to Delhi and from there to Bombay, hardly being aware that she was never going to return.

At Bombay although she underwent a serious emotional turmoil, she hardly made that visible. But it took its toil on her health. Though she had to live like a very ordinary woman despite her status as a land lady in the past, she did not lose her pleasantness. But she kept being nostalgic about her Rawalpindi which according to her was far superior to Bombay.

Anil Pinto
Dept of Media Studies
Christ College

IFEP Phonetics patter

FIRST SEMESTER EXAMINATIONS
IBA
Communicative English I
Phonetics: Paper I


Time: 3 Hours Max. Marks: 50
Note: 1. All questions are compulsory.
2. Make sure you use the correct question number.
3. For all transcriptions use the symbols in the English Pronouncing Dictionary by Daniel Jones.

I. Read the following passage and answer the questions given below:
IA. Give phonetic symbol and the three-term label for the initial phoneme in the following words:

IB. From the passage pick out a word ending with each of the sounds described below:

IC. Give phonetic symbol and the three-term label for the initial phoneme in the following words.

ID From the passage pick out a word ending with each of the sounds described below.

IIA From the jumbled group of words given below, identify the pairs that contain identical consonant phonemes.

IIB. From the jumbled group of words given below, identify the pairs that contain identical vowel phonemes.

IIC. From the jumbled group of words given below, identify the minimal pairs.

IIIA. Give the plural forms of the following nouns and next to each word state whether the plural maker is pronounced /s/ or /z/ or /iz/. You need not transcribe.

III B. Give the past tense of the following verbs and next to each word state whether the past tense marker is pronounced /t/ /d/ or /id/. You need not transcribe.

IV. Fill in the blanks in the following sentences with a word or a phrase

V. State whether the following statements are true or false.