C2 Blog: September 2011

Humans are superior, non-human animals are inferior. Animals were put here as the playthings of humans, for us to do with them what we want. We are able to farm them and control them, we can change their genetics and what they look like, animals have no minds of their own. We eat them, race them and catch them for sport. We even refer to undesirable human behavior as animal. In this world you either harm or you are harmed. God gave humans the ability to harm, so we do. Animals are here for us to exploit. Maiming and injuring an animal is no different to eating it.

5. You are concerned about the food that is given to children at schools today. You decide to write a letter of complaint to the Department of Education outlining your concerns for school food today and the actions you think need to be taken by governments to ensure our children continue to get the great all round food education they need to feed themselves better in the future and to help reduce the crippling rise in obesity. (deadline: 16 Jan)

6. Write an essay: Objective Proficiency p 56 & p 57 (deadline 29 Feb)
7. Write a proposal: Objective Proficiency p 72 & p 73 (deadline 16 Apr)
8. Write an article: Objective Proficiency p 90 & 91 (deadline 30 April)
9. Write a report: Objective Proficiency p 108 & 109 (deadline 14 May)

Presentations
Readers (deadlines: 31 Oct and Feb)

Workbook
You can do the exercises in: Units 1-13

Readers C 2

Your assignments are:

A) You will choose a book to read. Tell your teacher which book you have chosen. (Deadline: 31 Oct.). You will then read the book.

B) You will prepare a short presentation about it. You can also include your favourite quotes from the book and add some explanations. You can also try to convince the class that the book you have chosen should (not) be on the Reading List next year. (February)

Reading List 2011-2012 (suggestions)

A Thousand Splendid Suns is a 2007 novel by Afghan author Khaled Hosseini, his second, following his bestselling 2003 debut, The Kite Runner. It focuses on the tumultuous lives of two Afghan women and how their lives cross each other, spanning from the 1960s to 2003. 384 pages.
Saturday is a novel by British author Ian McEwan, first published in 2005. set in London, on Saturday, 15 February 2003, during a large demonstration against the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The protagonist, Henry Perowne, a 48-year-old neurosurgeon, has planned a series of chores and pleasures culminating in a family dinner in the evening. As he goes about his day he ponders the meaning of the protest and the problems that inspired it, however, the day is disrupted by an encounter with a violent, troubled man. 308 pages.
Notes from a Big Country is a collection of articles written by Bill Bryson for The Mail on Sunday from 1996 to 1998. The book was published in 1998. When Bill Bryson returned to the USA he was asked to write a weekly column about what life was like in the big country. The results, combined here to make a book, are funny and insightful, making you snigger. Full of descriptions and statistics. 368 pages.
The Island is a historical novel written by Victoria Hislop in 2005. It has won several awards. Set on the island of Spinalonga, off the coast of Crete, The Island tells the story of Alexis Fielding, a teenager on the cusp of a life-changing decision. Alexis knows little or nothing about her family's past and has always resented her mother for refusing to discuss it. She knows only that her mother, Sofia, grew up in Plaka, a small Cretan village, before moving to London. Making her first visit to Crete to see the village where her mother was born, Alexis discovers that the village of Plaka faces the small, now deserted island of Spinalonga, which, she is shocked and surprised to learn was Greece's leper colony for much of the 20th century. 320 pages.

Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of theDog),published in 1889, is a humorous account by Jerome K. Jerome of a boating holiday on the Thames between Kingston and Oxford. The book was initially intended to be a serious travel guide, with accounts of local history along the route, but the humorous elements took over to the point where the serious and somewhat sentimental passages seem a distraction to the comic novel. One of the most praised things about Three Men in a Boat is how undated it appears to modern readers — the jokes seem fresh and witty even today. 184 pages.

C2 Blog

C2 Academic and Exam Information

Homework 2011-2012

Reading List C2 2011-2012