article about CALL 10

Virtual CALL Library

The Virtual CALL Library aims to be a central point of access to the diverse collection of Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) software scattered across the Internet and available for downloading.

Please choose from the languages listed on the left.

How does it work?
No software is stored here. Each program's name forms a clickable link to download the package from its location elsewhere on the Internet. As far as possible, this will connect to the 'master distribution site' where new releases are uploaded, perhaps the author's website. Alternatively, there may be a link to download from one of the major software archives - e.g. Simtel or WinSite.

Shareware and freeware
Most software linked from this site is shareware - this is copyrighted software that is freely distributed with the requirement that payment is made to the author if the program is found to be useful. Some of the packages are freeware - this is also copyrighted, but no payment is expected. Commercial software is not generally listed, but we have some links which should help you.

Some of the software accessible from here is compressed using the ZIP format. You will need an unzipping (decompression) program to use the software downloaded: Windows users could try WinZip or the freeware ZipCentral.

If you know of any useful CALL shareware or freeware not listed here, and to tell me of updates, corrections and suggestions, please e-mail me: M.R.Platts@sussex.ac.uk

Disclaimer: Neither the University of Sussex nor its employees accept any responsibility... You download and use these files at your own risk. There are no implied endorsements of any cited commercial products and nothing should be implied by the presence or absence of a given site in a listing.

article about CALL 9

PROCESSES AND OUTCOMES IN NETWORKED CLASSROOM INTERACTION: DEFINING THE RESEARCH AGENDA FOR L2 COMPUTER-ASSISTED CLASSROOM DISCUSSION

Lourdes Ortega
University of Hawai'i at Manoa

ABSTRACT

The present paper focuses on the use of one networked technology, namely synchronous computer-mediated interaction, in the second language (L2) classroom. The scope is intentionally limited to research concerned with evaluating the potential benefits of computer-assisted classroom discussion (CACD) in terms of second language acquisition (SLA) theory. The findings stemming from the existing body of L2 research on CACD are critically examined and a number of methodological suggestions are offered for future research on CACD. It is suggested that in addition to analyzing language outcomes by means of well-motivated measures of L2 use and L2 acquisition, a multiplicity of data sources be used in CACD research, so as to be able to document the processes learners actually engage in when interpreting and carrying out CACD tasks. A process- and task-driven research agenda for L2 CACD is proposed with the ultimate goal of describing the nature of language, learning, and interaction fostered in networked synchronous communication and to ascertain which features of CACD may or may not be relevant to the processes involved in second language acquisition.

NETWORKED CLASSROOM INTERACTION AND SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING

From drill-and-practice software, to word-processing programs, to network and hypertext software, the gradual integration of technology in classrooms over the last twenty years has tended to mirror the technological developments and limitations of each computer era as well as, more importantly, the theories of learning and instruction developed by scholars and construed in teachers' actual practices. Thus, the introduction of networked technologies in education coincided with a shift in education from an interest in cognitive and developmental theories of learning to a social and collaborative view of learning (cf. Hawisher, 1994).

Since the early 1990s, national and international networks, on the one hand, and local area networks (LANs), on the other, have been widely used for instructional purposes within social and critical education approaches. The use of electronic mail, bulletin boards, or discussion lists on worldwide networks such as the Internet enables learners and teachers to access and share information in a time- and space- independent fashion. By contrast, the instructional use of LANs, which link computers in a laboratory or a classroom to each other, has introduced the possibility of real-time, synchronous, many-to-many written discussion by a whole class or by smaller groups within the class (Warschauer, 1996b). Both technologies underscore a view of learning as a collaborative act that happens in a social and political context, with learners and teacher working together in the new medium of networked interaction.

Some scholars have suggested that the era of hypertext and networked communication that started burgeoning in the mid-1990s signals the need for an expanded view of literacy: Computers can no longer be seen as a surrogate of the teacher or an intelligent tool in the hands of the student, but as a new medium that has changed the ways in which we write, read, and possibly think (Selfe, 1989). Without committing to such a radical analysis of the role of technology on literacy practices, I would agree with Herring (1996), Selfe and Hilligoss (1994), and others that we need research on computers and education that not only extols the pedagogical and social virtues of computer technology but also determines exactly in which ways language, learning, and interaction have been transformed by the use of networked and hypertext technologies in our classrooms. In the case of L2 classrooms in which CACD has started to be used, the crucial question from an SLA perspective is in what specific ways CACD may or may not be relevant to the processes involved in second language learning.

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Computer-Mediated Discussion in the Language Classroom

The use of networked computers for the purpose of large group discussions in language educational contexts began with hearing impaired students learning L1 composition at Gallaudet University (Batson, 1988). The software application for computer-assisted classroom discussion (CACD) which is most widely used in foreign language classrooms is the Daedalus Integrated Writing Environment (Daedalus Inc., 1989) and its application InterChange. This software was developed in the 1980s in the English Department at the University of Texas at Austin by Fred Kemp, a scholar in composition studies, and colleagues. Social theories of writing instruction that emphasize the collaborative nature of meaning and writing were at the core of the Daedalus software as it was intended to be used in composition classes (see Barker & Kemp, 1990; and for a discussion of the concomitant social epistemic theory of writing, see Berlin, 1987). In foreign language classes, Daedalus began to be used also in the University of Texas at Austin in the early 1990s, but the orientation was more on target-language practice than on the development of writing skills. In the last six years, a small number of FL studies (and most recently ESL studies) have reported on the use of InterChange/Daedalus in CACD in various FL classes in universities in the United States, typically for general classroom discussion purposes rather than in connection with L2 writing instruction.

How does CACD work? During a typical Daedalus/InterChange session in the computer lab, each student sits in front of a computer terminal and is free to type in messages that can be sent by clicking on the "send" button on the screen. Sent messages appear on the upper half of all individual screens, displayed in the order in which they were sent and automatically identified with the name of the sender. All class members can read each other's comments at their own pace by scrolling up and down the sent-messages window, and they can write messages at their own leisure without interfering effects (freezing, etc.) from incoming messages.

Among the many different types of CALL activities available for second language instruction, CACD stands as a promising area for research in second language learning and teaching for several reasons. For one, conducting class discussions on a computer network entails meaningful use of the target language and forces teachers and students away from treating language as an object rather than as a medium of communication (e.g., Colomb & Simutis, 1996). Not only is CACD a communicative CALL activity in Underwood's (1984) sense, but it can promote a task- and interaction-driven approach to L2 learning and teaching which is the backdrop to concrete proposals for curriculum design superseding traditional communicative approaches (e.g., analytic and Type B syllabi as outlined in Wilkins, 1976, and White, 1988, respectively; see also detailed discussion of procedural, process, and task syllabi in Long & Crookes, 1993). The communicative investment and the meaningfulness and relevance achieved in many CACD discussions appear to provide for a context in which opportunities for language development are enhanced, since students are motivated to stretch their linguistic resources in order to meet the demands of real communication in a social context. In brief, the CACD environment appears to be optimal for devising CALL activities that facilitate and promote comprehensible output (Swain, 1985) within a holistic, process- and task-oriented approach to the L2 curriculum (Long & Crookes, 1993). Other benefits of CACD associated with language learning that have been repeatedly singled out in the FL literature are:

• Learners are able to contribute as much as they want at their own pace and leisure; consequently, they tend to perceive CACD as less threatening and inhibiting than oral interactions and produce a high amount of writing, with all students participating to a high degree and all producing several turns/messages per session.
• Because of the interactive nature of the writing, learners are expected to engage in a variety of interactive moves on the computer and to take control of managing the discussion.
• Learners make use of the available opportunity to take time to plan their messages and edit them. In this way they engage in productive L2 strategies and processes.

article about CALL 8

oes feedback enhance computer-assisted language learning?

References and further reading may be available for this article. To view references and further reading you must purchase this article.

Elisabeth van der Linden^a

^aUniversity of Amsterdam, Spuistraat 134, 1012 VB Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Available online 19 July 2002.

Abstract

Programs for computer-assisted language learning (CALL) are becoming more complex. On one hand, courseware designers develop programs of a more open-ended character, e.g. adventures, hypermedia courseware. On the other hand, courseware in the traditional drill and practice vein is more and more elaborate and offers extensive feedback to the learner. Developing this last type of courseware, in which feedback generally is based on an error analysis of a large group of learners, demands an enormous investment in time and energy. The question is whether this investment pays off: do learners indeed learn better by programs with a considerable amount of feedback?

This question was addressed in a research project at the French Department of the University of Amsterdam. Students' reactions to feedback were studied in two ways. First, log files were analyzed containing the series of tasks-responses-feedback of each student. In addition, think aloud protocols were analyzed. The results from the log files, which were confirmed by the analysis of the think aloud protocols, show that there was no overall successful strategy. While some students made optimal use of the feedback provided, others seemed to avoid using it in several ways.

article about CALL 7

article about literature 10

A very short concentration on the impact of war on contemporary poetry of Iran

Written by Administrator

Dec 26, 2009 at 08:24 AM

Since the declaration of war against Iran by the former president and dictator of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, the theme of war have been the major theme of contemporary literature of Iran. The war, that is called the imposed war in Iran, has had a pervasive impact on the consciousness of Iranian poets shaping a new period of symbolism mostly applying mystic and religious outlook toward literature consequently the application of poetry in the turn of political system was mainly provoking the crowd. Following this method many poets dedicated their pens to convey the newly raised Islamic values especially those were about the concept of jihad (holy war) and shahadat (martyr ship). In contrast to what they had in mind, all these attempts never ended to a well-formed epic because the national aspects of their poetry never superseded its Islamic aspects. The war nurtured a new style in poetry that portrayed it romantically instead of giving a tragic or realistic picture. The outcome of such a view was changing the imposed war into holy defense. After war although this style remained to be the dominant style of poetry patronized by the government but the theme of nostalgia, which was supposed to be applied any way, made the picture of war more and more far from realism. In the very beginning small spots of lights of change sparkled in free verse. Claiming to be avant-garde poets, they suggested some other different views. Following those, in the recent decade Qazal writers proposed other ways to convey the theme of war. How ever they inherited that from free verse but they themselves gave a new taste to it. The war between Iran and Iraq still has drastic impacts on contemporary poetry of Iran but recently these impacts are mostly canalized in the way that even some times the literary products contradicts the values of the government.

article about literature 9

The romantic beast among non romantic beauties

Written by Administrator

Sep 07, 2008 at 02:00 PM

What do we mean exactly when we call some one or some thing romantic? The term is notoriously difficult to be defined and even got more complex by the amount of recent critical attempts. What makes this to be such complicated are those different fields, movements and genres in which the term has been emerged. Romantic spirit of politics seems to be synonymous with nationalism while romanticism in literature challenges a sense of national identity and nation hood [1]. Accordingly one may come to the point that Lovejoy was right to say “the word, romantic, has come to mean so many things that by itself it means nothing” [2]. Consequently it would be excused if we specify the term just in case. Hereby as we are dealing with the genre of novel we need to trace “romantic codes” in the works of some early novelists who are said to be among the fore runners of writing romantic novels or fictions including: Samuel Richardson, Horace Walpole and Mrs. Radcliff. These writers fed a taste for gothic tales of dark castles, midnight escapes and shining heroism, all given a somewhat sensational medieval setting. Mrs. Radcliff adds other romantic notes: nature and beauty [3] which are more suitably useable in our case. Considering the work of Shelly, one can find her beast to be born in the world not just strongly attracted to its beauty and transparently avid of nature but almost hopelessly impaled on them. In the time Shelly wrote Frankenstein, Lock’s idea that people were not born with innate ideas was a common belief. Lock imagined people as a kind of blank canvas or “tabula rasa” accordingly the monster in Frankenstein is portrayed in this way, as his most early impressions of the world surrounding and its inhabitants are combined with a kind of openness and innocence but soon he finds other people not charming and welcome but some sorts of beautiful beasts ( or it is better to say not too much ugly as he was) so he leaves the city and hides him self in the woods seeking the natural beauty of the world as a meaning for his life. By cogitating about former fictional and mythical characters and meditating about his needs, he thirsts for love and having a mate. But because he is detached from his origins, the beauty he loves should be some thing detached as well. He is not interested in other people as other people are not interested in him so he asks Victor Frankenstein to give him a mate from his own origin. This instinctual request leads the narration to its crisis point. Those former fictional characters we foresaid, all had their romantic and amorous moments in which they could laugh with or cry for their loveable mates. Perhaps if our monster had cried, for just one moment, in a monstrous feminine bosom, he would have also believed to be a wretched one not the most wretched. Perhaps this is the scene that is flashing in the creature’s mind and makes his thirst more intense, makes him jealous of life time of being in love. [4] The world surrounding deprives him of the love he seeks and this “not reaching” the love is what he writes on his “tabula rasa” by the hands of other people. This might seem to be so deterministic but quite contrary to this notion, one can find the beast a newly born creature with free will to choose, knowing that also he did not choose the form of his life but he could choose its theme. We titled this essay “the romantic beast among non romantic beauties” but as we know that romanticism is ruled by the laws of nature we can find the beast to be the non romantic one. Because he belongs to the realm of corpses and not living people, by insisting to live and love, he is the one who violates the regulations designed by nature. Perhaps it is not a wrong interpretation that corpses should stay dead…

article about literature 8

iterary landscape in Equatorial Guinea an afro-ibero-american universeBy Joaquin Mbomio Bacheng

Context

Donato Ndongo Bidjogo and other Equatorial Guinean writers' involvement in the University of Columbia-Missouri's cultural days featuring Hispano-American literature that was organised in the United States from 12-16 May 1999 was a pleasant surprise - Equatorial Guinea is the only Spanish-speaking country in Sub-Saharan Africa. The country is currently undergoing a huge creative boom.
Once Spain's only colony in Sub-Saharan Africa, Equatorial Guinea became independent in 1968 and the new government very quickly cut all ties with its former coloniser by setting up a repressive autarkical regime. The intellectual elite that grew during Spanish sovereignty was gradually eradicated in a series of purges under the new regime. The country's first Head of State, Macias Nguema, ran the country with an iron fist and was behind what Max Miniger-Goumas (a specialist on Equatorial Guinea and member of the Spanish college of African studies) calls "Nguemism". Between 1968, independence year, and 1979, when the coup d'état against Macias took place, literary expression was banned. Important figures from the literary and art worlds were systematically eliminated. The execution of Dr Manuel Castillo Barril at the Bata prison, and the assassination of Professor Mambo Matal in the Black Beach penitentiary in Malabo, are perfect examples of the vehemence of this anti-intellectual movement. To preserve their integrity, the surviving intellectuals had no other choice but to take exile in Spain. Dr Nzé Abuy, the first Archbishop of Equatorial Guinea and author of a number of works (1) was one of the first to leave.
The fall of Macias in 1979 marked the renewal of relations between Equatorial Guinea and Europe. In 1980, Equatorial Guinea and Spain signed a co-operation agreement. Culture became an important feature of the new relationship between the two countries. Three men (previously exiled in Spain and very much in the lime-light) were to play a vital role in reviving Hispanic culture in Equatorial Guinea: sculptor Leandro Mbomio Nsue (2) (the Minister of Culture), writer Donato Ndong Bidjogo (3) (Deputy of the Hispano-Guinean cultural centre and co-ordinator of the cultural magazine, Africa 2000), and Professor Constantino Ochaa Nvé (4) (Director of scientific research). The Centro Hispano-Guineano cultural centre, which opened in Malabo in the early 1980s and hosts a publishing house, rapidly became the nerve-centre for the cultural revival, with Spain's support, through the publication and distribution of quality works of literature written by authors from Equatorial Guinea.
During the 11 years following the 1968 independence, Equatorial Guinea only had one recognised novel. Cuando Los Combes Luchaban was written in 1953 by Leoncio Evita (5). During the 1980s there was a veritable literary renaissance, encouraged by a swarm of writing competitions and literary awards. This was Equatorial Guinea's "siglo de oro" (golden age). Equatorial Guinea's literary renaissance was consolidated in the 1990s with the publication of a number of novels, essays and treatises, often included in University syllabuses in neighbouring countries (especially Cameroon and Gabon). Such was the case with Donato Ndongo Bidjogo's Las tinieblas de tu memoria negra [Darkness in your black memory](6) and El Parroco de Niefang [The cleric of Niefang](7) by the author of this article.

Original literature

At a crowded conference during the cultural festival at the University of Columbia, Donato Ndongo Bidjogo presented his country's literature as being unique in Africa, having developed within a mixed Hispano-African environment. Equatorial Guinean literature takes its inspiration from stories by Cervantès, and Octavio Paz and Pablo Neruda's poetry. However, it is also first and foremost a way of expressing tradition, a product of the ancestral imagination, deeply rooted in the very soul of Africa - an Africa of ritual, of myths, of legends, of tales, of dance and of communal discussions. Artistic creativity in Equatorial Guinea is thus fed by very different, and yet very complimentary African, Hispanic and American cultures. Literature from Equatorial Guinea is the product of a tri-dimensional cultural environment - that of Afro-Ibero-Americanism - and this is what makes it unique.
Literature from Equatorial Guinea is also unique in the way it is evolving, as the beginnings of a literature of transition. It is an expression of the fight to deconstruct colonial hierarchy, a cry of anguish in its post-independence exile. It is a song of freedom in its eternal quest for a new world. It is formed by new cultural realities bearing the mark of a new cultural identity.

Authors and themes

There are basically three main generations of literary expression in Equatorial Guinea. These are clearly defined by their historical and chronological context. They are: the Elder Generation (colonial period 1900 - 1968), the Exiled Generation (1968 - 1985) and Contemporary Generation (after 1985).
The literature of the Elder Generation is dominated by the colonial period. It first reflects the rupture in African society violated by the brutal appearance of the "white man" and his colonialism. The Elder Generation is characterised by descriptions of the new African situation with the eradication of ancestral society, replaced by the realities of the colonial period. Lastly, this literature provides the first accounts of a new awareness of the indigenous identity and takes the first step in the fight for the country's independence. Leoncio Evita's work, Cuando los Combes Luchaban (cited earlier) had a strong influence on this period.
The intellectuals of the Exiled Generation lived through the terror that reigned during the first eleven years of independence. Most of these authors left their mother country and those who stayed under the dictatorship were exiled and isolated within their own country. During this period - a time of anguish for those who stayed and a time of anonymity for those who left - Equatorial Guinean intellectuals could not help but write about the people's suffering. Literary expression became the African's cry from within, his reaction to the awful realities of the time. This literature is marked by a powerful lyricism that Professor Mbare Ngom (8) has called the "moriña". The "moriña" is the heart-felt expression of an intense pain used as a form of political protest. The Exiled Generation is a generation of poets, a generation that bears both physical and mental scars. Some of the authors of this period have remained anonymous while others are now well known. Zamora Loboch, Balboa Boneke, and Ciriaco Bokesa are all part of this generation, but their greatest representative is Anacleto Olo Mibuy (9), Equatorial Guinea's literary griot, exponent of Afro-Hispanism and defender of the Bantou identity.
The Contemporary Generation arose out of the cultural renaissance that took place in Equatorial Guinea during the 1980s, with the support of the "Centro Hispano-Guineano de Malabo". This generation, unlike the previous generations that were far more homogenous, groups together authors on very different paths. They work with different themes and have different backgrounds. The Contemporary Generation includes writers like Maria Nsue Agüe, author of "Ekomo"(10), the first novel to be written by a female author, or poet Juan Tomas Avila Laurel(11). Maria Nsue Angüe's work is remarkable in that it breaks with traditional forms imposed by Spanish Classicism. Using Castilian vocabulary Maria Nsue Angüe creates an African semantic universe to describe one African woman's struggle within the traditional and everyday realities of her world. Ekomo has had a powerful impact on Equatorial Guinea's literature. At the other extreme are other still unknown creators. Their poetry is like the song of an innocent child. Sometimes, the nostalgic memory of time spent with a lost friend clouds the peaceful skies painted by the new poets who are running from the realities of contemporary Africa, preferring to watch their world pass by from the shade of a coconut tree.

By Joaquin Mbomio Bacheng

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article about literature 6

Tips for Driving in England: Shakespeare, Henry James & Thomas Hardy

This article was written by Hunter James

Photos by Tom Curtis FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Driving in England is a sport best left for the man grown jaded with the old, worn-out things of this world and is ready to taste the golden apples of Paradise. For anyone who has only driven in America and who has furthermore tended to regard the fashions of the Mother Country with a certain air of condescension, a first-time sortie onto one of Great Britain's M-Roads can be a mortifying experience even if the driver manages to persuade himself that he has not bought a one-way ticket straight to perdition.

To put it more simply: Motoring about the British countryside is an experience best left for a stranger imbued with the feeling that it is somehow romantic to die in a foreign land, among the grandly preserved monuments of another age.

As for me, I had other ideas. I simply was not quite ready to summon the undertaker on the day I rented my economy sized Ford at Gatwick Airport. Or maybe I just didn't know it yet. Anyway, after we were actually underway, wife Mary Ellen and I, there was little romance in it at all: only unmitigated terror and curses and wild palpitations that forced me to use up all my tranquilizers at a rate three times faster than the doctor had prescribed. I had listened only vaguely and with the air of one who knows everything as the girl at the rental desk asked if I had driven in England before and explained that there was a right way and a wrong way to negotiate the island's "roundabouts."

We roared out of the airport, off to the Cotswolds, of which we had read so much, thinking of the great cathedrals, the Old Norman castles, the medieval villages, the Roman ruins. I don't know what happened exactly. But long before I ever even got to the highway I had run smack up against a fence that said "No admittance," unable to turn around or even to figure out how to manipulate the gears and in imminent peril of being run over by a transport truck when a pleasant fellow of about forty came jogging up behind.

"Ah yes," he said, laughing. "You're American, aren't you?"

I confessed the awful truth. I also realized I hadn't even got out of the airport yet. The new chap was quite a friendly sort. He showed us how to manipulate the gear - I think it was a sort of a secret button or something - and again laughed pleasantly as we swung about and headed off toward the nearest Roman ruin. I hoped it would be well marked.

In the rear view mirror I could see him waving us on, still laughing. Sometimes I have the feeling that he may be laughing still.

William Shakespeare?

The only thing I knew for sure about driving in Britain, the most important thing, was that you must stay on the wrong side of the road at all costs (I know Britons hate to hear a damned colonist put it like that) nor must you fall into the fatal trap of believing that the speed limit signs actually mean what they say, as they occasionally do in America.

I did not come by that insight suddenly. But I had my first glimmer of it when we finally made onto the M-Road, heading north to Stratford, prepared to prove to the curators there, with evidence that would brook no argument, that William Shakespeare did not actually write the works of Shakespeare after all. A professor named Brenda James (no kin, at least none that I know of) had recently produced evidence, the most convincing so far, that a British diplomat who never wrote anything under his own name, except for letters and such, was actually the author of all those plays. But everything in its place: I was breezing along at eighty-five kilometers or so (whatever that is in American English) when all at once another motorist came roaring up behind me madly honking his horn.

What had gone wrong this time? Had I lost something? Had I been mistaken for somebody else? Was the man drunk? Angry? Looking for trouble?

"My word!" Mary Ellen suggested, pressing forward with all her might, hands jammed against the glass, feet jammed against the floorboard, to hold back oncoming objects. "Get in the other lane!" She tried to explain that I wasn't allowing enough space between our car and the center line. "YOU AREN'T USED TO IT! DON'T YOU SEE THAT! DON'T YOU SEE?!"

Well, I got on over into the other lane after I finally figured out which was my left hand and which my right, and promptly learned my first lesson of highway etiquette in Britain. The fellow wanting to get by shot on past not at eight-five or ninety but at a speed I reckoned to be maybe one hundred twenty or one hundred twenty-five.

Was that all he wanted? For me to pull into the slow lane and stop holding up traffic? Perhaps. As he zipped past he politely tipped his hat as though to say: "A jolly good day to you, old chap."

So I learned that much anyway: Life in the fast lane. For Britons only.

Or Maybe Henry James?

We decided we had to get into Oxford and somehow get out again if only for the sport of it. That was when I saw my first roundabout. What had the girl at the rental counter said about roundabouts? I desperately tried to remember. Then I realized it wasn't a roundabout. It was just another intersection, crowded now with cars waiting to turn in every direction, busiest intersection in all of Oxford, perhaps in all of England, with a lady Bobbie holding up a frantic hand that said: "Stop!"

I couldn't stop. Suddenly I didn't know where the brakes were. I didn't know where anything was. I figured I must be in some kind of roundabout after all, and the only thing I could remember was what the girl at the rental counter said, when warning me against roundabouts:

Hesitate and you're lost!

I raced on through the intersection, or whatever it was, scattering pedestrians, freezing traffic and narrowly dodging the lady Bobbie, before I found the brakes. I looked back and saw her picking herself off the grass and coming forward. "Ah," she said, not unkindly. "You're American, aren't you?"

All Oxford screeched to a halt. The whole world screeched to a halt. I was waiting for it to start up again while she stood there pleasantly brushing herself off and saying again, in a sharper yet not unfriendly voice: "You are American, aren't you."

Humbled, I again confessed the awful truth. A mere colonist. Disreputable accident of birth. I showed her my driving license even though she hadn't asked for it.

"Well," she said, "at least your name is quite British. Are you related to the author? Which one? Brenda or Henry."

"I don't know a Brenda."

"You mean Henry? Oh, yes, a very poor relation, forgotten at the bequest."

I don't know why, but I held myself a little higher after that, even after confessing that we were no relation whatsoever, thinking at any moment to be led despicably off to jail.

She looked at me a little suspiciously. "Very well then."

She got me turned around and pointed in the right direction and held up traffic until I was safely on my way . . . out of town.

"We could have been in jail!" Mary Ellen said, not shouting. "We could have rotted in jail here and no one would ever have known!"

She had done graduate work in English history and knew all about the British tradition of democracy and habeas corpus and all the rest. It didn't matter. Suddenly all of England looked like something we had read about in Dickens.

It really was the worst of times . . .

Second Roundabout in Burford

I swerved to avoid a collision while it was yet some distance away and then heard a dull, sickening clunk as I struck a parked car to my left.

"See," my wife said. "Now we've got a real mess on our hands. I told that you just weren't used to having so much of the driver's seat between you and the left shoulder of the road."

"STOP SHOUTING!"

"I'm not shouting. I haven't raised my voice at all. All I'm saying is that you aren't allowing yourself enough room because you aren't used to it yet. How much damage have we done?"

"You think just because you haven't raised your voice I can't hear the shout in it? Besides, it's these British roads."

"If we could've just gone by train. Everyone says the Brit Rail trains are clean and up-to-date and very efficient."

"Well, so are the jails."

Stratford-upon-Avon: To Be Shakespeare or Not To Be?

Thought I didn't even mark that parked car, it was really quite a bother, all these roundabouts and strange traffic customs.

I had only wanted to see the ruins and get to Stratford-upon-Avon as quickly as possible so that I could explain to the curator that Shakespeare couldn't possibly have written all those marvelous works attributed to him.

I had long ago given up on Marlowe and Oxford. So it must be the new guy, the diplomat my non-cousin had discovered, a chap by the name of Sir Henry Neville, who had spent time in Parliament as well as in France and also, unfortunately, in the Tower of London.

I would convince the curator at last of the truth, and then he would nod and say "Ah, we and the whole English-speaking world will be much beholden to you," and very possibly publish my findings in the local paper, all in the name of truth - and never mind that when the big news hit the street the town would be out of business faster than a ramshackle Old West mining town shipping off its last trainload of gold bullion.

By the second day I still hadn't got the hang of the roundabouts. But I had found the curator in Stratford, like so many others, quite a pleasant chap. I explained my mission. He nodded, as I knew he would, and said:

"Take all the time you want. Look around and enjoy yourself, but be very careful that you don't find yourself floating head down in the Avon tomorrow morning. The last joker who came here with that kind of information well, I'm afraid he did not come to a very pleasant end."

A lovely stream, the Avon. Perhaps it could have inspired a Shakespeare after all, the way the grass ran right down to the water, the quiet currents, the trees set back at a respectful distance.

"Will you please promise me," said Mary Ellen, "that you will not bring up the Shakespeare thing again today, at least not while we are in Stratford? You don't want to be regarded as just another American colonist, but now you've done the very thing that will make it impossible for you to be thought of as anything else."

My wife was right.

All I learned was what I had been told from the first day: you'd better not betray any signs of tentativeness in England, whether on the roads or in the archives. When the curator finished with me, I was little more than a mop of dripping sweat, wondering quite seriously if he really meant it when he reminded me of how all the people who had come there making similar ridiculous charges found themselves floating upside down next morning in the Avon.

On the Road Again

Back on the road, I remembered the old rule: Hesitate for a second and you might as well be swimming in shark-infested waters. Enter ever so tentatively into one of those roundabouts and the other cars will descend on you snapping wildly, like sharks hovering for the kill, smelling blood, nipping at your rear bumper, biting off your tail lights. So you just plunge in with half-closed eyes, holding your breath and pretending that those aren't really screams coming from your wife after all.

"They say you can get stuck on these things and stay all night," I said. "Or until somebody sends a rescue squad."

By that time I had made half a dozen circuits of the roundabout.

Nighttime began to creep up on us.

Another half dozen circuits and beads of sweat beginning to appear on my forehead. "We're supposed to turn southwest. I guess we'll just have to rely on the sun as our directional sign."

"Sun's almost gone."

"Well, I'm sure as hell no good at navigating by the stars."

I was really getting dizzy now. Maybe I would be stuck there all night. Like in some of those old movies.

I took a chance and shot out of an exit that I had more or less selected by instinct, with only a little help from the dying sun. I was really sweating now and needing a cigarette for the first time in thirty years. Somehow I got to where I was going, Salisbury, I think, and later up to Yorkshire and Chester, fighting the roundabouts all the way.

That's the part the guidebooks leave out.

"Traditional England," they call it, all those lovely little towns - and never a word about the devilish highways built to avenge themselves on any colonist idiotic enough to think he can solve the mystery of the British traffic system.

We finally made it on up to the Lake Country, where, on a hill behind Dove cottage, I found a smooth pebble which I immediately realized, by psychic instinct, had once been fondled by Wordsworth himself and perhaps inspired some of his greatest poetry. I brought it home and placed it above my desk, but I don't guess psychic rocks work for everyone.

Bishops Canning

"We should have taken Brit Rail!"

"I keep telling you: You can't get to all the places you want to go by train!"

A good argument, except by the time I got back to Gatwick to turn in the car I wasn't exactly sure where I had been. There were vague memories of Oxford and the great cathedral at Salisbury and the mysterious dolomite stones at Avesbury, and the ghost of a man, either a druid or a Capuchin monk doing obeisance before one of the rocks. And the Sunday morning that we found ourselves peeping out of a heavy fog in the old community of Bishops Canning.

I would never have found the place at all if I hadn't made the horrible mistake of taking my eyes off the road for a moment. Just lucky, I guess.

I'm not sure exactly how to describe Bishops Canning. Not a town, hardly even a community, a place so remote and forgotten that you couldn't even find it in the guide books. One of the many villages we would never have found if we had gone by Brit Rail. I could think of nothing like it, except, perhaps, remotely, some of the old lost towns hidden away in Virginia, way back in the woods, with no markers to show you the way in.

Bishops Canning, doubtlessly full of quaint historic events and old legends.

I stood there in grass up to my knees, with the thick fog hanging over me, and a flock of sheep munching contentedly as the parishioners gathered for worship. I watched them coming up the narrow path that had been mowed for their convenience, the rest of the churchyard having been left for the sheep or perhaps to camouflage the landing of UFOs, which are truly a big part of the folklore in this part of the world.

How often, I wondered, had the redoubtable Thomas Hardy witnessed such a scene? Had he once walked these same roads, amid the tall grass and the heavy fogs and the flocks of sheep, watching the parishioners go in for devotions? Almost every page of Hardy hints of such a world, of fog and lonely moors and men and women caught up in the throes of an implacable fate.

Dorset

We drove south into Dorset, Hardy's own town, on the same day, passing onto the main thoroughfare past a copper bust of the great man, only to find that this most fatalistic of British novelists, once considered for an English peerage, had been something of a bounder among the people who knew him best.

The talk was that he would go for long brooding walks in the English dusk, growling at the neighborhood children and sweeping them out of his way with his cane. Was that the real Hardy - or only the partly excusable behavior of a magnificent artist preoccupied with resolving some new, onerous and exceedingly complex turn of plot? Yet there is no doubt that he was a singularly humorless cuss.

"All laughing," he once wrote, "comes from misapprehension. Rightly looked at there is no laughable thing under the sun."

In the end you begin to get the hang of it. Traditional England has taught you a lot. You plunge headlong into the roundabouts, trying your best to bite off the other fellow's fender for a change, having learned that this quaint custom is nothing more than a distinctively English version of Russian Roulette.

On the open road you are okay because you have learned to keep the pedal to the metal and to hell with the speed limit signs and just don't ever slow down at all, even for a sideways glance at Stonehenge, or try to pull off the road or do anything whatsoever except plunge ahead as fast as you can with both hands on the wheel, looking neither to the right or the left and pretending that your wife isn't really screaming at you, only practicing for her next Little Theater role.

~ Photos by Tom Curtis at FreeDigitalPhotos.net ~

article about literature 5

How to Write a Short Stor
Literary Arts - Articles


y Writing a short story is an easy way to become familiar with the process of writing. The short story can take on many different forms and one should allow them a measurable degree of creative control regarding format and structure.

This is only intended as basic guide to writing a short story and based on more conventional styles and structures. With an understanding of the following short story concepts, the personal and creative possibilities and choices are many.

Important to remember is the notion “Show, don't tell.” “Show, don't tell” refers to allowing your characters to express the story through their actions and dialogue not through you the writer telling the reader what is being expressed. Here is a simplified example of how it works. Instead of telling the reader through your writing “Joe was really mad at Kate for cheating with another man” you should show this with your writing: “With an ache in his stomach and a heart that had been torn apart, Joe was grinding his teeth as he approached Kate without initiating the customary kiss that had become routine during their year together. His pulse raced as he took in a deep breath, attempting to calm the rage that was hammering every thought he had of her. Kate couldn’t look Joe in his crazed, red eyes. Instead, she fiddled with her hair as Joe’s stare pierced though her masked guilt as he yelled: ‘I hope he was worth because now we’re through!’”

Developing a story idea is the first step. Choose an idea that excites you and ignites some passion and then define it with these important components.

Theme

The Theme of the story you are going to write could be something that can help in our lives or convey a message. Subtlety is important because you don't want to be preachy to your reader and at the same time you shouldn't have to explain what the moral of the story is. The reader should be able to learn and recognize the theme through your story.

Plot

In order to keep the reader excited and interested it is important to have a Plot, conflict or struggle that your main character has to overcome. This struggle can be with another character or it can be something a character struggles with inside the character like feelings or emotions. Most often the main character or the hero/heroine should win or lose on their own and not be rescued by someone else. Conflict usually intensifies as the story moves forward until it reaches its climax at the end of the story.

Story Structure

With Story Structure, it’s imperative to quickly whisk the reader directly into the action and introduce the main character or hero/heroine. This is where you'll have to decide whether to tell your story in "first person" or "third person."

Writing in First person is telling the story as if it were happening to you by using the pronoun "I." Writing in Third person is telling the story as if it's all about other people by using the pronouns "he," "she," "it."

At first, writing a short story from the first person point of view seems simple, you just write as if you were the character telling the story. However, when getting further involved, there is more to consider. There are three different kinds of first-person narrators: "I" who tells his/her own story, "I" who tells the story of someone else they have observed, and "I" who retells a story told to them. Additionally, there are many other techniques for writing such styles of narrative, these include:

Dramatic monologue – The story is written as if the viewpoint character is speaking aloud to an audience.

Interior monologue –The story is written as the viewpoint character feels it, relives it and reflects on it. This type of story takes the reader along the character's journey of self-discovery. Usually the reader will end up knowing more than the character does.

Journal or diary – The story is written as if the viewpoint character is making a private record of events in a journal or diary without the intention of being read by others.

Letter - The story is written as if the viewpoint character is recording events, either as they happen or after the fact, in a letter to one or more individuals. The narrator is aware that at least one other person will read it, but what they record may depend on whether this is a private, intimate letter to one person, or a more general letter to a whole family.

Public journal - The story is written as if the viewpoint character is recording events, either as they happen or after the fact, for more public consumption. Imagine old explorers who kept journals of their expeditions and then published them later or sent parts home to be published as the journey went on.

Using the Third person point of view tells the story through the eyes of just one character-usually the hero/heroine. The third person point of view is the most common for writing fiction, but choosing this point of view is more complicated than simply writing "he," "she" or "they" to describe the action. There are three types of third-person narrators with many possible variations for each.

Omniscient – The story is written in the third person omniscient point of view where the narrator knows everything, allowing the writer to mention the thoughts and feelings of any character, and to insert narrative comments. The narrative can also skip around to different places and times, filling in back-story at any point in the present story. The challenges of this point of view are that sometimes it is difficult to maintain a consistent voice, it can feel impersonal to the reader and it is less believable than the other styles.

Objective – The story is written in the third person objective point of view, the narrator knows only what can be heard and seen from outside the characters. Imagine the narrator as recording events like a movie camera. All the thoughts and emotions of the characters are unavailable, so the story must speak for itself. The challenge of this point of view is that it can lack emotion and often create a cold and uninvolved feeling to the story.

Limited – The story is written in the third person limited omniscient point of view where the narrator knows everything about one character including thoughts and feelings. The other characters are only known through that one person. This type of viewpoint can be so close to the character that it is nearly a first person point of view, or it can pull back for a broader view. Because of its many advantages, this point of view is often thought of as the default.

After choosing a point of view one must decide whether to tell the story in the present or past tense. Past tense is writing the story as if it already happened, present tense is writing the story as it is happening right now. Once you have chosen your tense it is important to stick to it and not switch between tenses because it will confuse the reader.

Setting

Decide on a Setting for the story, a place and time that are interesting and familiar to you. You can create and imagine a fantasy setting or research a specific setting but it is important to be comfortable with what you are writing. Write what you know about.

Style and Tone

Style and tone is the language or dialogue you use that is right for your story. Always use action and dialogue to let the reader know what's happening whenever possible. Remember when writing your short story to "show, don't tell."

Characters

Dialogue should be in direct quotes like "Come help!" instead of indirect quotes as "He told her to come help." Don't complicated dialogue with difficult words or with too many words. To write well, simpler is usually stronger and less is most often more. Finally, choose the best word-the one that is closest to your meaning and gives the clearest image possible. If you can't think of a word, use a thesaurus.

Now that you have some insight into story structure, the next step is to start writing your short story. The concept of a beginning, middle and end can be considered and kept in mind but many interesting short stories don’t take that linear approach. Reading short stories is a great way to learn about them and the many different styles in which they can be written. Writing your short story should be a creative process that reveals itself to you as go along. As you grow into the writing process you will know what is right and what works because it will feel organic to you when it does.

Andrew was educated at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland and the University of California at Santa Cruz. He has authored The Cigar Connoisseur along with numerous magazine articles on cigars, food & wine and travel. Aside from these areas of interest, Andrew has written for both film and television having sold an original screenplay as well as a two-hour A&E Biography.

article about literature 4

his is the first page of the item you requested.

• Literary Studies in Studia Slavica under the Editorship of László Hadrovics (1966-85)
• Peter I. Barta
• The Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 33, No. 2 (Summer, 1989), pp. 293-299
  (article consists of 7 pages)
• Published by: American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages
• Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/309349

article about literature 3

Literary map of San Francisco

July 19, 2009|By John McMurtrie

A nub of 47 square miles, much of it punctuated by vertigo-inducing hills, most of it surrounded by ocean water - half of it the open, not-so-tranquil Pacific, the other half the calm, protected currents of a gray-blue bay.

Just as San Francisco has been shaped by its dramatic earthquake-scarred, coastal setting, the city, despite its relative youth, has also been defined by legions of writers whose words have brought it to life. Jack London, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Alice Adams, Amy Tan, Michelle Tea - they have all etched the landscape for us.

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And so we thought it would be fun to create a map of San Francisco composed of some of the very words - from novels, poems and essays - that animate our city.

Ian Huebert's beautiful, whimsical literary map - loosely inspired by one of St. Petersburg, Russia, by Vera Evstafieva and Andrew Biliter - fittingly evokes the colorful, free-form and text-rich rock concert posters from a music scene that put San Francisco on the map in the 1960s.

Of course, the map isn't intended as a comprehensive collection of quotes about the city (apologies to Herbert Gold, Bret Harte, Khaled Hosseini, Fae Myenne Ng, Tom Wolfe and on and on).

If you'd like to read more quotes, a few books make for excellent resources: "City by the Bay: San Francisco in Art and Literature" (edited by Alexandra Chappell; SFMOMA; 2002), "San Francisco Stories: Great Writers on the City" (edited by John Miller; Chronicle Books; 1990) and "The Literary World of San Francisco and Its Environs" (Don Herron; City Lights Books; 1985). Also, a San Francisco literary map illustrated by Paul Madonna (826 Valencia; 2005) is a useful guide to landmarks, resources and events.

Have other quotes about the city that you'd like to share? Feel free to post them at sfgate.com/books.

Meantime, by all means, we encourage you to get out some tape or tacks and pretty up that bare wall or window with this map. Follow its curvy lines and let your mind wander and wonder about the City by the Bay.