Malala Yousafzai's Nobel lecture

In class on Thursday we talked about rhetorical modes of appeal and watched two celebrated speeches, one by Emma Watson and one by Malala Yousafzai. Though very different speeches, they both address women's rights and gender inequality. Despite her very young age, Malala Yousafzai has become an important symbol in the struggle to give all girls the opportunity of an education. This autumn, she and Kailash Satyarthi were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize "for their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education" (www.nobelprize.org). Now, watch and/ or read Malala's Nobel lecture (video here and text here) and write a blog post about the speech where you comment on

• how Malala establishes her credibility
• how she draws on emotions
• how she builds the logic of her argument. 

The resources we used on Thursday ("Speaking to convince" from Gyldendal) may be helpful. Remember to give your blog post a suitable title and a proper structure. In addition. try to find a suitable illustration for your post. This illustration is a word cloud of Malala's Nobel Lecture made on wordle.

Global Issues

Starting next week the main topic in International English will be Global issues. Browse through the headlines of the TED talks you find here: http://www.ted.com/talks?topics%5B%5D=global+issues&sort=newest Watch one of the talks and write a blog post about it. Who is the speaker? What is the talk about (give a brief summary)? Why did you choose to write about this particular talk? What are your thoughts about this issue? Why is this important or at least interesting? Were you suprised by anything the speaker said or was there something you found particularly interesting? You might want to watch a couple of talks before you decide, but make sure to choose a talk that you feel you are able to comment on. Also, embed the video in your post. (Click the < > symbol under the video).

Brief analysis of Gran Torino

In class today we watched the Clint Eastwood film Gran Torino. For next week, you are to write a brief analysis of the film. Start off by presenting the film with the title, production year, nationality, the names of the main actors and the name of the director. You can look up facts about the film here. After presenting these basic facts you should go on to explain the plot and setting of the film. Other elements that you can include in your analysis are conflict, characterization, imagery (symbols, the car), theme, soundtrack and use of camera. For a more detailed explanation of how to write the analysis, go to this link: NDLA How to analyze a flim. Obviously, since your text is supposed to be fairly short (approximately 400 words), you cannot include everything. Therefore, you should aim to focus on the elements that you think stands out in this film. Also, write about the film as a whole and try to explain how some of the elements above function together in order to get the film's theme and message across. Since our main topic right now is multiculturalism and multicultural societies, you should comment on how the film presents the multicultural society in which it is set. This illustration was shared by Franco Mathson on flickr.

What is the relationship between traditional media and social media?

When you log on to facebook or twitter, you will often come across news stories shared and often commented on by your friends and acquaintances. One could say that the people you "know" online become your personal news editors. In other words, we use social media to find news, or the news find us via our friends. At the same time, as explained by Markham Nolan in this TED talk,  traditional media use social media to find and investigate news stories. Furthermore, in episode five of the HBO series The Newsroom, we saw how social media can be used by news producers to get in touch with the real people who are on the ground where important events are taking place - more or less anywhere in the world.

Write a short text where you sum up the main points of Nolan's talk and comment on the relationship between traditional and social media. Also, search online to see if you can find a good comment article about this and share the link to this comment in your blog post.

World news

This week we spent some time browsing world news. First, you were simply asked to check out the websites of news giants BBC, CNN, Fox News and Al Jazeera. After forming a first impression of these, you were to pick one piece of news that was covered by all of them and compare the coverage on the four websites. Now, write a post about what you found. What was the headlines, what images/ illustrations were chosen, was there differences in the language? Try to also comment on how detailed/ thorough the coverage was.  How nuanced would you say the various websites were in their presentation? What type of and/ or how many sources were used? Finally, give your  subjective opinion on which of these presentations of the news story you liked best and explain why. The picture is a clipping of the BBC front page today.

A visit to the Nobel Peace Centre

Last week we visited the Nobel Peace Centre and were given a tour of their exhibition about social media and democracy - be democracy. Write a post about this visit where you explain in your own words what the exhibition was about. What did you find interesting and why? Use one of the photos you took as an illustration and explain why you chose this photo. (This photo is a screenshot from the Nobel Peace Centre's homepage.)

Social media

Which social media can you think of? Which social media do you use? Write a short text where you start with introducing social media/ explaining what it is (feel free to use the definition you find on www.merriam-webster.com). Give examples of popular social media and how they are used and then go on to discuss the pros and cons of social media and social media usage. You may choose to focus on one or two types of social media, like facebook and/ or twitter (you can even compare and contrast), or you can write about social media in general. 

You can probably find useful information in the presentation made by the class: Social Media
The photo "Social media explained" is shared on flickr by Chris Lott.