English in South-East Asia

Today, we read three texts in our book “Worldwide”. I worked with Nooshin, and we chose to read the texts and then do the tasks.  The texts were called: “English in South-East Asia”, “The triumpf of Japanese English” and “Manga and anime”. They were all texts about English in South-East Asia and the last text was about Japanese comics and animated TV-shows.

From the first text I learned that after World War 2, some westerners looked upon Japan as a "boy of twelve", because they saw them as immature, childlike and dependent on America. They thought that the Japanese would easily accept Western systems and concepts, and become America's junior partner in Asia. But it didn't turn out like that: the Japanese have developed a lot and they have had a huge economic growth since World War 2. Japan have also become big on manga and anime. Manga are Japanese comics and anime are Japanese animated series, and they have both become very popular around the world.

I also read that Japanese people often understand English better than native English speakers, because they study English grammar very thoroughly. This is good, because it is very important for people in South-East Asia to know English. A lot of technology and things on the internet is in English, so mastery of English is becoming a key to success in South-East Asia, and especially India. In India, it is also much easier to get a job if you are good at English. Working at call centres is for example a common job for English speakers in India. Call centres are customer’s service for international companies. A criterion to get hired at a call centre is that one must have good English skills. The employers are required to have a neutral English accent, so the customers cannot guess that they are from India.

I think this was a very good way to spend the English-day. It is easy to learn when you can decide for yourself what you want to do and how you learn best. By reading all the texts and answering the tasks I learned a lot and hopefully I will remember some of it for a while.

Kite Runner - the movie

Last Friday we watched the kite runner at school. It was really nice to see the movie after we had read the book. We didn't see the entire movie, but I enjoyed the part we saw. As it usually is, the book and the movie were a little different from each other. In the movie, you don't see the characters minds and their thoughts, but in the book we could read Amir’s thoughts almost all the time.
One of the tasks we had regarding the book was to write about five specific paragraphs from it, and link them to different topics, like for instance conflict or relationship. Then, we were supposed to explain why we chose them. While we watched the movie we were asked to try to see how one of these paragraphs was interpreted in the movie. The paragraph I chose to look for in the movie was linked to conflict, and here it is:

“Sometimes I look out this window and I see him playing around on the street with the neighborhood boys. I see how they push him around, take his toys from him, give him a shove here, a whack there. And, you know, he never fights back. Never.. he just … drops his head and… “So he’s not violent,” Rahim Khan said.” “That’s not what I mean, Rahim, and you know it,” Baba shot back. “There is something missing in that boy”.

In this paragraph Amir is listening to a conversation about him between his father and a friend, Rahim Khan. This paragraph from the book is very similar in the movie. The conversation and what they say is almost identical to what it says in the book. We see Amir outside the room, listening, and everything is actually almost like I pictured it while reading the book! I often experience that when I am reading a book, I picture everything I read in my mind. And then, if I watch the movie after reading, everything is so very different from what I pictured. But in this case, with this paragraph, it was very close.

So far I really liked the movie, and I'm looking forward to see the rest!

I took the picture here