Saturday 7 July 2018

Sound: reading 1, "The Secret Garden: an Excerpt" (RW3, p89, Developing critical thinking)

What we read

We have just read and checked our understanding of "Making a Difference."

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Our response 

Having read the text a couple of times, Bixby and Scanlon now invite us to respond to the ideas in it in a critical thinking exercise. 
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Bixby and Scanlon's question

There are actually two questions, but the second one is the more interesting, so it's the one we want to respond to in our comment here. 

  • What can you infer about daily life from the story? 
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Reference

  • Bixby, J. & Scanlon, J. (2013). Skillful Reading & Writing: Student's Book 3. Oxford: Macmillan Education

13 comments:

  1. We can infer that the class system was still strong, that is was normal to have maids serving the family living in rich houses. This reminds me of the TV series Downton Abbey, where this is very clear, especially in the first couple of seasons set in the years 1912 - 1920.

    We can also infer that electricity was not in wide use. The fire was coal, not electric. Perhaps this also lets us infer that global warming was not something people worried about at the time. And it is clear that superstitions were also common at the time, as even Mary seems to reject the less mysterious explanations that her maid offers, and does not believe herself.

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  2. From the story, we can inferred that Mary's daily life is talking with Martha and sitting near the fire. I think that in 1911, there was no job that will accept woman to do easily, so Mary might have no job and just stay at home.
    For another reason, I think Mary's uncle is rich, so she might not need to work. That's why her daily life is so boring.

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  3. I think you could infer that life is a little boring and what's fun to do to fill a long boring day is to let your head be on cloud, imagine things or stories, in this excerpt is the giant. However, these days we have so many things we like to do such as checking email, text, Facebook or many other things we can do anytime on our devices.

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  4. We can infer that Mary and Martha are form different social statuses. Mary is in a higher one. In addition, we can infer that the rich family do not have to do anything by themselves because they have maids. There's nothing much to do each days if you are in a rich family apart from sitting by the fireplace and talk. One more thing is that the rich ones do not closely supervise their children, unlike nowadays.

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  5. I think we can infer that the daily life from the story is routinely simple way of life from waking up till getting to bed. Mary doesn't have much more choices for her recreation. She just sit and talk with her maid and walking around the house.

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    Replies
    1. That sounds very similar to Iew's idea above, with which I also agree.

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  6. We can infer that the daily life from the story is about life in rural not in business area. Mary and Martha lived in a big house surrounded by garden. The nature there is good. There is wind blow though their house. The daily life there is not busy life.

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  7. We can infer that there is still a hierarchy system being used in the story. We can also infer that the house is very huge but there is no electricity and air-conditioning system.

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  8. You can infer that Martha always looks after Marry .
    You can infer that at that time the rich usually have maids in their house.
    We can infer that people at that time believe in spirituality.

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  9. I can infer that Mary uncle' family looks like happiness, and her uncle is rich so she have a comfortable daily life. But Mary think the house had a little strange, because she usually heard some mysterious sounds and saw some strange things. She think no one told the truth of the house. She want to find the reason. And this house must had a big secret her uncle never told everyone, she need find it by herself.

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  10. We can infer that it have something quite not clearly to what happened after Mary and Martha got to the secret appear. It didn't have a make sence.

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  11. I can infer that Mary had not gone to the school. Her uncle might left home in the morning and she lived lonely in the house with no one to play or talk with. Although there was maid, she did everything alone. It looked like there was nothing much.

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  12. After reading the story, I think that Mary’s life must be quite boring and scary as she is living alone in a big house with some maids who seem to have many secrets. Since her uncle is appeared to be rich, according to a number of maids looking after the big house for him, she might be able to enjoy her life to the fullest.

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