Finally the Project works!

Finally we reached the long-awaited week of presentations of the projects. And it seems to be a great start, it was almost an unanimous choice of the first presentation as the best. The group we are talking about is composed by Fred, Natalia and Louise deal with The Power of Music, Glee and MTV.

This group presented us with a very appealing presentation, original and above all enjoyable and interesting. We saw in this presentation a very well done research, alongside they were able to bring very captivating elements together. They were able to provide essential information to work through the presence of very interactive elements - the videos, and with the help of super attractive PowerPoint animations they cought our attention.

But unfortunately, we also found some break points in this near amazing work. When they presented various videos they should have analyzed  them by entering them in the context of work, making it more complete.
In relation to the presentation itself the element that pleased us the most was Frederico, who was totally comfortable in the topics discussed. He got a very assertive tone of voice, right from the beginning that captivated our attention. On the other hand they should have interacted with the audience, despite having caught our attention they do not even tried our involvement.
There, it was a very good  presentation, that's why we have chosen as the best this week!


Good work :D

Accent discrimination through the time

Over the past lessons, we've seen the classic My Fair Lady, the story of a poor girl who sells flowers and to make it better decides to improve her English; his teacher, Henry Higgins, with much effort and persistence turns out to transform the illiterate Eliza Doolittle into a true lady of high society, ended up falling in love with her. This film is based on the myth of Pygmalion (a sculptor, makes an ivory statue representing his ideal of womanhood and then falls in love with his own creation, which he names Galatea. The goddess Aphrodite brings the statue to life in answer to his prayer), and it is a musical comedy that corresponds to the post-Victorian age (in England) and shows a world of social inequalities. With these inequalities comes discrimination, this film shows specifically discrimination based on accent or pronunciation.

Society has always shown us discrimination of various orders, there are people being discriminated against every day for having a different skin tone, for being female, for having a different sexual orientation, for having a physical or psychological disability, for having less financial possibilities, everything is a reason to discriminate. This film shows us that from the moment a person has a different pronunciation (or a different accent) in relation to the Queen's English (the English that is “proper” to speak) is immediately associated with a person without possessions, without culture, without the right to be respected by others.

This film has the background of London during the the 1920s. It is a different social context of today, but equal in certain details. Discrimination is one of the various topics that are similar. Carrying discrimination discussed in the film to our days (and to our country - Portugal) we found some practical examples of this: even today the accent of the islands (Madeira, mainly) is associated to simple people, rural, uneducated, without possessions; this happens also in the interior of Portugal, or even in the North or South. Whatever the accent or pronunciation there, are always elements associated which will define all the people of a certain area: it is called discrimination. And, despite being already a topic discussed frequently on the media, discrimination is still very clear in the daily actions of many people, everywhere.