The Purpose of this Blog

Your task on this blog is to write a brief summary of what we learned in class today. Include enough detail so that someone who was ill or missed the lesson can catch up with what they missed. Over the course of the term, these 'class scribe' posts will grow to be a guide book for the course, written by students for students.

With each post ask yourself the following questions:
1) Is this good enough for our guide book?
2) Will your post enable someone who wasn't here to catch up?
3) Would a graphic/video/link help to illustrate what we have learned?


Tuesday 28 September 2010

Public & private Othello: Act 1.3 (28/09/10)


At the beginning of today's lesson we were asked to discuss the difference between the words "Exotic" & "Different". After we discussed this in pairs we were asked to feedback to the class, there were a range of ideas that suggested that the word "Different" was more used than the word "Exotic". Next the class decided that when someone/something was "Different" it was often referred to the unknown and was more negative compared to "Exotic" which was seen as unique (more positive). We then established the dictionary definitions of the words:

Exotic: From another part of the world; foreign.
Different: Uniquely new or of experimental nature.

With are gained knowledge of these words we then discussed whether the character of Othello could be classed as exotic or different. We concluded that Othello's character was both exotic and different.

Sir then added a new word to our vocabulary..

Dichotomy - A split that divides something into 2 parts

Following this we then started to read Act 1 Scene 3. (The duke is telling Othello about the Turks coming to invade Cyprus but is interrupted by Brabantio)
At the end of this scene we gather that Othello is a very composed & humble character who feels he is not in the wrong.

The rest of the lesson was focused around Othello's speech during this scene. (Click link to listen to speech)



The class then split into groups and had to act out a portion of Othello's speech & emphasize certain aspects which showed:

1. Othello's bravery and determination as a warrior
2. Othello's love for Desdemona
3. Noble savage
4. His intelligence and ability to argue in public
5. His passionate nature

Our final task was to come up with a conclusion stating if Othello was different or exotic, we also had to evaluate what the speech shows and how the speech reflects Othello's public/private life.

Homework: Note 10 bullet points on the Ottoman empire and the Venetian empire, Due Thursday.

7 comments:

  1. Fantastic post. The video link makes me understand the speech much more better. Even helps the students who were in, great job.

    Chris

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  2. Why is Chris the only one commenting here? This is HW EVERY lesson. People who fail to post a comment are not supporting the person who has worked hard to produce the blogpost for the lesson.

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  3. this is an excellent post but the video link dosent work but other than that i have a clear understanding with differnce between exotic and different.your blog helped me understand more about othellos character of combining exotic and different with his looks.
    Rosie

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  4. The video link doesn't work ! but anywayz just to comment on the difference between exotic and different, exotics is more favourable, because it assusmes a certain level of excitement. i would personaly not like to be called different, exotic yes..different hell NO !!

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  5. Nice blog. Who wrote it?

    It was well explained as I found it hard in the lesson to explain the difference between exotic and different.

    That picture is so funny!!!!!!

    Daniel.

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  6. lol the picture is kind of creepy. however, othello is almighty and powerful in public, but in private i think he is an emotional person. Because he decribes events in his life in a passionate way but then again he can just be showing off.

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  7. it`s good how you made extra links to explain the lesson in a more interesting way

    Tamsin

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