Level II
Chapter 2
Writing
IC3
IC3 | IT | TOEFL | Best Answer
English | Vietnamese
Assessment
Water Ecology
Your life: does a river run through it?
Có dòng sông nào chảy qua cuôc đời của bạn không?
Skills:
In this chapter you will do these things:
English Language Skills:
Writing a Descriptive Paragraph
River/River Life Vocabulary
Organizing Your Ideas: Moving from General to Specific
Topic and Topic Sentence: How are they different?
Adjectives Add Detail to Writing
Freewriting for Generating Ideas
Vietnamese Language Skills:
Writing a Descriptive Paragraph
Descriptive Adjectives
Answering Guiding Questions for Generating Ideas
Organizing Your Ideas in a Vietnamese Paragraph
IC3 Skills:
River Myths: Freewriting River Stories
IT Skills:
Navigate “Google.com” for information on organizations concerned with sustaining and regulating the Mekong.
Create a graphic organizer on the word processor to identify characteristics and values of the chosen organization. Save the organizer on your disk.
TOEFL Skills :
Structure and written expression
Intercultural Communicative Competence
Myth Freewriting Exercise
A myth is a story that explains how something came to be or why something is the way it is. It is a way to honor things that are important or special to a group of people. Different cultures make up myths to explain how things came to be.
For example, there is a myth about the Ha Long Bay islands in Vietnam that says they were formed when the gods from heaven sent dragons to help defend the land against invaders from the North. When the dragons arrived in the area that is now called Ha Long, they began spitting out jewels and jade that turned into the islands that dot the bay.
Americans have myths as well. One of the most well known American myths says that a gigantic man named Paul Bunyan made the Grand Canyon by dragging his axe behind him.
There is also a Tibetan myth about why giant pandas are black and white. According to legend, pandas used to be completely white. Then a girl sacrificed herself to save a panda from a leopard, and the pandas held an elaborate funeral for her. They all wore black armbands to the funeral. The pandas were so sad that their tears mixed with the dye from the black armbands. When they rubbed their eyes, the black dye formed black spots around their eyes. They also clutched at their ears and hugged each other tightly in their grief, which created the black markings on their arms and legs. The pandas decided never to wash the black dye off so that they would always remember what the girl had done for them.
These myths should give you a starting point for thinking of myths of your own or retelling myths that you’ve heard or read in the past. Remember that myths are meant to celebrate things that are important to a culture, not necessarily reflect the way things really are or came to be. Therefore, the more creative and interesting they are, the better myths they are.
Read the following questions and free write everything that comes to mind.
- What do rivers do for your family or your way of life?
- Is there a specific river that is especially important to how you or your family live?
- What kinds of animals do you think of when you think of a river?
- What places does the river impact outside of your village or area?
- What does the river do for those places?
- What reasons, realistic or not, might there have been for the river to be made by a divine or spiritual being?
- Can you think of any mythical ways the river might have been made?
BÀI GỢI Ý VIẾT TỰ DO VỀ HUYỀN THOẠI
Huyền thoại là một câu chuyện giải thích một sự vật nào đó đã được hình thành như thế nào hoặc là tại sao nó lại như vậy. Đó là một cách tôn vinh những sự vật mà những sự vật nầy quan trọng hay là đặc biêt đối với một nhóm người. Văn hoá khác nhau sáng tạo ra những huyền thoại khác nhau đối với những sự vật khác nhau.
Ví dụ như ở Việt Nam có một huyền thoại về các hòn đảo vịnh Hạ Long cho rằng chúng được hình thành khi các vị thần từ Thiên đình phái rồng thiên xuống trần gian để giúp bảo vệ đất đai chống lại quân xâm lược đến từ phương bắc. Khi các rồng thiên đến vùng đất mà bây gìơ được mệnh danh là Hạ Long, chúng bắt đầu phun ra những hạt trân châu và ngoc bích biến thành các hòn đảo rải lấm tấm trên vịnh.
Người Mỹ cũng có huyền thoại. Một trong những huyền thoại nổi tiếng nhất của người Mỹ nói rằng một người đàn ông khổng lồ tên là Paul Bunyan đã tạo ra những hẻm núi khổng lồ Grand Canyon bằng cách kéo lê cái rùi phía sau lưng ông ta. Cũng có một truyền thuyết Tây Tạng nói về tại sao những chú gấu trúc có bộ lông đen trắng. Theo truyền thuyết nầy, bộ lông của gấu trúc thường toàn màu trắng. Sau đó, một cô gái đã tự hy sinh thân mình để cứu sống môt chú gấu trúc thoát nạn từ một con beo, và đàn gấu đã tổ chức một đám tang hết sức trịnh trọng cho cô ấy. Tất cả chúng đều mang băng tay màu đen đến dự tang lễ. Đàn gấu quá đau buồn đến nổi nước mắt của chúng trộn lẫn với thuốc nhuộm từ những băng tay màu đen nầy. Khi chúng nó dụi mắt, thuốc nhuộm hình thành những chấm màu đen chung quanh mắt của chúng. Chúng nó cũng giữ chặt lấy tai của chúng và ôm chặt lấy nhau trong nỗi sầu thương, việc nầy tạo ra những vết màu đen trên cánh tay và chân của chúng. Đàn gấu quyết định không bao giờ tẩy rửa những vết đen nầy để chúng có thể luôn nhớ đến những gì cô gái đã làm cho chúng.
Những huyền thoại nầy chắc chắn cho bạn một điểm mở đầu để suy nghĩ về huyền thoại của riêng mình. Hãy nhớ rằng huyền thoại có nghĩa là tưởng nhớ đến những sự việc quan trọng đối với một nền văn hoá, không cần thiết phải phản ảnh cách thức hay là cách hình thành của sự việc đó. Vì vậy, sự việc càng được sáng tạo và gây thích thú bao nhiêu thì chúng càng trở thành những huyền thoại tuyệt vời bấy nhiêu.
Taking It Further (Journal Writing, Extra Assignments, Special Explorations, Creative Endeavors):
- Think of legends in your own culture related to rivers and tell the story.
- Search for river stories from other cultures.
Back to Top
Information Technology
See this section under Listening/Speaking chapter 2 of the same level.
These exercises draw upon a modified version of “Messing with the Mekong,” by Lisa Mastny, World Watch magazine. Washington, DC: Worldwatch Institute, November/December 2003, pages 21-28.
Questions 1-20 are incomplete sentences. Beneath each sentence you will see words and phrases, A, B, C, and D. Choose the one word or phrase that best completes the sentence. Look at the following example:
The agricultural expert saw the distress of rice growers _____ with insect damage.
- A. made difficult
- B. struggling
- C. because of
- D. that are struggling
The correct answer is B. If you are ready to respond to the following twenty questions, note the time, and begin.
1. More than 130 years _____, a French expedition set off upriver from the Mekong delta in what is now Vietnam with a single mission: find an inland water route to China.
- A. since
- B. after
- C. once
- D. ago
2. But France’s commercial goal was hindered by a riverbed dotted with jagged rocks, _____, and deadly whirlpools
- A. threatening sandbars
- B. modern piers
- C. threatening sandbar
- D. modern pier
3. In the 1930s, after minor channel improvements, it _____ took 37 days to sail from the East Sea to northern Laos, a journey that took longer than sailing from Vietnam to France.
- A. should still
- B. would still
- C. could still
- D. still
4. Natural obstacles in the river have sheltered the Mekong from the fate of many of the world’s _____ long been exploited for shipping and trade.
- A. largest river, which have
- B. large rivers that was
- C. large rivers, which have
- D. largest river that had
5. In 1992, the $5 million Upper Mekong Navigation Improvement Project _____ to dynamite 21 shoals, rapids, and reefs along a 331-kilometer stretch of the river.
- A. had then begun
- B. began
- C. was surely
- D. begun
6. Laos, Myanmar, and Thailand _____ agreed to the improvements planned for the Mekong River in 2000, _____ the three countries and China signed a navigation agreement.
- A. not only … but
- B. all … but
- C. formal … but
- D. formally … and
7. Laos is pinning its hopes on the economic prospects of the Mekong _____ it is mountainous, landlocked, and the poorest country in Southeast Asia.
- A. since
- B. though
- C. although
- D. due to
8. _____, Laos hopes to benefit indirectly from China’s economic boom and to free its population of 5.2 million from a largely subsistence farming economy.
- A. Always
- B. Furthermore
- C. Certain
- D. Addition
9. In addition to being an important trade link, the Mekong has tremendous hydropower potential that, _____, could position Laos as the “battery” of Southeast Asia.
- A. which if fully harnessed
- B. for all purposes
- C. if fully harnessed
- D. when it is done
10. Even without a new shipping channel, commerce _____ China’s southern provinces and Southeast Asia has grown _____.
- A. because of … appreciably
- B. between … greatly
- C. between … alot
- D. of … a lot
11. This growth in trade between China and Southeast Asia has _____ with China’s entry into the World Trade Organization in 2000.
- A. accelerated
- B. accelerate
- C. accelerates
- D. been accelerated
12. But Aviva Imhof of the International Rivers Network warns that, _____, dredging the Mekong may offer “few obvious benefits” for the majority of Laos’s Mekong residents.
- A. on account of
- B. despite obvious costs
- C. regardless
- D. despite its commercial promise
13. Most of the _____ scheduled to travel the new shipping channel of the Mekong belong to China, which also has the advantage of using _____ modern piers and facilities than any of its downstream neighbors.
- A. larger vessels … more
- B. largest vessels … most
- C. larger vessels … most
- D. large vessels … some
14. “Without the shoals, rapids, and reefs, the flow in the Mekong is likely to be much _____, and big waves caused by _____ ships would destroy Laos’s riverbanks,” warns Thongpho Vongsriprasom of the Lao Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry.
- A. strong … smaller
- B. strong ... huge
- C. stronger … huge
- D. stronger … tiny
15. Only 4 percent of Laos’s land area is suitable for agriculture (most of this along the shores of the Mekong), and many farmers rely on _____ for their annual harvests of lettuce, cabbage, and other crops.
- A. the fertile sediment enriched riverbanks
- B. the fertile, sediment-enriched riverbanks
- C. fertile riverbank usage
- D. fertile banks of the river usage
16. In November 2001, Beijing agreed to give Laos and Myanmar $5 million to finance the blasting of shoals, rapids, and reefs, and a Chinese company _____ to do the work in these countries.
- A. that could
- B. which might
- C. was appointed
- D. were paid
17. By June 2003, all but one of the 11 major rapids _____ for destruction by blasting under this Upper Mekong Navigation Improvement Project _____.
- A. scheduled … had been altered
- B. planned … were altered
- C. planned … had altered
- D. scheduled … had altered
18. Outside reviewers of this project, _____ Bob McDowall with New Zealand’s National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research, noted that the initial studies for this change to Mekong lacked lists of fish species, descriptions of river habitats, and an investigation of other biological values.
- A. being
- B. which
- C. including the
- D. such as
19. _____ local fishers and villagers worry about the longer-term _____ altering the river since the Mekong supplies about 80 percent of the dietary protein consumed in the Mekong basin, _____ a total population of more than 65 million.
- A. Moreover, … effect of … which has
- B. Moreover … effect of … that have
- C. Furthermore, … consequences of … that have
- D. Furthermore … consequences of … which has
20. Fishermen _____ complain that waves from the bigger barges have turned over their boats and now threaten their traditional fishing methods.
- A. furthermore
- B. would
- C. already
- D. could
This "Best Answers" forum allows students and teachers to learn from one another inter-culturally. On each side of the world where classes are immersed in www.emu.edu/ic3 curriculum work, there has been consideration of an important development question. In University Level 1, Chapter 2 students have wrestled with a key developmental question, "Your life: does a river run through it?" To answer this fully in another language, many steps have been taken. First, classrooms discussed this question through Listening/Speaking, Writing, and Reading exercises in a second language - either in Vietnamese or in English. Second, students have thought "internally" (within themselves) about this question. Third, they have written and corrected a draft of this response on the computer, using new second-language and IT skills. Third, they are now prepared to take the extraordinary step of sharing this work product with students in another land. Their counterparts are simultaneously trying their best to communicate to you. They are likewise posting their answer to this same developmental question, using their own new second-language and IT skills. Once the postings are complete on the "Best Answers" forum, classrooms at each end of the inter-cultural exchange may decide how best to read, comment upon, and respond to the answers posted by students at the "other end of the dialogue."
Instructors and students, alike, may judge whether or not this exchange is deepening your learning. As one examines one's own answer in light of another's response from another culture, how does this sharpen or deepen your own understanding of self? Begin to write down and discuss whether you see small steps of progress in thinking across the North American and Vietnamese cultural boundaries as a result of your participation in this IC3 forum and curriculum. In the chapters and levels ahead, more and more developmental questions are posed. As participants progress from the Level I level to the four levels of University instruction, the same development concerns are examined with more challenging and sophisticated materials. The dialogue, therefore, is expected to gain momentum and depth, even as it requires more critical examination of one's own, another student's, and world expert analysis of key development questions.
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