HOW THE MONA LISA GOT HER SMILE

Do you know who the Mona Lisa is? Click HERE to read an article about her from the Enciclopedia Britannica. 

Now let's discover how the Mona Lisa got her famous smile!

 

Click HERE and read Five Things you didn't Know about the Mona Lisa from Google Arts & Culture.Write five questions (one from each interesting fact) and answer them. Prepare the task to hand in!

HEROES & VILLAINS

HEROES AND VILLAINS - Williams Carlos Williams by David Widgery

Read the following article retrieved from a quality newspaper

The first thing any practicing doctor who also writes gets asked is, ‘How do you find the time?’ A combined career ought, in theory, to be perfectly possible: writers and doctors are both only trained observers. And there is a distinguished list of literary medics. But almost all end up doing one or the other. And if they are any good as writers, the stethoscope takes second place. There never seems to be time to do both properly.

But William Carlos Williams, the great Modernist poet, succeeded. Williams, who was born in 1883 and died in 1963 after a series of strokes, was not only a prolific poet, critic, novelist and dramatist, but also a lifelong, full-time general practitioner in Rutherford, New Jersey. Although he could have easily set up in private practice in Manhattan, he chose instead to work in a working class industrial township with many recent immigrants from Italy and Eastern Europe, who spoke little English.

His ‘Doctor Stories’ deal with crises understood by any contemporary inner-city GP: still birth, autopsy, patients who refuse examination or cannot understand reassurance, never-ending evening surgeries, externded family consultartions in broken Englisuh, the particular test of night-visiting. My visits are made to the concrete tower-blocks of Tower Hamlets in London’s East End, and the new immigrants are from Vietnam and Bangladesh. There is no other writer who deals so well with how to listen, how to care, how to be there at the moment of physical need. He must have jotted these feelings down on prescription pad or notebook, then transcribed them o his laboratory typewriter, when hammering often awoke his children. ‘By the time we assembled for breakfast, he had probably already done an hour’s stint,’ recalls his physician son William.

As much as his industry, I like his laconic tone. His tenderness is hard-edged, his humanism slightly cynical; best of all, he is never sentimental about the oppressed. And there is the sheer quality of his literary work.

Williams, whose mother was Puerto Rican, was only a second-generation English speaker, so he struggled to develop a truly American voice. His innovations were a simile-free- metaphor-stripped diction arranged with a syntax and prosody based on lug breaths. It produced a wonderful, still woefully underrated body of work, ranging from the long love-poem ‘Asphodel’, to the haiku-like lilts in ‘Pictures form Breugel’.

Williams is heroic because he was a prophet in his own land, because he reclaimed poetry from European-imitating academics and because he stayed a working doctor – and enjoyed it. ‘I never felt’, he wrote, ‘that medicine interfered with me but rather that it was my food and drink, the very thing that made it possible to write.’ So whenever I become disgruntled about the workload, I mutter a phrase of Williams’ about one of his patients, which sums up my own mixed feelings about practicing in the East End: ‘her smile, with a shrug, always won me.’

(David Widgery, The Independent)

ACTIVITY

MULTIPLE CHOICE 

Choose the most suitable answer for each question

1. How is William Carlos Williams unlike other literary doctores, according to David Widgery?
   1.   He enjoyed working as a doctor.
   2.   His work as a doctor was a source of ideas for his writing.
   3.   He managed to continue both careers for all his life.
   4.   His powers of observation developed with his writing.
    
2. The problems that Williams encountered among his patients...
   1.   ...were typical of the time.
   2.   ...exist in similar settings today.
   3.   ...have disappeared with advances in medicine.
   4.   ...were specific to the region where he worked.
    
3. In which area is there a similarity between William Carlos Williams and David Widgery?
   1.   Literary tastes
   2.   Temperament
   3.   Family origins
   4.   Working environment 
    
4. When did William Carlos Williams do his literary work?
   1.   At night
   2.   After evening surgery
   3.   During the afternoon
   4.   In the early morning. 
    
5. According to David Widgery, the reputation of William Carlos Williams...
   1.   ...is now higher than it has ever been.
   2.   ...is not as high as it deserves to be.
   3.   ...has declined since his death.
   4.   ...has been overshadowed by that of his contemporaries.
    
6. Regarding his own medical work, David Widgery...
   1.   ...fails to find it challenging.
   2.   ...sometimes wishes he had less to do.
   3.   ...continues practising for the sake of his patients.
   4.   ...finds it interferes with his aims as a writer.
    

 

STEREOPYPING

What is a stereotype? Stereotypes are qualities assigned to groups of people related to their race, nationality, and sexual orientation, to name a few. Because they generalize groups of people in manners that lead to discrimation and ignore the diversity within groups, stereotypes should be avoided.


Examples: 


►All African American are good at sports.

►Italian and French are the best lovers.








►All teenagers are rebels.









►Blond girls are unintelligent. 




 
►Spain is a country made of gypsies dancing flamenco everywhere.










►Old people are grumpy.









Any time you group races or individuals together and make a judgment about them without knowing them, this is an example of a stereotype. Racial remarks, sexual remarks, and gender remarks are the biggest stereotypes.

Stereotyping is not only hurtful, it is also wrong. Even if it is correct in some cases, constantly putting someone down based on your preconceived perceptions will not encourage them to succeed. 

Media stereotypes are inevitable, especially in the advertising, entertainment and news industries, which need as wide an audience as possible to quickly understand information. 

Stereotypes act like codes that give audiences a quick, common understanding of a person or group of people.

Stereotypes reduce a wide range of differences in people to simplistic categorizations. They can transform assumptions about particular groups of people into “realities”. They can be used to justify the position of those in power or perpetuate social prejudice and inequality.

In addition, stereotyping can encourage bullying behavior that children carry into adulthood. 

Stereotyping can also lead people to live lives driven by hate, and can cause the victims of those stereotypes to be driven by fear. For example, many gays and lesbians are afraid to admit their sexuality in fear of being judged.

More often than not, the groups being stereotyped have little to say about how they are represented.

We should educate ourselves and people around us that stereotyping often is the result of general ignorance of another person's culture customs and norms. We can avoid it by learning about differences and similarities between the cultures.

READING COMPREHENSION ACTIVITIES

A. Find words in the text that mean:

1. One of the main groups that human can be divided into according to their physical differences, for example the colour of their skin.                                    
2. The practice of treating someone or particular group in society less fairly than others.                                                                                       
3. The ability to make sensible decisions after carefully considering the best thing to do                                                                                       
4. The main ways people receive information and entertainment as television, radio, newspapers, and internet.                                                                         
5. A belief or feeling that something is true, although there is no proof. (PLURAL)                                                                                                           
6. The bad feeling that you have when you are in danger or when a particular thing frightens you.                                                                           

B. True or false? Correct the wrong ones 

1. We only stereotype people when we have known them. 
2. Advertising, entertainment and news industries never stereotype. 
3. There is no relation between stereotyping and bullying. 
4. We cannot avoid stereotyping.
5. We should know more about other people´s cultures.

C. Are these stereotypes or realities?

1. Girls are only concerned about physical appearance.
2. Only anorexic women can become models.
3. Some teenagers are rebels.
4. Girls are not good at sports.
5. Chinese people always eat rice.
6. If somebody wear belts, belt buckles, jewlery, sunglasses, and hats they are part of a rock band, they are depressed or they take drugs. 
7. Some children don't eat vegetables.
8. Men drive cars better than women.

WHAT MAKES A PERSON BEAUTIFUL?

WHAT IS THAT MAKES A PERSON ATTRACTIVE? OR GEORGEOUS? OR BEAUTIFUL? 
 (OR WHATEVER YOUR FAVOURITE ADJECTIVE IS)...

Seriously, what is it that makes a man handsome or a woman beautiful? What is it that sets someone above another on the appeal scale? Many people claim it depends on each culture. 

Nevertheless, the general topic of attractiveness is important to members of virtually every society and attractive people are recognized universally as being appealing, even across wildly varying cultures… This means that there is a measurable standard for beauty and what is generally found most desirable. 

Recently, there has been a survey in Britain to find the most beautiful face. The result showed an 18-Year-Old as having Britain's most beautiful face.

The following text is the transcription of the video launched to show the girl whose face has been voted to be most perfect in the U.K.

TRANSCRIPTION

It might not launch a thousand ships, but this is the face that won the title “Britain’s Most Natural Beauty”. Eighteen-year-old Florence Colgate’s face is considered almost flawless … it’s perfectly symmetrical, with large eyes, full lips and high cheekbones.

- I had to send in a picture wearing no make-up and from that I got called to say I got through into the top 5 out of 8000 people. It’s just unbelievable. Honestly, I did not expect to get this far at all.

The competition wasn’t just about subjective beauty – it was settled with science. Researchers say the distances between facial features and the width and length of the face are deciding factors for perfection. And Colgate scored very close to the ideal.

- I think I just look at my face and I see me, I don’t really see, like science, it’s just yeah.

Colgate works part-time at a local fish and chips shop. But she says her new-found fame doesn’t seem to have made her more popular with customers.

- I haven’t really noticed. Obviously you still get your regulars who come in every week. I don’t know, it’s a busy fish and chip shop anyway.

Colgate plans to study business management at university, unless of course, a lucrative modeling contract shows its face.

 

Vocabulary

Launch – to send or shoot (something, such as a rocket) into the air or water or into outer space.

Flawless – with no faults or errors.

Full – having a rounded shape : not thin or narrow.

Cheekbones – a bone of the face that is located below the eye.

Subjective – relating to the way a person experiences things in his or her own mind.

Lucrative – producing money or wealth.

AND NOW WATCH AT THE VIDEO:

AND NOW IT'S...

ANSWER:

1º What do you think? Is she beautiful?

2º In your opinion, what makes a person beautiful?

3º Is it only a matter of physical appearance - colour eyes, hair, waist size, skin colour, etc? Can a person's personality make someone beautiful?

4º How important is to be beautiful according to someone's else standards?

5º Does the pursuit of Beauty or Perfection distract you from other things you would enjoy or could carry out?

6º How much is it worth to sacrifice for Beauty?

7º Is Beauty interior or exterior? Can you have one and not the other?