Contents
Ireland: A Story of Beauty and Hope (Collage) .............................................................. p. 14
Makki Marseilles: "Impressions of Ireland" ................................................................. p. 16
Ireland-Collage ............................................................................................................ p. 18
John Tarver: "What's up in Ireland?" .......................................................................... p. 13
Development since 1998 ............................................................................................. p. 16
Jonathan Swift: A Modest Proposal .............................................................................. p. 18
Satire ............................................................................................................................ p. 19
Cecil Woodham-Smith: The Great Hunger
.................................................................. p. 21
Cragie Hills
.................................................................................................................... p. 25
Eviction
.................................................................................................................... p. 26
Emigration .................................................................................................................. p. 26
W. B. Yeats: "The Wanderings of Oisin" ...................................................................... p. 28
The Celts ..................................................................................................................... p. 29
James F. Clarity: "Gaelic Now Trips off Ireland's Silver Tongues" ........................... p. 31
An Ghaeltacht ............................................................................................................. p. 32
Richard Conniff: "God bless you, Father"* ................................................................ p. 34
Saint Patrick ................................................................................................................. p. 35
Rita Kelly: "The Cobweb Curtain" ............................................................................... p. 37
Narrative techniques ................................................................................................... p. 40
Mary McAleese: "Hopes for the new Millennium"
"No more Terror?"
..................................................... p. 42
......................................................................................................... p. 44
The Good Friday Agreement ........................................................................................... p. 46
Confidence essential .................................................................................................. p. 49
Bernard MacLaverty: Cal .............................................................................................
IRA .............................................................................................................................
Fenians .........................................................................................................................
The Twelfth of July .....................................................................................................
p. 51
p. 52
p. 53
p. 54
Michael Elliott: "Overburdened With History" ............................................................ p. 55
Interviews with Students from Methodist College Belfast ........................................... p. 59
A Farewell to Arms? From long War to uncertain Peace in Northern Ireland
........ p. 62
Competence Training ....................................................................................................... p. 65
* Titles provided by the editor
Ireland
3
Listening comprehension skills
Any of the texts can be used for listening comprehension if you listen to someone reading them, make
notes and answer questions or summarize the text. Texts that are particularly useful are those where
the author can be heard:
texts 9,13 (on CD-ROM)
texts and music
text 5 (on CD-ROM)
radio programme
text 7(14)
Visual text comprehension skills
reading cartoons
reading photos
texts 2,4,8,14
each text, particularly collages and texts
3,4,13,14,16
Particular writing skills / creative writing skills
that you can practise in 'Projects' or on the whole text:
brochure
essay
paper/speech
letter
e-mail
poem / song
story
texts 8(17), 9(14)
any text, particularly texts 6(21), 10(13)
any text, particularly texts 10(12), 11(4)
texts 4(15), 7(12), 10(13), 11(7), 15(8)
see "letter"
texts 5(13), 6(17), 7(2)
text 6(17)
Intercultural Skills
Intercultural linguistic skills:
When you use another language you need intercultural
skills. This is because languages do not just have
different words; they differ fundamentally in the ways
they express thoughts, or even sometimes in the thoughts
they choose to express. So there is no such thing as
word-for-word or exact translation. Just think, e. g., of
the differences between the German word fahren and
the English word drive. Or where, in German, you
might write: "Mit diesem Bild will der Autor die Unmenschlichkeit des Krieges ausdrücken", in English
we might say "The author uses this image to express
the horrors of war."
So when working with this book you need to develop
skills in relation to the use of the foreign language:
• Intercultural linguistic awareness: e.g. seeing how
differently words and structures are used in English
from their 'equivalents' in your language;
• Intercultural linguistic competence: e.g. being
able to use the foreign language in the way that
members of that language community use and understand it;
• Register and tone: e.g. being able to recognize and
use different registers like academic or colloquial, or
different tones like serious, humorous or sarcastic.
All the texts and tasks in this volume expect you to
work in the medium of English, which will help you to
practise these vital skills. Specifically, you may be
required to actively use various types of equivalents
between English and your own language. This will
involve the following skills:
• Translation (German: Übersetzung): Here you must
try to find the nearest possible written equivalent in
the other language while making sure that it reads
like an original text in terms of structure, idiom, register and tone. This is particularly difficult in literary
texts where you have to think of the aesthetic effect
as well.
• Interpreting (German: dolmetschen): As an interpreter you must try to give the nearest equivalent
possible of someone's spoken words, either after they
have said them, or simultaneously.
Ireland
69
• Conveying the sense (German: Mediation): People
may want to know the sense, or message, of a document. They need to know the important facts and
figures, but the particular linguistic expressions used
in the original are irrelevant.
sense are: texts 1,2,4,7,8,10,13,14,15 and 16. You could
also convey the sense of particular positions, like those
of the characters in texts 5,8 and 9. For a real challenge
you could try to translate texts 3 and 12 or the poems in
texts 1 and 6.
The texts in this Viewfinder volume (or extracts from
them) most suitable for translating or conveying the
In addition, this Viewfinder volume Ireland also deals specifically with the interactions of different cultures, and so is particularly useful for practising other intercultural skills:
intercultural awareness and familiarization
empathizing with others
socio-historical contexts
contemporary problems
introductory text, collages, each text
introductory text, texts 1,3,4,5,8,9,11,13,14,15,16
texts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 13, 14, 16
introductory text, texts 8, 9, 10, 11 (extra text), 12,
15, 16
Particular texts and tasks will give help in being aware of cultural differences and in practising these
skills:
ethnicity and identity
language and dialect
religion
cultural assumptions and particularities
prejudices and stereotypes
integration and equality
conflicts and reactions
relativism and universality
70
Ireland
texts 1(8d), 15(4,5)
texts 7(1,3,8,10,11,13,14,15), 15(1)
texts 8(7,11,12,13,16,18,19), 15(2)
texts 1(1,2,7,9,10,11,12,13,14), 2(15,16),
4(13,14,18), 5(2,9,10,12,14,15,16)
texts 1(3)
texts 4(1), 9(11,12,14),
texts 2(1,9,12,13)4(11,12), 10(7,8), 11(1,3,4,5,6,8),
12(1,7,8,9,10,11), 13(2,4,5,,6,8),
14(1,6,9,13,15,17,18), 16(1,2,3,4,5,6,7,10,11,13)
texts 4(2), 14(10,11,14), 15(3)