That’s Right Nate

Today, I am going to kick off a new segment in my blog which is called Nate Reaches Out.   The idea behind this recurring feature is that a lot of my readers need help.   While I already had a bachelor’s degree, I feel that my honorary associate’s degree from Eugene Sawyer Community College has with it certain responsibilities.  One of them is community service.  If you have a question or problem that I can use my expertise to help you with, please let me know.

Today’s problem comes from Lola.  She just receiver her PHD from a Brazilian university.  I know, I didn’t know they had universities either.  However, she is interested in a job teaching English and if we’re ever going to get Brazil to adopt English as it’s official language, I thought this was a good cause.

Ok, here are the themes I need to study for my contest. The opening is for a professor of Linguistics and Literature in English in a public university in the Northeast of Brazil. Google “Fortaleza” and you’ll see that this city is paradise and that God is indeed Brazilian.
1. Theme, focus and information processing
2. From sentence to text (the notion of “text” and grammatical devices)
3. Sentence types and discourse functions
4. The interrelation between the sound system of English and other areas of research
5. Mood and Modality
6. The Semantics of the English Verbs
7. The Complexity of English Noun Clauses
8. Renaissance Elizabethan Theater
9. Romanticism in Britain
10. Romanticism in America
11. The Irish Literary Movement: The Celtic Twilight
12. The short story as Literary Form: A study of case
13. The Novel of Reconstruction: The lost generation
14. The Harlem Literary Renaissance
15. American Theater: Eugene O’Neill & Tennessee Williams

[You will obviously have to expand on this.  These are just starting points]

1. You are always going to want to start out with a good theme.  In America that’s the key to a successful televsion show as well.  Focus let’s you know what people are saying that you have to pay attention to and what you can ignore.  Information processing is the way that we humans process information also the brave American soldiers and it’s got to be about jobs.

2. There is a major difference in grammar between sentence and text.  For instance, the sentence “Oh my, did you see what she was wearing later? I was laughing about it.”  as a text it would be written “OMG, did U C wht she was wearing l8r? LOL”

3. There are 4 types of sentences -

1. Declarative – usually involves a statement
2. Imperative – usually  involves an exclamation
3. Interrogative – usually involves a question
4. Harsh Interrogative – usually involves a water board

4. The English make lousy sound systems, I would stick with Japanese.

5. This sounds like one of those touchy feely liberal arts type questions.  I don’t do those.

6. I won’t answer this because I don’t want to be accused of being anti-semantic.

7. English noun clauses are very simple as soon as you get to the subject, just ignore the other worrds.  It’s too much work anyway.  For instance, in the sentence, “What I had for breakfast gave me heartburn”  What is enough for a subject you don’t have to do the whole clause.

8. For the 20 minutes I saw of Shakespeare in Love, I can tell you Elizabethean Theater is bor-ring.

9. Romanticism in Britain is very limited by their culture.  They were brought up to keep a stiff upper lip and not really enjoy sex or romance.

10. Romanticism in America is much better.   I think it’s because of rock and roll, but even before then.   The only problem with American romance is when the guy is working very hard to put food on the table and a roof over the family’s head and while he’s working his wife is running around behind his back with the trainer who lives across the street.

11. The Irish Literay Movement consists of novels written by drunken authors like Jame Joyce’s Ulysses (which was a major disappointment to me as it had nothing to do with our former President and famous Civil War general) as well as Irish pub songs about drinking

12. America’s love affair with the short story is ingrained upon us from an early age.   No character has influenced more Americans over the years than Bazooka Joe.

13. People call this generation The Lost Generation because of the pheonomenal success of JJ Abrahams’ Lost television show.  Most people who read the Lost novels will tell you that Gregory Maquire does the best job of reconstructing the excitement of the show.

14. The Harlem Literay Renaisance was characterized by a vibrant art and literary scene in the black neighborhood of New York.  Much of The Cosby show’s look and sound were influenced by the Harlem Renaisance and many famous jazz musicians visited the house.

15. Both were depressing drunks.  If you want to impress the judges discuss modern American theatre–I’d suggest Grease or the Billy Joel musical Stepping Out.