Why I decided to make a blog for our English class...

Dear Students, 

I just wanted to outline my thinking behind setting up this blog for you. Three days from now our journey together will begin and I anticipate using this blog as a means of recording all of our thoughts, discussions, exploits, grand ideas and good times. As you know, we will be discussing the very important topic of male/female gender relations using some of my (and Monika's) favorite texts and films. We will also be visiting Vienna to see the play "Othello" and will be acting out our own various scenes during class. 

I intend to update this blog every evening during our course. You are free to comment on each post and if you have anything that you yourself would like to post, please let me know. I hope to document important passages and quotations, photos and videos taken during class and discussion excerpts on this website for you all - as a way to reflect on our week together. And of course, for you to show your friends and parents what you learned!

Looking forward to meeting you!

Alysha

Materials....

---------- A Note from Monika & Alysha on Tuesday, June 22, 2010 ----------

Dear students,

Our course is beginning shortly and Alysha and I are really looking forward to meeting you on Friday at 10:30 am.

Make sure that you bring along the following:

- if possible your netbook/laptop with headphones 
- an English/German dictionary if you don´t take a laptop,
- paper, pencils, glue and if possible a pair of scissors,
- any Shakespeare texts if you´ve got them (especially "Taming of the Shrew", "Much Ado about Nothing", "Othello").


See you soon,


Alysha and Monika

Welcome To SOAK (Sommerakademie) 2010!

-------------------- A Note from Monika on Monday, May 24, 2010 --------------------


Welcome everybody to the English course that will start in less than six weeks.

Alysha and I are looking forward to meeting you at the Semmering and expect to have a great week of speaking, reading and listening to English - creative writing, drama sequences, interesting discussions and much more.

Since we are all curious I would like to ask some questions:
which parts of the course description were most attractive to you (meaning what made you think- yeah, this might be interesting for me)?
Was it Shakespeare or drama in general? Did the issue of "battle of the sexes" spark interest in you? Do you generally adore the English language regardless of the topic?

I will get to know all of this in time, but it would be great to get some hints from you before the actual beginning of the course.

Next time, I will tell you more about the material you should bring along.
See you soon,
Monika Kolovos


-------------------- A Note from Alysha on Friday, May 28, 2010 --------------------


Hello, hello, hello!!

I am so excited to meet all of you! I'm thinking we're going to have some great discussions during our week together - I know "battle of the sexes" is one of my favorite topics to talk about. :o) I really look forward to hearing your opinions and interpretations of the material we've selected for the course.

Also, I've read a few responses from you to Monika - I really enjoyed that - keep 'em coming!

For now, I hope you enjoy your last month of school! See you in Semmering!

Alysha