Mister James Teaches English

"Araby" is a short story by James Joyce  (PDF) published in his 1914 collection Dubliners. On the purely narrative level the story traces a young boy's infatuation with his friend's sister. On the symbolic level Araby traces the development of the boy as he turns his back on the certainties of childhood and Catholicism and embraces the uncertainties of adult emotions and desires via imagination. Araby is structured in a way that first introduces the childhood world of the narrator, the boy of the story. It is a mysterious but exciting world where even simple things take on great significance, relative to the small size of the world - a single street really. But the story also opens with death, and the abandoned house of the recently deceased, but 'charitable' priest. This death can be understood as the loss of faith and the end of childhood. From there we look forward as readers through what is possibly the first steps into the adult world by the boy telli...

This is an amateur video that attempts to explain theme in the simplest terms possible using the movie Cinderella

The older students have started working on a module that is called Reading for Culture. It is made up of the following themes: What is Culture? We will be identifying culture through the course, so I do not want to add a big definition here. However, it may be enough to say that culture is how you understand the world around you and how you are understood by those around you. This idea will be developed through background readings and discussion that focus on culture in daily life, what cultures do students experience and witness, do students have a close affinity or participate in any particular cultures? The major goal of this course is to identifying cultures in texts; this consist of reading and discussions around set texts. We will be reading articles, stories and novels with the goal or focus of identifying culture and cultural elements in a complex text. These cultures are made up of elements that operate under broad headings such as: Work - how is work represented or referred ...