Hi Everyone,
Today we started with a quick review of the 8 parts of speech used in English – and practiced some examples in sentences and then did a fun exercise telling stories with random parts of speech.
Our topic today was – the sounds of silence. We discussed and described what is silence? How do you feel when things are silent. We shared 2 minutes of silence together, and some of us felt uncomfortable, and sort of anxious. Others initially felt odd, but, then got into it and felt calm and relaxed. We talked about a man, John Francis, who stopped talking for 17 years. Take a listen to his brief radio interview What We Learn When We Find Silence. After listening we agreed that 17 years of silence seemed kind of crazy!
We talked about the cultural and physical aspects of silence. The relationship of religions and silence. We associate silence with patience, reverence, respect, wisdom and understanding. We discussed where is silence in our lives and what do we do in silence.
But we live in a noisy world, so what about noise pollution and coping with it?
We talked about what sounds we love and what we hate.
Recently, a documentary film, called In Pursuit of Silence was produced by director Patrick Shen. Take a look at his kickstarter video which introduces Patrick and his ideas for the film. (this video was used to raise funding on kickstarter, an online resource).
After watching we then watched the trailer for the film, In Pursuit of Silence, which got into the more detailed issues about silence in this noisy world.
We agreed that although silence is important, we are probably not looking for absolute silence, but, a balance of silence and sound. We also discussed when silence is a bad thing, like when our freed of speech is silenced.
Finally listen again to the Simon and Garfunkel song “The Sound of Silence” which was written over 50 years ago. It still has a relevant message, and simple but pleasing melody.
Remember to relax and practice!
(and appreciate some silence in your noisy world)
