Four Teaching Guides for From This Wicked Patch of Dust (original) (raw)
Related papers
2015
This paper considers Sergio Troncoso's _From This Wicked Patch of Dust_ as a resistance novel. I argue that Troncoso relies on form, language, and indigenous myths and symbols to resist dominant American linguistic authority and popular imagination and to embrace his mestizo and Chicano heritage. Yet, he does not call for a complete return to old Mexico, which is itself plagued by problems of androcentrism. Instead, he calls for a Chicano identity that is defined by hybridity, ambiguity and fluidity.
In this article, we analyze the variety of English-Spanish code switching found in Chicano literature and we present the results of a translation exercise into Spanish of Sergio Troncoso’s novel From This Wicked Patch of Dust, in order to offer a useful tool or a compendium of strategies to help translators when dealing with the main difficulties inherent to this kind of texts. We introduce Chicano literature and code-switching as main expressions of Chicano culture, and we present a group of strategies used by authors who employ code switching in their writings, as well as the translation techniques used by other translators to solve these difficulties. Also, we provide specific examples of the challenges of translating code switching and the strategies applied to solve them, to create a target text that preserves the linguistic and cultural characteristics as well as the intentionality that the author seeks to express in the source text. We highlight the importance of the strategy of foreignization as a means of assuring a better reception of the target text by the Spanish-speaking reader. Keywords: code-switching, Chicano literature, literary translation, translation strategies
Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, 2014
This study adds to the growing research on the involvement of parents with a migration background in schools (Crozier & Reay, 2005; Dantas & Manyak, 2010; Kim, 2009; Levine- Rasky, 2009). We analyse conferences between teachers and parents in culturally diverse schools in the Netherlands at a decisive moment in the pupils’ school career. At the end of primary education, parents and teachers engage in a series of talks, in which they discuss the child’s transition to secondary education. These conferences have a formal character, because the teacher gives an official recommendation, the “school advice”. They are a source of concern and sometimes conflict, in particular when the teacher’s advice is for a lower track of secondary education than the parents had imagined or expected.
The act of reading and acquisition of values. A study of primary school children.
L’edition pour la jeunesse entre heritage et culture de masse, 2005
This research studies the acquisition of values from the reading of some texts by Roald Dalh. It looks into the way children percieve the values contained in different paragraphs from this author’s famous works. To carry it out, once the paragraph has been read, by means of interviews, questionaires and different activities children are asked to explain, according to them, the meaning of the text. It is also researched the children’s opinions about the characters’ behaviour and what they would do if they were those characters. The results from the research allow us to find out interesting questions on the acquisition of the values in a reading, it is checked that the acquisition of the values is close to the originall values reflected by the author, although it can be seen some differences and several nuances, mainly, due to children’s cultural background. The meaning that children get out of the values that are inside the texts is closely linked to their own believes and values that depend, in turn, on the culture in which children are.
Parent-children communication towards sexual relationship of youths in Hanoi
This paper explores the parents’ sexual opinion, parents’ supervision on children attitudes towards sexual behavior of young people in Hanoi, Vietnam. Using ethnographic and snowball sampling, data were colleted through in-deepth interview with 35 young people and 10 their parents. Parents’ replies highlighted the influence of culture and belief on their sexual values, which they wished to convey to their children. Althought direct communication about sex related topics was rare within these families. Parents used other strategies to pass on their values. The paper concludes that sexual values within families and the influence of culture need to be considered as a chanel to convey sexual values to children .
Social changes in indigenous Maya communities in Chiapas, Mexico toward increasing levels of formal education, commercialization, and urbanization are transforming traditional Maya developmental pathways toward adulthood. This mixed-methods study is based on interviews with a sample of 14 first-generation Maya university students who have also undergone a transition from a rural to an urban environment, either with their families or as part of their educational process. Greenfield’s theory of social change and human development suggests that formal education and urbanization shift developmental pathways in the direction of increasing values for individual autonomy. This study supports Greenfield’s theory: students perceive they are departing from traditional values by endorsing notions of choice, exploration, self-fulfillment, expanded norms for behavior, and gender equality. However, change is a gradual process of negotiating a pathway through old and new values. Qualitative analyses of interviews reveal how Maya university students are working to harmonize new values of independence, self-fulfillment, and gender equality with the traditional values of respect for elders and family obligation. The study concludes that formal education and urbanization are forces that create conditions for changes in developmental pathways toward adulthood consistent with the characteristics of emerging adulthood. This study adds to a growing body of literature documenting particular manifestations of emerging adulthood in developing countries around the world and shows how emerging adulthood may be a key developmental period connected to the socialization of individualistic values.