First Written Exam – “Leitura e Produção Escrita II”

Date: December 7 (Tuesday)

Student’s name: Javier Alejandro Pedroso Domech
Professor: Rogério de Souza Sergio Ferreira
Grade: _______________________

I- Daniel Defoe is well known for his famous story of Robinson Crusoe. In this novel,
regarding Crusoe relationship with Friday, yes, he is a survivor, trying to stay alive,
he also saved an Indian cannibal from other savages, but he has a spirit of
domination and colonization, and the reason a say this is because he started teaching
his ‘‘Indian friend’’ Friday English and also turned him into Christian, banishing him
of his language and religion beliefs. Those actions are typical of a colonizer. While he
was there, he needed protection to prevent any attack of animals, so for the night, he
climbed a tree for a good nap. He realized that he was on an island surrounded by
water and no place to go, then manages to make himself a shelter for the night by
using the chests and boards he brought from the ship. Some of the information I
used was from the book “Selections”, by Clare West available in Google Classroom
and another part from ‘’Aventuras de Robinson Crusoé’’, translation to French.

II- The weirdest place that took my eye is the Die Rakotzbrück – The Nature’s Own
Ring located in Germany. The reason why a choose this place is actually because I
have a German friend that has been telling me fascinating stories about German
places. This bridge is truly a beautiful place to go and visit. I am a person of nature,
that's why the environment just caught me and made me start imagining things, like
a small wedding in a boat, under the bridge and its reflection becoming a ring. It
could be a little bit weird because of the name bridge ‘‘the Devils Bridge’’, but that
would be for sure something to talk about. I hope someday a could visit this
wonderful rare place and get married because now it has become my dream.

III- The English Language has a rich vocabulary. According to Google, the original
Oxford dictionary has over 400.000 words and Cambridge over 140.000 phrases and
meaning, almost a word for everything, for every type of situation. For instance,
English has a word to describe the state of being a woman: muliebrity, an example
extracted from Bill Bryson’s book Mother Tongue: the story of the English Language.
Part of the reason behind all this is its history, and how it has been in constant
transition since the first invasion to Shakespeare’s writing, to now. Time has been
responsible for the creation and adoption of many words used in English. Words
from German like ‘’kindergarten’’, ‘’uber’’ and many others, in French we use words
like ‘’aviation’’, ‘’champagne’’ and ‘’cliché’’, and in Latin, words like ‘’agenda’’ and
‘’debilitate’’ that are incorporated into the everyday vocabulary. All examples of
words given are from blog.busuu.com. Based on Bill Bryson’s book, English is also a
polysemic language, the word ''sound'', for instance, could mean an audible noise or a
state of healthiness. A capacity that many other languages can’t do, to distinguish
similar words like ‘‘house’’ from ‘‘home’’, ‘‘masterful’’ from ‘‘masterly’’ etcetera. It has
as well plenty of synonyms with the same meaning of almost every word existing.
Ghost words, for example, are words that were created by error rather than by
linguistic transmissions, like “dord”, “button-hole”, “sweetheart” and so much more.
So, by announcing several examples there is no doubt that English is probably the
richest vocabulary among other languages.

IV- The Grand Old History of the English Language

Old English, how it is referred to, was brought into England by several invasions and
a culturalization process that came with it. The language evolutions begin with the
settlement of the Germania tribes and afterward, it goes through a period of
transition with the first one being the invasion of the Danish and Norwegian Vikings,
called Old Norse. They were introduced to the language around 2000 words. Words
like ‘’happy’’ and ‘’their’’, the term ‘’Thursday’’ for example, come from the word
‘’Thor’’, a name that they used to identify one of their gods. The following period is
what we call now middle English, which influenced the English language was the
Norman-French invasion. In this time, we see over 7000 French words in English
culture and still used nowadays. We see words like ‘’army’’ and ‘’logic’’. Last but not
least, we have the era that we call modern English. By that time until now the
presence of several English writers, have incorporated Latin terms from different
classic authors into their work which helped the English language gain more
vocabulary. William Shakespeare, considered, in my opinion, one of the greatest
writers who ever lived, contributed to the development of the English language by
introducing words while writing. Words like ‘’assassination’’, ‘’cold-blooded’’
etcetera. Other historical moments that made the English Language evolve even
more were the cultural revolutions that were happening back then. For example, the
vowel shift allowed a better pronunciation, the creation of phrases like ''a broken
heart'' or '' by the skin of your teeth'' for the Kings James Bible translation, are still
implemented in our lives, and I can't forget the exchange of words between countries,
it is the case of Albania language that has Latin, Greek, Serbian terms. The examples
given above, are taken from a video we watched in a class by Cloud English and the
reading attached to our classroom app, ‘’Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue_ The
Untold Story of English’’.

V- I do not emphasize with him at all, Robert’s point of view proves once again he
doesn’t know how to handle rejection. A convincing example of that is when he says:
‘’Margot didn’t reply. Robert’s heartbreak soured into rage. What a rude little bitch
not even having the decency to explain herself’’. In fact, from his standpoint, I have
noticed things that justify his behavior. For instance, he has been influenced by
watching porn and that is the reason why he adopted a crazy attitude while they were
having sex. ‘’He’d been watching loads of porn and felt inspired by it. "Take that
thing off," he said powerfully, pointing at her bra’’. At 34 years old, embracing a
misconception about how to treat a woman demonstrates that he’s more childish and
immature than Margot. But that’s not it, the part where he was imagining Margot
and another guy just blood my mind. This is actually what he thought and do: ‘’He
imagined them together, Margot naked and moaning like she had with him. He felt
turned on and he felt angry. Should he masturbate or text her back? He did both. It
felt good. He was better than her’’. The fact that he felt turned on and masturbate
about that, shows how twisted his mind is.