Richard III., once more

Let's be fair ... let's give Richard a chance to say how it really was:

William Shakespeare, Sonnet 18/Writing task

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? (Sonnet 18)
by William Shakespeare
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date. Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimmed; And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed; But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st, Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade, When in eternal lines to Time thou grow'st. So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. Task: Write a text beginning with "Shall I compare thee to ...", between six and twenty lines. It can be either a traditional poem or a modern one, it may even be prose. It can be a love poem, but doesn't have to be. If you are looking for a paraphrase of the sonnet in order to understand it better, you can look here: http://www.shakespeare-online.com/sonnets/18detail.html

Cartoons

One of the tasks encountered in both 'Schulaufgaben' and the 'Abitur' exam is the analysis of a cartoon.

In order to get some practise, it is advisable to look at a couple of cartoons and describe and interpret them. You can find innumerable examples at Daryl Cagle's website. Cagle, a cartoonist himself, set up this very useful site that covers professional cartoons from newspapers all over the world, with special emphasis on US affairs and topics.

Daryl Cagle's Professional Cartoonists Index