Poverty in the USA

Most people all over the world think that the USA are a very rich country. If we look at the economic power of USA and the profit they make every year, it's a right fact. But unfortunately, this isn't the only thing. Perhaps the other side just exists because of this well-known site, but if so or so, it's reality: Poverty.

The US-American society is splitted into different groups, known as "social ranks", what's also normal in other countries like Germany. But in the USA live the richest and poorest. While the poeple on the one site live in the most modern houses with huge gardens, the people on the other site haven't got a house or just a normal flat. These people often live in the modern slums and ghettos of America. Districts where many people live on small room in rented flats are called 'ghettos'. 'Slums' are ghettos where the state of repair and social things is even badder then in normal ghettos, for example no sanitaries. The people in ghettos and slums haven't got much money. Lots of them live a wretched life in unemployment and because of this also a live with lots of worries.

But why had they to live like this? We can say that there are two reasons to have to live in poverty, so perhaps in a ghetto or even in a slum;

First, you are born "down" (you remember, I told you something about social ranks and the division between rich and poor). That means, that you grew up in a "broken" family with no or bad education, perhaps (and not rare) with violence, or you grew up in a poor family which hadn't the ways to help you with your education at school and couldn't support you.

Second, you are born "up", but slipped "down". That means, that you grew up in an intact family with good education, love and supporting, or you grew up in a family where you must get good marks and a good qualification, perhaps because it's good manners and others shouldn't think bad about your family. But then you lost your job, for example in an economic company and slipped down more and more. That's possible, because in the USA people get money because of their unemployment after employment for maximum 99 weeks, but normal just 26 weeks. After that time, they have to survive on their own. Now you think perhaps „Okay, I noticed. But they can go working again!“. The problem is that there are so many people and so less jobs. The state seems to help in this situation, offers training programm and arrange job interviews, but that can't solve the problem: There isn't enough work for all. And it's much worse. The problem is not only the actually lack of workplaces, in the future the situation will become even more drastic. That's because the workingplaces don't get extremely more, but the number of habitants of USA get bigger. The consequence: The unemployment and because of this also the poverty could become more.

Living in poverty is never nice, unimportant where. If you have slipped into poverty, you look back to your "old and good" life all the time and if you have lived in poverty since a long time, you look up to the people who have a better life than you. Poor people in the USA are depend on the alms of the state and organisations, like food pounds, income support* or soup kitchen. But what they get isn't much. So the mother Ined Morales with two children has to go to one of the "soup kitchens". Her job and naturally also her salary at "Nissan" has been reduced and she just get 283 Dollars social help from state every month. That's specially terrible, because she has a job and works (although her children are there!), but doesn't get enough help from the state to safe the life of her family (for me, „life“ means to have enough food, clothes and a living place).

(information about I. Morales from http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/fotostrecke-61043-3.html )

I hope I could bring this subject area closer to you and have awaked your interest.

Interesting pages

A ghetto in NY City: http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=300803

Short texts with photos (GERMAN): http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/fotostrecke-61043.html

California

California is the third biggest state of the USA, it's in the west and next to the pacific ocean, Oregon, Nevada and Arizona. The inoffical name of California is "the golden state", because ones, at about 1948 a lot of gold had been found in California so it became to start a real gold rush.
Today a lot of people are thinking of California as "the golden state" , which is like a pretty sunny state, with great sea and awesome beaches.
California had first been colonised by Spain, so there're a lot of Spanish-speaking people even today.
The govenor of the state is called Jerry Brown, he's from Democrats, before him it had been Arnold Schwarzenegger.
California is also known for some weird laws, for example in Los Angeles it's illegal to bath two kids in the same bathtub or to stop children while they're jumping over a puddle.

Some of the biggest and famous cities of the golden state are: San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego and the capital city Sacramento.
It's also rich of important and well-known sights and artists, there's the Golden Gate bridge of San Francisco, which can't be seen easily because of mist around the area. They painted it in this orange colour for being seen better if there's mist.
There's Hollywood, some great national parks like the Death-Valley-nationalpark, Chinatown, the beach boys, Metallica, Slayer, Exodus & the doors, and there's also a really famous serial, that is called californication and which's about a guy who's name is Hank Moody and who's living a kind of typical Los Angeles life.
What's also a typical thing, people are thinking of, is California while the hippie-times. San Francisco was the most important "hippie-city", where they demonstrated against all the prude and white-bread that had been spread out all over the world. There're also excisting some songs about that time.

Sarah & Sophie

United States of America (USA)



source: http://www.nationalflaggen.de/





The first English speaking country, we will deal with is the USA!



Task II for the 21st February

1) Name at least 7 countries which have English as their first or second offical language?

2) There are different reasons why is English is so widespread: Political reasons (globalisation), historical reasons (colonialism), linguistic reasons (reasons related to the language itself).. Choose one of these different reasons and have a closer look on them! Present your results in class and in the blog! You can work in groups of maximum 4 students!

3) Next week we will concentrate on one of these countries... With which country we shall start our "world tour"?

Task I for the 21st February

German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg faces fresh accusations of plagiarism in his doctoral thesis. According to a report due to be published in SPIEGEL on Monday, he used the services of the parliament's research department for his dissertation, and didn't mention the author in his footnotes.

German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, under pressure following allegations that he plagiarized parts of his doctoral thesis, also used the services of the German parliament's research department for the dissertation, SPIEGEL has learned.

In May 2004, when Guttenberg was a member of parliament for the conservative Christian Social Union party, Ulrich Tammler, a civil servant in the department with two PhDs of his own, wrote an analysis for Guttenberg headlined "The Question of the Link to Faith in the US Constitution and Supreme Court Rulings on the Separation of the Church and State."

Tammler completed the 10-page document on May 13, 2004 and passed it on to Guttenberg's parliamentary office under the reference number WF III - 100/04, according to an article due to be published in SPIEGEL on Monday.
Even though members of Bundestag, or lower house of parliament, are only supposed to use of the department for work relating to their parliamentary mandate, Guttenberg included almost the entire article in his dissertation, with only minor word changes.
Tammler himself isn't cited in any of Guttenberg's footnotes. Only the parliamentary research department itself is mentioned, a footnote 83.

The 60 staff of the department are meant to help lawmakers fulfil their duties as members of parliament. The department's guidelines state: "The German Bundestag reserves all rights to the work of the Research Department. Publication and distribution require the approval of the departmental management."

Guttenberg has rejected opposition calls for him to resign but said on Friday he would temporarily relinquish his "doctor" title pending an investigation into the matter by the University of Bayreuth, which awarded him the PhD.
The affair threatens the political future of the aristocratic minister, one of Germany's most popular politicians, who has been tipped as a possible future chancellor.

SPIEGEL

TASK: Copyright? Mr. Guttenberg seems to have ignored copyright rules... How can you be sure that you don't make a mistake like this? Name some copyright rules according text work, videos, pictures and sounds you can use eventually in our blog...

my opinion about blogs

In my opinion posting and reading other posts is a really good way to share some information or things you're interested in.
There are so many different opportunities of what to write.
What's also special and nice to see are photo-blogs, maybe also of young people who are talented in.
In school we had made a blog before a few months, it was exciting and pretty easy to work on, because it's no hard work for me, like sitting at home and writing about things you like, just in english. It's kind of fun and I really liked that as I do today with our blog here.
The mainly topic of our blog is also nice, it's like getting to know new cultures on a very different, amazing way, because you're so free in choosing what to write exactly and about which country, maybe you've also a favourite, you know a lot about.
Our blog is well-arranged but the colour is a thing I don't really like, it's just to dark, not friendly or happy, like it should be, because it's about different countries, all working together, mostly in a good way.
English on the internet is a good way of learning. Learning to write, learning to read and especially learning to understand.
All in all I'd say that blogs are definitely my favourite way of learning or of having lessons.
And if we're all working together, that'll be a very nice blog I think.

Task III for Monday, 14th February 2011

The 10 myths of Blogs and Blogging

Write down in your own words what each of the myths could mean:

1. Blogging isn't journalism:!

2. Blogs will replace journalism!

3. There is a blogosphere!

4. There is a first blogger!

5. Bloggers are narcissists!

6. Bloggers can't be trusted!

7. There are too many blogs!

8. Blogging is dead!

9. Blogging is trivial!

10. Most blogs stink!

Task II for Monday, 14th February 2011

"Think before you post!" Write your impressions about this video and it's message...

Task I for Monday, 14th February 2011

1) What's the main difference in news production (20th century and 21st century) ?
2) How are the writers of a blog called?
3) How is an article written?
4) Where do the older articles go?
5) How can people interact with the writer?
6) "Blogs are basically a two way .......... "
7) When a lot of bloggers link their blogs, it's called ......

My opinion about the blog

First of all I want to say, that the lay-out of our blog is very well done. I think, that the blog is a good idea, because we can improve our english and discuss certain things and exchange our opinions. With this blog, we can also learn a lot of things about the other countries. It's also cool, that we can work at home and it will be interesting to read the posts and comments of us and our classmates. The blog makes the lessons more interesting and i think we will have more fun with working in the Internet. Our Topic is very good, because it's important to know which country speaks english, because english is the universal language and later we will need some english knowledge. With this topic we also learn things like the culture, popular activities or how they life. Finally I want to say that it's cool, that we work also with videos, because it makes the lesson more varied. I hope we will have some funny lessons together and I hope we will work good together.

Nico

My opinion about the blog.

It is very cool to have english lessons at the PC because it makes the lessons more interesting for the students. The students can write their own impressions and opinions about some things int the world. When everyone comments the posts it will be very interesting to work with the blog. I think the lay-out of the blog is good but it could have some more colours in the background because it looks a little bit dark.
These blogs can also help us to improve our english speaking and writing knowledges. But we have to look for the copyrights on many videos and pictuers because when we not look for these things we will get wourse with the court.
I think the Theme "English around the world" is intersting and nice to work with. We can learn much about the lands we will study. I think we can also learn much things about the countrys like their culture or their activities.

I think all of us can enjoy to write on this blog because its very interesting to change opinions about some things. And I think we have to discuss many things in our lessons.

Made by Robin :D

My first Impression, (:

First of all I think the idea to do English on the computer is really good. You can improve your computer and internet knowledge, while you improve your knowledge of English. And the Blogs are also a very good idea, because at the moment everything runs off on the internet. What you just do. Where you are. What interests you have. Everything is published. And mostly while you write Blogs. But at my age I don’t know anybody, who writes Blogs. I find it good if we would be introduced in the whole thing.

I find the theme okay. However, we could also have taken really more interesting themes, because after some time the material goes out to us certainly on this theme. But to inform himself this theme is very good. You get to know so much about other countries.

The creation of the side also could be nicer a little bit and not so boringly and darkly. But otherwise the construction is okay.

See you later, your Elena.

My opinion about blogs

Hello,

I think it's a very good idea to write something about a special theme like English around the world. It can be very interesting and we can learn a lot of new things about the other countries. My first impression about this page was very good but now, I think the colors are a kind of dark. If everybody make comments and entrys at this blog it will be very interesting for ourself and for the other people, too :)
I think that blogging in English is good to improve our English and get to know the other cultures and so on. Hopefully, this blog will get more colors and comments, because it would looks more alive for everybody. By the way, in my opinion blogging makes a lot of fun, so I think, that the blog could be very great!

Everybody can lay out their own posts, so the pupils are more interested in the lessons. They can change their impressions and comment the impressions of the others. We don't know the next sub-headings so that make it more intersting for us!

All the pupils can learn how to lay out their own blogs and how to write a very good entry!
It's a very good idea.

Yours Madelaine

Our first Blog !

at first we want to say that we think that it´s a really cool thing that the homepage is made especially for the GSE. also we got to say some things about the layout of the homeage ! We hold that it´s all made to dark, and we´re missing colorful colours because when it´s like that everything makes a bad impression to us ! what we like are the medias and the informations we get. We find that altogether was a nice idea because we can get in contact with people from other countriers. It´s all very exiting to me an Sophie and we´re curious how our blog vibes to foreign people from all over world. we´re sure that our English will get better because of this course and we´re very glad about it. To write some topics and blogs in English will be fun for us and every single of our WPU-cours. We´re hope our lessons will be nice & funny.

Sophie & Vanessa.

My impression about blogging!

Hello! I think it´s a good idea to write interesting subthemes about some English-speaking-counties. I hope we will not get in trouble with copyright and have a good time together! The next time i will post some interesting texts about the countries and their favourite food :D. Maybe you´ll get interested in it and write me some comments. Copyright is a special theme and we have to talk about it. Some music-songs have copyright in Youtube when they are shown with their real video. I always take care when I am in the internet. For my posts I only use legal videos and pictures. I hope you all will enjoy my posts and have fun ;D
These blog can help students and other people to learn more about these lands we write about and their culture, buildings, etc...
Maybe the next time Elena and me take part in a exchange to USA. This bolg gives us more information about the country.
Very good idea!
Yours Romina

My Opinion about blogs

I think using blogs is a good way to exchange information and impressions on the Internet. Utilising blogs in school is a good idea to make lessons more interesting for pupils. Everyone uses the Internet so using the Internet in school is a good solution to make pupils be more happy in school. I already have experience with using blogs in school because our class used to use a blog for writing summaries and other information about our books we were reading meanwhile. I think that was more interesting than reading out these information in our lessons. The Internet is getting more and more common so surfing the Internet is getting standard. It's interesting to see what the others think about blogs.
Our blog has a good style, I think. It's very clear laid-out.
Our topic "English around the world" is quite interesting for me. Knowing where people speak english is important because english is a world language. I hope we will have some nice lessons with our blog and everyone finds a good topic to write about.

Maurizios and Kilians first impression

In spring 2010 our class 10G1 used a blog in english for a book summary and I (Maurizio) was quite impressed, this experience was very helpfully, it was fun and I'm happy, to reactive the work in english on a blog on the internet. I learned, that my english was getting better when I write constantly comments and blogs in english on the internet. So I'm glad, to start an interesting topic on an english blog for school. It will be fun and my english will get better.
We think to work with the computer could be useful for future, english is the language of the world an the internet is getting more and more important, to combine both things in school will be a good lesson for our lifes. The topic, English all over the world, is quite interesting and I think none of us will think, they picked the wrong course. The combination from english and internet is also helpful, because we can work at home and we could split our work in small parts. Our first impression of our new teacher is also positive, he seems to be a very friendly person. We'll enjoy to be active on this blog, and we will enjoy the work on the internet in english in school. nice weekend from Maurizio & Kilian

My opinion about our Blog

We find this site good. It is built well and has a stylish layout. The subject of English around the world, we find very helpful because we as student or as a reader through these various blog entries we can learn about very different countries.In addition, we find it good that you can interact with different people. We are curious how to work with the English blog and look forward to more blogs and other countries to experience. In addition, we are curious about what others think of our entries.

We hope that more interest for our blog. In addition, we learn through many different infortmation.

We find it not so good that other people can not comment on our entries and we thus obtain an opinion from different people can read these entries. We can find very important because one of the comments may be make Prositiv or negative views expressed by readers or by different people.

We hope we can learn more about the United States and find out more about the states. We look forward to working in this course.
Jana & Alina

Our first opinion

Hi guys,

as we joined the room this morning, we knew that we would work on an english blog but we didn't know that it seems to be so interesting; the layout looks very nice and clear and it's easy to make entries like posts and comments. We hope we better get to know the other users by posting new comments and by working with the same exercises.

The project, blogging in the internet, will be a chance for us to discover the possibilities of the internet, which are important for most of us or will be important for us in a few years.

It's a good idea to show us how to handle the internet and blogs like this. Everybody knows that our generation and the following has to learn how these technical things work. But if we already learn in school to get by on the internet, it will be easier for us to prepare ourself for the future. And we think a blog is a good way to came easily in contact with others around the world.

So we hope, we have a great time together and maybe some of us will built an own blog in our privat lives.

Written by Lea and Clara

My opinion about our Blog

First of all I want to say "hello". I think this blog is a good idea because we can talk together and discuss some things about English speaking countries. I think that we'll learn a lot about English speaking countries. This blog is a good idea because we can write our own opinion and add pictures and videos to our posts. Because of it's linked with the internet we can learn on our own and do comments about other posts... . Maybe some things or posts won't be so exciting for some of us but I think in the end everybody will have one or more favourite posts or comments about English speaking countries.
I will link some videos or pictures in our time in this subject because I think that it will be more interesting with some pictures and videos because you have some things to watch and not only to read. Sometimes it will be interesting videos and sometimes funny videos I hope. :-D
I have to say that English isn't my favourite but because of the reason we work together with the internet it will be an interesting subject. I hope that everyone will enjoy this subject and we'll learn a lot about English speaking countries.

Pasi

Opinion on the blog

In my opinion the blog already has a great layout, I really admire. Maybe background could have a little more colour in it, but a start has been made. When it comes occasionally to blogs, I always get a thougt about active Internetbloggers, who spend a lot of time and invest an encourage and effort to change the world or tell the world outside their thoughts and share topics. I can refer to a lot of blog-read experience after hundreds of hours on the Internet. Most of the blogs are only interesting for a small bunch of people but with every second it's easier to specify your commands to look for new blogs you want to read. Our blog with the interestic topic "English Around The World" will maybe be visited by a lot of people because the theme should refer to all english-speaking people. I hope to get a nice corner where I can write about the United States Of America, here it's an individual choice about who or what to write about, our classmates will have lot of topics they can work on. In this case, our blog is a great opportunity and chance to everyone's talent and natural gifts of letting their minds do intense work.