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14/10/2011

What literature can do for us

Watch the first four minutes of the video below and answer the questions. You can then check your answers here. After the exercise you may want to see the whole video (20 mins in total) without subtitles or with English or Spanish subtitles.




Comprehension Questions:

a) Elif Shafak was born and lived in Turkey during her childhood. True or false?
b) In what ways did she feel her family was different from other families?
c) Which are the two models of women the writer grew up with?
d) The writer’s grandmother’s practices to heal patients’ warts included: an apple, words, rose thorns and ________________
e) As a witness to her grandmother’s healing practices, the writer …
1. believed what she saw
2. questioned the power of the healing
3. thought her grandmother was crazy
f) What was the lesson the writer learnt from her grandmother?
g) According to an Eastern tradition, it’s not good to stare at one’s own reflection for too long. What many women do, then, is…
1. not to buy mirrors
2. to cover mirrors with velvet
3. to turn the mirrors upside down
h) One of the dangers of this globalized world is…
i) What is the power of story-telling, according to Elif Shafak?

1 comment:

Cristina I. Sánchez Soto said...

a) Elif Shafak was born and lived in Turkey during her childhood. True or false?
False. She was born in Strasbourg and moved to Turkey when her parents separated.
b) In what ways did she feel her family was different from other families?
She was an only child; her mother a single mother. Families in Ankara were usually large and dominated by the father figure.
c) Which are the two models of women the writer grew up with?
Her mother (educated, modern, secular) and her grandmother (non-educated, traditional, spiritual, less rational).
d) The writer’s grandmother’s practices to heal patients’ warts included: an apple, words, rose thorns and ………………
Dark ink
e) As a witness to her grandmother’s healing practices, the writer …
1. believed what she saw
f) What was the lesson the writer learnt from her grandmother?
If you want to destroy something, you have to surround it with thick walls; it will dry up inside.
g) According to an Eastern tradition, it’s not good to stare at one’s own reflection for too long. What many women do, then, is…
2. to cover mirrors with velvet
h) One of the dangers of this globalized world is…
We tend to form clusters and attach stereotypes to them
i) What is the power of story-telling, according to Elif Shafak?
Stories cannot break frontiers, but they can make “holes” into the world of others, allowing us to get a glimpse of them, to understand them better.