Book Review 1 : If You Could See Me Now by Cecelia Ahern

Hey there  peeps!

This time around, I am going to do some book reviews on what I've read before. The novel that I am going to review today is IF YOU COULD SEE ME NOW which is written by Cecelia Ahern. She is one of my favourite writers. Here the story goes,

Trapped in a stifling, small town in Ireland, Elizabeth Egan had always been known as a serious woman, never laughing at jokes or taking joys from the simplest pleasure of life. This is due to having been abandoned by her free-spirited mother when she was young and was forced to grow up quickly to take care of her sister, Saoirse.

Taking advantage of Elizabeth's sense of responsibility, Saoirse has led life with abandonment, and when she gives birth to a son, Luke, she leaves Elizabeth to take care of him.

At the age of six, Luke claims to have a friend named Ivan whom Elizabeth cannot see. Though at first she is exasperated with this imaginary friend, she starts playing along with Luke when she learns that imaginary friends will only last about 3 months.

Though invisible to most, Ivan is real. Only Luke and Saoirse can see him, though he comes to realise that Elizabeth can feel his presence. Knowing that only people who are in real need of a friend are able to see him, he follows Elizabeth around. When, suddenly, she is able to see him, Ivan is delighted, but disappointed just as quickly when she thinks him to be the father of one of Luke's friends. A friendship which soon turns into romance blossoms between them.

Elizabeth meets Benjamin at work, and he asks her to dinner, but Ivan prevents her from going by inviting her out instead. Ivan's boss, Opal, sees his love for Elizabeth and tells him her own sad tale. She tells him that however much he wishes to be with Elizabeth a time will come when she will no longer be able to see him and will eventually age while he would remain young. However, Ivan is too much in love with Elizabeth and refuses to listen. To convince him, Opal takes him to see her own love, who has become an 80 year old man while Opal has remained young.

One day, when Elizabeth is hosting a party, she is no longer able to see Ivan and he realises it is time to move on to a new friend. Ivan visits Elizabeth in a dream telling her that he was glad he met her and etc. A few days later, Elizabeth realizes that he was Luke's 'imaginary' friend.They go their separate ways, and not only Elizabeth but Ivan as well are changed by the experience. Elizabeth is more relaxed and Ivan admits that Elizabeth has been by far his favorite friend.

A little bit about LINGUISTICS

Basically, linguistics is the study of word. I am going to focus on the lexical change in linguistics. Lexical change is a change in meaning or use of a word. It also causes changes in our lexicon.  Changes in lexical categories may change the function of a word.There are many types of lexical change. There are addition of new words, borrowings or loan words, loss of words and semantic change. In addition of words, there are seven different ways of adding the words such as, deriving words from names known as eponyms, blends, back-formations, acronyms, abbreviations or clippings, compounding and new bound morphemes. Next type of lexical change is borrowings or loan words. It can be directly or indirectly. When occurs directly, the borrowed item is native word in the language from which it is borrowed. As an example, the word “feast”, which is directly borrowed from French and can be traced back to Latin as “ festum”. On the other hand, when indirectly, example is the word “algebra”. In addition, loss of words also causes the lexical change. 

A word is lost through inattention. Some examples of words are, “two bits” which means twenty-five cents today. This kind of words are no longer used by younger generation nowadays. Technological change also contribute to the loss of words. For example, acutiator once meant sharpener of weapon. Lastly is the semantic change. It can occur by three ways that are by broadening, by narrowing and by meaning shifts. In broadening, the meaning of word becomes more general or inclusive than its historically earlier form.  For example, “holiday” which means any day we free from works or school. “Holiday” is originally from “holy day” which means a day of religious significance. The meaning of “holy day” is broadened to holiday. In narrowing, the meaning of word becomes less general or inclusive than its historically earlier meaning. As an example, hound once means sofa and small writing desk. But today, hound only meaning sofa. The meaning has been narrowed to sofa only. In meaning shifts, the word loses its former meaning and takes on new, but often related meaning. For example, silly was used to mean happy in Old English, in Middle English it meant naïve and now in Modern English it mean foolish.

How To Read Well?

How to Read Well: Four General Steps

1.    Concentrate As You Read

-          Improve your concentration by:

i)              read in a place where you can be quiet and alone

ii)            sit in an upright position

iii)          consider using your index finger (or a pen) as a pacer

2.    Skim Material Before You Read It

-     Spend two minutes rapidly surveying a selection, looking for important points and skipping secondary material

-          How to skim?

i)              reading the overview

ii)            study the title of selection

iii)          form a basic question (or questions) out of the title

iv)       read the first two or three paragraphs and last two or three paragraphs in the selection

v)            look quickly at the rest of selection for other clues to important points

3.    Read The Selection Through With A Pen Nearby

-          Aim to understand  as much as you can the first time through

-          Circle words you don’t understand

-          Put question marks in the margin next to passages that are unclear and that you will want to reread

4.    Work With The Material

-          Go back and reread passages that were not clear

-          Look up meanings of words that block your understanding

-          Prepare short outline of the selection by answering following question:

i)              What is the main idea?

ii)             What key points support the main idea?

iii)            What seem to be other important points in the selection?

Reference:  John Langan. (2002). English Skills with Readings (Fifth Edition): Seventeen Reading Selection, New York: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc

Reading Strategies

1.    Before Reading

-          Jackdaws

-          Related readings

-          Other media and activities

-          Story mapping

-          Role playing

2.    During Reading

-          Directed reading-thinking activity (DR-TA)

-          Think-Pair-Share

-          Character sketches

-          Linguistic Roulette

-          Imagery

3.    After Reading

-          Group mapping activity

-          Sketch to Stretch

-          (Write and Share)²

-          Agree or Disagree? Why?

-          Bleich’s Heuristic

-          Compare-and-Contrast Charts

Reference: Timothy Rasinski and Nancy Padak. (2000). Effective Reading Strategies: Teaching Children Who Find Reading Difficult (Second Edition), United States of America   Prentice-Hall, Inc

to why this is created

It's been quite a while since my obsession into the world of so-called fantasy of mine a.k.a BLOGGING world. Yeah.I am a blogger, indeed. Not a "hardcore" blogger i would say. I am simply write everything that comes to my mind. It's like when i have story, voila! I blogged. (is this word even existing? =p) wanna take a sneak peek into my so-called "diary" ? nah, just drop by for a while peeps..here it is sheilajulmohamad.blogspot.com

so whatca thinkin of my blog? enough of the bla bla bla about my main blog. To why this is created? "This" is refer to THE RANDOM MUSINGS OF MINE, dear fellow readers. Brief introduction of me. I am Sheila. A student, taking TESL, Teaching English As A Second Language. Brief, is it? And the answer to why this is created? I want to share all my lessons & everything that I have learned throughout this learning process here, at UPSI. I do hope this little thing I called, THE RANDOM MUSINGS OF MINE might help some of readers out there, I really hope, I do hope.