Thelenberg 2012 13

Homework

If you had the money to buy a useful, efficient robot ...

• what kind of robot would you buy?
• what should it be able to do?
• what would be its most important feature?

Explain your decision!

Basic Skills & Information

• Information on homework and oral grades
• Reading and Marking technique - SQ3R Method A useful method to read, mark and annotate texts.
• Working with Cartoons
• A good speech/speaker ...
• Answering questions on the text
• Starting a paragraph
• Starting an Essay/Comment
• Writing an interview
• Mediation
• Characterization
• Building an Argument

Brave New World

Brave New World is a separate page now! Open here!

US Foreign Policy and Relations to Europe

Typically American? A collection of Stereotypes?

Typical Americans are .... / Typically, in America you find ... / In America "they" believe in ...

celebrate Halloween and Thanksgiving (huge turkey) in a big way boys play basketball or football; girls are cheerleaders eat tons of fast food ⇒ obese OR they are very sporty love beauty contests ⇒ plastic surgery all own a gun streets are straight for miles are either conservative and patriotic or crazy lots of casinos and gambling huge shopping malls and outlets king size beds big houses with big front-lawns basketball-basket in every front-yard newspaper boys throw papers in the garden drive broken/huge cars waste a lot of energy (big cars, air conditioning) don`t protect nature/environment, e.g. use one-way plates and cuttlery American Dream: from dishwasher to millionaire, you can do it if you really want lots of poor/homeless people many people are not properly insured/ no social security often have to work two or more jobs to survive love the Oktoberfest in Munich always drink alcohol out of big mugs go to church regularly are not allowed to have sex before marriage all wanna be famous wear funny costumes at highschool graduation live in big cities/skyscrapers listen to hiphop or country music feel like/would like to be/behave like cowboys in saloons/on prairie gangs + much crime in big cities Americans are only interested in America

Cartoons on US Cultural Hgemony / Americanization

• Cartoon on Americanization
• Cartoon of President George W. Bush as Cowboy
• Working with Cartoons
• Notes on Cartoon!

Text on US Cultural Hegemony

1. What reasons for anti American feelings in Europe does the text give?

• American culture ousts European culture
• German or other European languages are being flooded with English terms and expressions
• Sense of national identity severely disturbed
• Europeans are afraid of loosing their cultural autonomy
• European culture replaced by American culture
• Vietnam-war
• Guantanamo Bay and Abu-Ghraib
• Americans ignore and don't know about European culture
• American worldview is centered on America
• Americans expect everyone to think and speak American
• Americanization as cultural imperialism

2. Why has Germany been especially quick at embracing American culture?

• America's help after WWII (→ Marshall Plan) ==> Germans felt grateful
• German culture discredited by Nazis, German from "Dichter und Denker" to "Richter und Henker"
• Germans looked for new cultural model → culture of the victoriuos, democratic and successful USA
• Germans were not allowed to have and learned to feel ashamed of patriotic feelings → easy to take over Western/US mass culture
• US culture meant luxury, affluence, freedom, individualism

The USA and Europe - increasingly difficult relations?

The results of your work on the two texts on the relations between the USA and Europe:

Vocabulary

Text: Brand Aid

• Cf. Greenline p. 60/61
• Click several times to enlarge!

The Wars of the USA in the 20th and 21st century

• Cf. worksheet on Wars
• Your summaries of the wars:

Vocabulary

The Home Front: Exorcising an old Demon

• Cf. workshhet, or partly here (p. 267/268):
• Comparison Vietnam War and Gulf War:

Science and Technology

Listening Test

• Listening Test: President Obama on USA and Technology