Reflect on the title: The Tell Tale Heart

A story with this title could be about someone coming clean from a crime. Perhaps their heart is beating fast due to the feeling of guilt; this sensation could convince them to come clean about their crime.

Interpreting it in a lighter way, it may be that someone is confessing their love to someone else, thus the ‘Tell Tale Heart’.

The Unreliable Gothic Narrarator

The narrarator is established in many ways as unreliable, such as when the narrarator says the old man’s heart was still beating even after they killed him. Edgar Allen Poe’s use of an unreliable narrarator is done to prove the character’s mental instability. Much of the unreliable storytelling from the narrarator actually comes from their denial of their own mental instability, since they are trying to prove to not just the reader, but also themself that they are not crazy. For example, they explained the murder of the old man was justified because of the man’s evil ‘vulture’ eye.

Research

• It is possible that the vulture eye serves as symbolism for the old man’s power over the narrarator; the old man could be a father figure or the narrarator could be their servant.
• published January 1843
• Inspired by a murder in 1830, Salem, Massachusetts, where a wealthy 83-year-old shipmaster and trader was murdered and it was suspected that his neice was the murderer.

The Setting

The setting in which the events take place is in the old man’s house. It is very dark considering that the old man was unable to see the narrarator hiding in his room. Evidence of this is the quote “his room was as black as pitch with the thick darkness”. It is mentioned that the bedroom is so dark because the old man keeps the shutters tightly shut through a fear of robbers. This can lead us to believe that the house is likely in a high-crime urban area.

Common elements of the Gothic setting in the novel

One theme of the gothic setting is elements of death/decay. One time this element is used in the novel is when describing the old man’s “vulture eye” since vultures, being scavengers, can symbolize forthcoming death.

Another gothic setting used in Edgar Allen Poe’s novel is madness. The main character in this poem is described to be in denial of their own insanity, spending most of the story trying to prove their sanity and ironically in doing so admit to commiting murder.

Furthermore, one element of a gothic setting used by Poe is mystery. This is shown by how the narrarator describes the murder of the old man with shocking detail, yet leaves the reader with many unanswered questions to ponder.

Hi, my name is Romili Townsend and today I will teach you how to teach anyone anything. Listen closely and by the end of this speech you should be able to teach people so well they’d think it was your job.

The first step is to engage your audience. You can do this by being passionate and radiating energy. This will tell your audience that you care a lot about what you are talking about and if you believe it is important then they will want to listen to find out why that is. When teaching it is important to speak in a loud yet clear voice, ensuring that you project your voice rather than shout. Once you have done this you need to give them a reason to trust your opinion. This is why you should list your achievements in the topic and back your points up with statistics and evidence. It’s even better if you can prove an opinion is backed up by an expert in the field. Using jargon, words exclusive to a specific field, will also make your audience think you know what you are talking about, but it is best to use it sparingly as you don’t want to confuse your audience as this will make them disengaged.

The next step is to choose a learning style. People use a variety of their senses to learn, but research has proven that one of the three main senses in each person is usually dominant over the others. This means that some people are visual learners and learn the most from reading how to do something or watching someone do that thing whereas others are better at listening to how it should be done, known as auditory learners. Finally, there are kinesthetic learners; these people learn best from hands-on experience and trying to do these things themselves. Deciding which of the learning styles to use should be easy if you know someone well, but if you don’t, or are teaching to a large group of people you should try to incorporate all three of these methods to ensure that no matter what sort of learning style someone prefers, you will cover it.

If you are struggling with teaching something you can try adapting your methods of teaching to suit the student. For example, if you were teaching computers to someone who knows a lot about cars then you could compare how the processor’s function is similar to an engine. Not only will connecting your speech with their interests make it easier for them to understand what you are explaining, but they will also become more interested in what you are teaching as you’ve related it to something they find interesting.

After you have taught a thing to someone and they have demonstrated that they can do it, it is important to briefly go over your points again and get them to perform the thing multiple times. You’ve probably heard the saying “practice makes perfect”. This principle has been traced back to more than 6,000 years ago for a good reason; the more we practice something the easier it is to remember. 

Those are my tips on how to teach anyone anything, and remember: The mediocre teacher tells, the great teacher inspires.

3 Modes of appeal:

• Logos
• Ethos
• Pathos

Logos: Logic. The use of statistic facts, figures or statistics. This bolsters your speech with the power of truth. Your audience are not able to dismiss it as opinion. Proves your knowledge, allows your audience to learn, backs up your demonstration.

Ethos: Authority/Ethics. By using an ethical appeal, you are trying to appeal to your author/speakers credibility. This can be especially powerful as by establishing authority allows the speaker to appear as an expert. This makes your audience more likely to listen to what you have to say. Audience engages, know what you’re doing, won’t believe you without it, jargon. Include successful people. Done through the use of specific language, word choices directly related to the topic or referring to notable figures within the area. This increases the power of your speech with the weight of importance. Your audience are encouraged to listen because you are shown to have authority on the subject.

Pathos: Emotional. Using specific language, “charged” words, tone and anecdotes to create an emotional response. This increases the power of your speech with the impact of emotional investment. Your audience are encouraged to listen because they connect with the content on a personal level. Empathy, more likely to believe, emotional connection equals relatability.

Structure

You need to have a logical progression to your speech. One point needs to flow into the next so that your audience is able to fully understand your demonstration.

Start with your introduction: how will you greet and engage your audience? What is your activity? Why did you decide to present this activity?

It is important to start off by grabbing your audiences attention immediately. You can do this many ways. Start by giving your audience a command, open with a joke, tell them a story or ask them a question.

Now you have outlined your topic it is time to get into the demonstration. What are the things your audience needs to know? Work through each step ensuring enough detail is given. How are you continuing to engage your audience?

You will need to have a demonstration of whatever it is you are discussing. After you have demonstrated your topic it is time to wrap up. You need to think about what you want to leave your audience with.

Think about: What are the points you need to reinforce? How will you make this memorable for your audience? Have you made it so the audience can do it themselves? How will you conclude and thank your audience?

Some techniques to think about using:

• Rhetorical questions
• Directly speaking to the audience
• Personal pronouns
• Figurative language
• Repetition
• Humour
• Analogy

Memory

One method of remembering your speech is to write your speech out in full and practice it a few times. Go back to your script and delete the last sentence/few words of each perspective and practice again. Continue to steadily delete parts of your speech until you are only left with the first few words. Now you are left with a list of bullet points which serve to prompt your speech moving forward.

Another powerful and effective strategy is to just practice, practice, practice. Doing the same speech over and over again will help push the speech into your long-term memory.

You can try recording yourself so that you can listen back to your speech to help connect it to another sense. Give your script to another person and ask them to interrupt you if you struggle to find your words.

Another more obscure technique is to connect information to location. When you are talking about a specific piece of information, connect it to a specific chair in the room. Now every time you look at that chair you will remember that piece of info.

Techniques

Eye contact: Easiest to understand but one of the hardest to get comfortable with. Spread the eye contact around, don’t just focus on 1 or 2 people.

Posture: This refers to how you hold yourself. Do stand confidently on both feet and stand up straight and look up. Don’t look at the ground, hold your hands in front of yourself or fold your arms. Don’t shuffle back and forth on your feet.

Voice Control: This is all about how clearly you speak. Practicing tongue twisters can help. There is a massive difference between shouting and projecting! The secret to projection is in the breath. The more breath you have the louder you can project.

Describe a key relationship between two or more characters or individuals in the text. 

Explain how this relationship helped you to understand at least one of these characters or individuals.  

• Simile – A figure of speech involving the comparison of one thing with another thing of a different kind, used to make a description ore emphatic or vivd (e.g. as brave as a lion).
• Metaphor – a figure of speech in which a word or phase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable.
• Alliteration – the occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words.
• Assonance – resemblance of sound between syllables of nearby words, arising particularly from the rhyming of two or more stressed vowels, but not consonants, but also from the use of identical consonants with different vowels.
• Personification – applying human characteristics to something non-human.
• Onomatopoeia – a word which imitates its actual sound. E.g. bang, zap, splash.
• Hyperbole – an exaggerated statement not meant to be taken literally. E.g. “I’m so hungry I could eat a horse.”
• Imagery – visually descriptive or figurative language, especially in a literary work.
• Personal Pronouns –
• Statement –
• Irony –
• Euphemism –
• Cliché –
• Jargon – special words or expressions used by a profession or group that are difficult for others to understand.
• Proverb – a short, well-known pithy saying, stating a general truth or piece of advice. “Early to bed and early to rise.”
• Pseudonym – A fictitious name, commonly used by an author.
• Rhetorical Question – A question asked to make a point rather than ask a question. The answer is generally already known.
• Rhyme
• Tautology – the saying of the same thing twice over in different words, generally considered to be a fault of style. “The two twins.”
• Satire – the use of comedy, humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people’s stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.
• Sarcasm – The use of irony to mock something.
• Pun – A joke exploiting the different possible meanings of a word or the fact that there are words which sound alike but have different meanings.
• Oxymoron – Two contradictory terms appearing in conjunction. “Living death”, “Act naturally”.
• Neologism – A newly coined word or expression.
• Mnemonic – A system such as a pattern of letters, ideas, or associations which assists in remembering something.
• Juxtaposition –
• Slang –
• Idiom –

In the twelve years I’d served aboard this ship, not once did I expect to be tasked with the objective that I’d been given. The ship’s oxygen supply was limited, everyone knew that, but frequent shipments of oxygen from the federation’s capital kept us alive. Everything changed when the last shipment was seized by rogue vessels.

I knew what sacrifices must be necessary to get us by while the next shipment was on its way. I suppose I had no one else to blame but myself for volunteering, but I had determined that volunteering was the only way I myself would survive this purge. The captain himself supplied me with a list of all the passengers, in order of their value to the wellbeing and sustainability of the ship, determined by computer algorithms. One look showed me that this data was heavily biased in favour of upper class members of the ship, but I dared not to digress against the plan of my superiors. One by one was I supposed to disable life support to the quarters of each passenger until only the valuable members of the ship were sustained, and the crew capacity had decreased to a quantity at which our current oxygen supply would last us until the next shipment.

The terminal booted almost instantaneously and a second later I had entered in the passcode to be greeted with a welcome screen. My heart pounded in my chest as I typed in the command to display the list of passengers, a task which took forever to do given the sudden clumsiness of my hands. My heart skipped a beat when I pressed the enter key. The screen flashed as it showed the list of passengers. With a sigh, I ran my fingers through my hair and considered what options I had. If any. Thud, thud, thud sounded the keys as my digits squabbled onto each one. The little sips of my drink had turned into large gulps as I longed for the spirits to numb my sorrows. It had some affect, I guess, as the world turned to a blur around me and my eyes grew heavy.

I had been dormant when the sound of a rock bouncing of the ship’s shield had brought me out of my half-conscious state and back into the world. A empty bottle lay on the floor, what content of it remained poured out over the floor. As I pieced together my surroundings, the blueish hue of the display dragged my attention back to the task at hand. With a jittery mouse I sorted by the execute tag and ticked the box to select all items on the list. The computer froze up for a second as thousands upon thousands of names were selected. The swirling of the room resumed, this time from the millions butterflies flying around in my stomach rather than the liquor. Each key took all my effort to press down as I typed in the command to disable the supply of oxygen to the sleeping pods. My heart beat with the speed of a thousand horses, echoing through my chest each time. I stared at the clock for what seemed like an eternity; every second felt like an hour as they passed. I’d had enough of putting it off. I struck the enter key and left the room. As I walked away I worried about greater things than the restlessness which would follow.

I’d had enough of this. The kids, Cheryl, and that father of mine always getting in the way to try and “help” us. I waited until the kids were asleep before opening the car door and sitting down in the driver’s seat. I twisted the key a couple times before the old piece of shit finally started and backed out of the driveway. I needed to get away from this. I drove to the nearest liquor store and bought the cheapest bottle I could get fucked up on before entering the neighbouring ammunitions store.

Write without using the letter r.

The automobiles lined up in position. Kyle adjusted the seeing glass to give himself a view of the vehicles behind him. If the event went how he expected it to then he’d be spending most of his time watching the tailing vehicles collecting dust.

Write without using the letter e.

Car go to start. Cars broom broom and start going fast. Carl turns oval and car turns too. Carls wins.

Rewrite the sentence in one tense.

“Nothing there!” said Peter, and they all trooped out again – all except Lucy. She stayed behind because she thought it would be worth while to try the door of the wardrobe, even though she felt almost sure that it would be locked. To her surprise, it opened quite easily, and two moth-balls dropped out

The boy’s vision blurred from the salty droplets which filled up his eyes and ran down his face. His shoulders routinely raised and lowered with each sniffle.

The dog’s tail shot back and forth as it leaped around the room, incapable of containing its own excitement.

Their warm breath fogged the air as the cold wind stung their faces. As they shivered, the sun beamed down on the frosted over lake, sending beams of light reflecting into their faces.

It had a perfectly round door like a porthole, painted green, with a shiny yellow brass knob in the exact middle. The door opened on to a tube-shaped hall like a tunnel: a very comfortable tunnel without smoke, with panelled walls, and floors tiled and carpeted, provided with polished chairs, and lots and lots of pegs for hats and coats- the hobbit was fond of visitors. The tunnel wound on and on, going fairly but not quiet straight into the side of the hill- The Hill, as all the people for many miles round called it- and many little round toors opened out of it, first on one side and then on another. No going upstairs for the hobbit: bedrooms, bathrooms, cellars, pantries (lots of these), wardrobes (he had whole rooms devoted to clothes), kitchens, dining-rooms, all were on the same floor, and indeed on the same passage. The best rooms were all on the left-hand side (going in), for these were the only ones to have windows, deep-set round windows looking over his garden, and meadows beyond, sloping down to the river.

On top of the blue couch, the girl was turning the page of a book. Scattered across the floor, lay the numerous books.