Friday 4 December 2020

English language teaching assignment

🌸Name: Payal chudasama 

🌸Sem: 3

🌸Batch:  2019-20

🌸Roll no: 16 

🌸Submitted by: smt.Gardi Department of English MKBU 

🌸Paper  name :English  language teaching - 1 (ELT)

🌸Course: M.A. English 

🌸 Topic : Difference between  CLT and ALM 

🌸 Enrollment no: 2o69108420200005

🌸 Email I'd: chudasmapayal1997@gmail.com 



☆ Introduction  about  CLT  :


Communicative Language Teaching(CLT) methodologies does not provide an specific method or theory of language teaching, but rather an approach that prioritizes communication. Historically, those methodologies come from alternative methods and approaches from the 1970s and 80s; methods such as the Total Physical Response (TPR), Natural Approach, Silent Way and Suggestopedia contributed for the field of language teaching, incorporated in other methods.


CLT primary's goal is for learners to develop communicative competence, which, according to Brandl (2008), is the “ability to interpret and enact appropriate social behaviors, and it requires the active involvement of the learner in the production of the target language”. It also 


☆involves the following abilities : 


  1. linguistic competence (knowledge of grammar and vocabulary)

  2. sociolinguistic competence (ability to say the appropriate thing in a social situation)

  3. discourse competence (ability to start, enter, contribute to, or end a conversation)

  4. strategic competence (ability to communicate effectively and repair problems in communication)



CLT methodologies have in common the fact that they are based on activities that require exchanging information and solving problems, communication activities with “real-world” situations, and by taking into account the learner’s background, needs and goals.


Doughty and Long (2003) define a series of principles that can be used as a guideline for implementing CLT.


  • Using tasks as organizational principles has to do with the focus on meaning by giving learners “a purpose to use grammar in a meaning context” (p. 8). A task can be defined as an activity in class that involves learners interaction with language and focuses on meaning rather than form.


  • Promoting learning by doing refers to how new knowledge can be better retained in long-term memory if it is tied to world events and activities.



  • Input needs to be rich, since the learner needs to be exposed to the language from various sources to develop native-like language skills. That input, however, must be comprehensible to the students.


  • Input needs to be meaningful, comprehensible and elaborated. The assimilation of new knowledge heavily depends on how easily it can be attached to already existing knowledge.


  • Promoting cooperative and collaborative learning by pairing or grouping students together so that they can work cooperatively on a task. This practice promotes communicative interaction in the target language.



  • A focus on form approach emphasizes a form-meaning connection, teaching grammar through communicative contexts.



  • Providing error corrective feedback is important for the learner, but it is a long term process. It depends not only on how the teacher provides the feedbacks, but also on individual learner factors.




  • Finally, recognizing and respecting affective factors of learning is essential for teachers to understand and provide learners with an environment where they can feel motivated.




The fact that CLT does not provide a specific method or curriculum allows it for the inclusion of strategies from other theories and adapt them to its goals. It seems to me that having an eclectic approach to language teaching, especially if focused on real-life situations, is beneficial for both the teacher and the student, since it can also be adapted to different kinds of learners. However, as Brandl (2008) points out, the quality of the teaching also depends on the quality of the material, and the teacher needs to be able to identify what better suits their classroom.



☆What are the advantages and disadvantages of CLT? :


ADVANTAGES


  • Communicative approach is much more pupil-orientated, because it is based on pupils’ needs and interests.




  • Communicative approach seeks to personalise and localise language and adapt it to interests of pupils. Meaningful language is always more easily retained by learners.



  • Seeks to use authentic resources. And that is more interesting and motivating for children.



  • Children acquire grammar rules as a necessity to speak so is more proficient and efficient.



☆DISADVANTAGES


  • It pays insufficient attention to the context in which teaching and learning take place 



  • The Communicative Approach often seems to be interpreted as: “if the teacher understands the student we have good .



  • communication” but native speakers of the target language can have great difficulty understanding students.


  • Another disadvantage is that the CLT approach focuses on fluency but not accuracy. The approach does not focus on error reduction but instead creates a situation where learners are left using their own devices to solve their communication problems. Thus they may produce incoherent, grammatically incorrect sentences.


☆Teachers’ Role in the Communicative Language teaching: 




The observation checklist was used to seek information on the teacher roles. There are roles spelt out for a teacher attempting to use the CLT approach in teaching listening and speaking. The major role of the teacher in a CLT classroom is to be a facilitator. In the study, the author sought to find out if in the Lugari classrooms the teachers acted as facilitators. This was on the assumption that the listening and speaking skills were taught using the CLT approach. The study, therefore, sought to establish whether the position of the teacher was at the centre or periphery. It was only in lesson 13 where there was an attempt towards a totally learner-centred activity. The teacher in this class had given group work out of class. The learners then came in to give their reports. Two groups reported their findings orally. The teacher introduced the lesson and asked the first speaker to take the floor.



☆  About  ALM  :


Around 1950s and 60s a new language teaching method became famous, it was the Audio-lingual method (ALM). This method was based on behaviorism, a theory originated in psychology. Brandl(2008, p.3) explains the ALM as follows:The underlying assumption of this philosophy was that, as Rivers (1964) put it, foreign language learning is basically a mechanical process of habit formation and automatization. In practice, this meant students were presented with language patterns and dialogues, which they had to mimic and memorize. Language practice by and large consisted of repetition of language patterns and drill exercises. Drill types included substitution drills, variation drills, translation drills, and response drills.


☆ Difference between  CLT  and ALM: 

The audio lingual method, or the Army method, or also the New key, is the mode of language instruction based on behaviourist ideology, which professes that certain traits of living things could be trained through a system of reinforcement. The instructor would present the correct model of a sentence and the students would have to repeat it. The teacher would then continue by presenting new words for the students to sample in the same structure. There is no explicit grammar instruction everything is simply memorized in form. The idea is for the students to practice the particular construction untill they can use it spontaneously. In this manner, the lessons are built on static drills in which the students have little or no control on their own output.



The communicative language teaching is am approach to the teaching of second and foreign languages that emphasizes communication or interaction as both the means and the ultimate goal of learning a language. The clt was the product of educators and linguists who had grown dissatisfied with earlier Grammer Translation and Audio Lingual Methods, where students were nott learning enough realistic, socially necessary language. Therefore they became interested in the development of communicative style teaching in the 1970s, focussing on authentic language use and classroom exchanges where students engaged in real communication with one another. The goal of clt is of creating communicative competence in the learners. It makes use of real life situations.



  CLT : (Communicative Language Teaching(

ALM:(Audio-lingual Method)

  • Meaning is more important than anything else.

  • Structure and form are more important than meaning

  • Dialogues are not normally memorized.

  • Prompt students to memorize structure-based dialogues.

    • Contextualization is required.

  • Contextualizing is not necessary.

    • Language learning is learning to communicate

  • Language learning is based on learning structures.

    • Mistakes are acceptable, communication has priority.

  • Mistakes must be corrected right on spot.

    • Comprehensible pronunciation is accepted.

  • Native-like pronunciation is the goal.

    • The use of the source language is permitted.

    Accuracy is the goal    Fluency (communication) is the goal.

    • The teacher controls the students.    The teacher helps the students.

  • Just the target language is allowed.

    • Accuracy is the goalFluency (communication) is the goal.


    • Accuracy is the goal.

    • The teacher controls the students.    The teacher helps the students.

  • The teacher controls the students.



  • The CLT was the product of educators and linguists who had grown dissatisfied with earlier Grammar Translation and Audio Lingual Methods, where students were not learning enough realistic, socially necessary language. ... Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) The Audio Lingual Method (ALM) Meaning is paramount.



    ☆ Conclusion:



    The audio lingual method, or the Army method, or also the New key, is the mode of language instruction based on behaviourist ideology .The communicative language teaching is am approach to the teaching of second and foreign languages that emphasizes communication or interaction as both the means and the ultimate goal of learning a language.



    ☆ work citation:


    • BRANDL, K. Principles of Communicative Language Teaching and Task-Based Instruction. In: Communicative Language Teaching in Action: Putting Principles to Work. Pearson, 2008.



    • Brandl, Klaus. Communicative Language Training in Action: putting principles to work.Pearson Prentice Hall, 2008.



    • Richard, Jack and Theodore Rodgers. 1986. Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching. New York: Cambridge University Press.



    • Harmer, Jeremy. The Practice of English Language Teaching. 3rd Edition. pg. 79-80. Essex: Pearson Education Ltd., 2001




    The American literature assignment


    🌸Name: Payal chudasama 

    🌸Sem: 3

    🌸Batch:  2019-20

    🌸Roll no: 16 

    🌸Submitted by: smt.Gardi Department of English MKBU 

    🌸Paper  name : The American  literature 

    🌸Course: M.A. English 

    🌸Topic:   Introduction  about  Edgar Allan Poe's stories 

    🌸 Enrollment no: 2o69108420200005

    🌸 Email I'd: chudasmapayal1997@gmail.com 


    ☆ Introduction  about  Edgar Allan Poe :

      He was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States and of American literature as a whole, and he was one of the country's earliest practitioners of the short story. He is also generally considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre and is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction.Poe was the first well-known American writer to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.




    ☆ Edgar Allan Poe’s Writing Style:


    Edgar Allan Poe  has a unique and dark way of writing.  His mysterious style of writing appeals to emotion and drama.  Poe’s most impressionable works of fiction are gothic.  His stories tend to have the same recurring theme of either death, lost love or both.

    For example, in the short story ” The Cask of Amontillado” opens with a first person narrator (Montresor) who speaks of his plan to kill Fortunato.  Montresor states,”I must not only punish, but punish with impunity” (Poe 144)  Poe has a brilliant way of taking gothic tales of mystery and terror and mixing them with variations of a romantic tale by shifting emphasis from surface suspense and plot pattern to his symbolic play in language and various meanings of words.  Poe uses a subtle style, tone, subconscious motivation of characters and serious themes  to shift his readers towards a demented point of view.  This is the unique tactics Poe utilizes that makes him an impressionable writer and poet.


    Edgar Allan Poe’s inspiration came from a women who lived in England named Elizabeth Barrett .  Elizabeth Barrett had written a work called “Lady Geraldine’s Courtship”.  Poe had dedicated another one of his works “The Raven” to Elizabeth because he had admired “Lady Geraldine’s Courtship” so much.  Poe’s admiration for “Lady Geraldine’s Courtship” came from its “fierce passion” and “delicate imagination.”(Museum)   Barrett felt privileged due to the high respect the people of England held for Poe.  Barrett stated,”There is poetry in the man, though, now and then seen between the great gaps of bathos. . . the “raven” made me laugh, though with something in it which accounts for the hold it took upon people; Your ‘Raven’ has produced a sensation, a “fit horror” here in England; Some of my friends are taken by the fear of it and some by the music; I hear of persons haunted by the “Nevermore,” and one acquaintance of mine who has the misfortune of possessing a “bust of Pallas” can never bear to look at it in the twilight.”(Museum).  The two had created a connection to each other through works.  Poe inspiration came from this connection, thriving him to compete with her while falling in love with her.



    ☆ Edgar Allan Poe's  stories:

    《1》The Fall of the House of Usher":


    "The Fall of the House of Usher" is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1839 in Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, then included in the collection Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque in 1840. The short story, a work of Gothic fiction, includes themes of madness, family, isolation, and metaphysical identities.Poe was inspired to write “The Fall of the House of Usher” by his own life as well as the life of his child-bride Virginia, especially the events of Virginia's death, which had sent Poe into deep depression and inspired many of his tales and poems.The story takes place in the Usher family mansion, which is isolated and located in a “singularly dreary tract of country.” The house immediately stirs up in the narrator “a sense of insufferable gloom,” and it is described as having “bleak walls,” “vacant eye-like windows,” and “minute fungi overspread 

    A striking similitude between the brother and the sister now first arrested my attention. 

     The narrator mentions that the Usher family, though an ancient clan, has never flourished. Only one member of the Usher family has survived from generation to generation, thereby forming a direct line of descent without any outside branches. The Usher family has become so identified with its estate that the peasantry confuses the inhabitants with their home.


    The narrator finds the inside of the house just as spooky as the outside. He makes his way through the long passages to the room where Roderick is waiting. He notes that Roderick is paler and less energetic than he once was. Roderick tells the narrator that he suffers from nerves and fear and that his senses are heightened. The narrator also notes that Roderick seems afraid of his own house. Roderick’s sister, Madeline, has taken ill with a mysterious sickness perhaps catalepsy, the loss of control of one’s limbsthat the doctors cannot reverse. The narrator spends several days trying to cheer up Roderick. He listens to Roderick play the guitar and make up words for his songs, and he reads him stories, but he cannot lift Roderick’s spirit. Soon, Roderick posits his theory that the house itself is unhealthy, just as the narrator supposes at the beginning of the story.


    Madeline soon dies, and Roderick decides to bury her temporarily in the tombs below the house. He wants to keep her in the house because he fears that the doctors might dig up her body for scientific examination, since her disease was so strange to them. The narrator helps Roderick put the body in the tomb, and he notes that Madeline has rosy cheeks, as some do after death. The narrator also realizes suddenly that Roderick and Madeline were twins. Over the next few days, Roderick becomes even more uneasy. One night, the narrator cannot sleep either. Roderick knocks on his door, apparently hysterical. He leads the narrator to the window, from which they see a bright-looking gas surrounding the house. The narrator tells Roderick that the gas is a natural phenomenon, not altogether uncommon.


    The narrator decides to read to Roderick in order to pass the night away. He reads “Mad Trist” by Sir Launcelot Canning, a medieval romance. As he reads, he hears noises that correspond to the descriptions in the story. At first, he ignores these sounds as the vagaries of his imagination. Soon, however, they become more distinct and he can no longer ignore them. He also notices that Roderick has slumped over in his chair and is muttering to himself. The narrator approaches Roderick and listens to what he is saying. Roderick reveals that he has been hearing these sounds for days, and believes that they have buried Madeline alive and that she is trying to escape. He yells that she is standing behind the door. The wind blows open the door and confirms Roderick’s fears: Madeline stands in white robes bloodied from her struggle. She attacks Roderick as the life drains from her, and he dies of fear. The narrator flees the house. As he escapes, the entire house cracks along the break in the frame and crumbles to the ground.


     


    《2》The Cask of Amontillado" (1846) A story of revenge: 

    This short story by Edgar Allan Poe, first published in the November 1846 issue of Godey's Lady's Book. The story, set in an unnamed Italian city at carnival time in an unspecified year, is about a man taking fatal revenge on a friend who, he believes, has insulted him. Like several of Poe's stories, and in keeping with the 19th-century fascination with the subject, the narrative revolves around a person being buried alive.in this case, by immurement. As in "The Black Cat" and "The Tell-Tale Heart", Poe conveys the story from the murderer's perspective.


    Montresor invites Fortunato to sample amontillado that he has just purchased without proving its authenticity. Fortunato follows him into the Montresor family vaults, which also serve as catacombs. For unknown reasons, Montresor seeks revenge upon Fortunato and is actually luring him into a trap. At the end  of the story, the narrator reveals that 50 years have passed since he took revenge and Fortunato's body has not been disturbed.



    《3》"The Gold Bug" (1843)  :

    "The Gold-Bug" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe published in 1843. The plot follows William Legrand, who was bitten by a gold-colored bug. His servant Jupiter fears that Legrand is going insane and goes to Legrand's friend, an unnamed narrator, who agrees to visit his old friend.


    《4》"The Purloined Letter"  


     


    This  short story by American author Edgar Allan Poe. It is the third of his three detective stories featuring the fictional C. Auguste Dupin, the other two being "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt".



    ☆Conclusion:


    Poe may be said to have reached a point in his critical thinking wherein he saw that effect as the object of a writer's art is produced by an appreciation of the orderly nature and working of law, and he felt that the secret of impressive writing lies in the use of natural processes.As regards the stages by which he reached this conclusion, it is apparent that the particular interests he found in his reading came to transmute themselves in his mind into one consistent way of thinking. Each of these interests, we have seen, has played its part in making his literary theory,  a theory which guided his choice of subject-matter and formed his technical method.


    ☆  work citation: 


    • Bittner, William (1962), Poe: A Biography, Boston: Little, Brown and Company.

    • Rosenheim, Shawn James (1997), The Cryptographic Imagination: Secret Writing from Edgar Poe to the Internet, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, ISBN 978-0-8018-5332-6.

    • Poe, Edgar Allan, Arthur Hobson Quinn, and Edward Hayes O'Neill. The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe: With Selections From His Critical Writings. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1992.

    • Bloom, Harold. Edgar Allan Poe's "the Tell-Tale Heart" and Other Stories. New York: Bloom's Literary Criticism, 2009. 





     

    The post colonial studies assignment

               



                 

                  


     Assignment 






    🌸Name: Payal chudasama 

    🌸Sem: 3

    🌸Batch:  2019-20

    🌸Roll no: 16 

    🌸Submitted by: smt.Gardi Department of English MKBU 

    🌸Paper  name : The post  colonial  studies 

    🌸Course: M.A. English 

    🌸Topic:  post colonial  reading  of “The  Tempest”  

    🌸 Enrollment no: 2o69108420200005

    🌸 Email I'd: chudasmapayal1997@gmail.com 





    Question:  

    Post-colonial readings of The Tempest were inspired by the decolonisation movements of the 1960s and 1970s in Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America. Jyotsna Singh describes how these readings challenge more traditional interpretations of the play, questioning Prospero's ownership of the island and rethinking the role of Caliban.


    ☆ Introduction : 


    This is Charles A Buchel’s painting of a primitive but emotionally powerful Caliban, played by Herbert Beerbohm Tree in 1904. Tree was the first leading actor-manager to choose this role over the magician, Prospero.

    The painting appears in a souvenir edition of The Tempest ‘as arranged for the stage’ by Beerbohm Tree. He had the edition printed as a record of his production at Her Majesty’s Theatre, London.

    Tree’s view of the play was that ‘of all Shakespeare’s works The Tempest was probably the one which most demanded the aids of modern stage-craft’. His production was the first to use electric 8light, but not just for spectacle: lighting was used to underline the sensitivity of Tree’s performance as the play’s ‘monster’.

    Jonathan Miller’s ground-breaking production of The Tempest was one of the first to highlight the political and colonial implications of the play. It was initially shown at London’s Mermaid Theatre in 1970 and then re-worked and re-designed for The Old Vic in 1988.

    In this 1988 photograph, Max von Sydow plays Prospero as a white colonist, while Rudolph Walker plays Caliban as a black slave reluctantly obeying Prospero’s commands. Ariel, also played by a black actor, was portrayed as a servant of the empire, impatiently awaiting political independence.


    ☆ Prospero's ownership of the island and rethinking the role of Caliban:


    After Miranda is fully awake, Prospero suggests that they converse with their servant Caliban, the son of Sycorax. Caliban appears at Prospero’s call and begins cursing. Prospero promises to punish him by giving him cramps at night, and Caliban responds by chiding Prospero for imprisoning him on the island that once belonged to him alone. He reminds Prospero that he showed him around when he first arrived. Prospero accuses Caliban of being ungrateful for all that he has taught and given him. He calls him a “lying slave” and reminds him of the effort he made to Caliban’s hereditary nature, he continues, makes him unfit to live among civilized people and earns him his isolation on the island. Caliban, though, cleverly notes that he knows how to curse only because Prospero and Miranda taught him to speak. Prospero then sends him away, telling him to fetch more firewood and threatening him with more cramps and aches if he refuses. Caliban obeys him.

    Ariel, playing music and singing, enters and leads in Ferdinand. Prospero tells Miranda to look upon Ferdinand, and Miranda, who has seen no humans in her life other than Prospero and Caliban, immediately falls in love. Ferdinand is similarly smitten and reveals his identity as the prince of Naples. Prospero is pleased that they are so taken with each other but decides that the two must not fall in love too quickly, and so he accuses Ferdinand of merely pretending to be the prince of Naples. When he tells Ferdinand he is going to imprison him, Ferdinand draws his sword, but Prospero charms him so that he cannot move. Miranda attempts to persuade her father to have mercy, but he silences her harshly. This man, he tells her, is a mere Caliban compared to other men. He explains that she simply doesn’t know any better because she has never seen any others. Prospero leads the charmed and helpless Ferdinand to his imprisonment. Secretly, he thanks the invisible Ariel for his help, sends him on another mysterious errand, and promises to free him soon.

    To return once more to Shakespeare; no man ever drew so many characters, or so generally distinguished 'am better from one another, excepting only Johnson: I will instance but in one, to show the copiousness of his Invention; 'tis that of Caliban, or the Monster in the Tempest. He seems there to have created a person which was not in Nature, a boldness which at first sight would appear intolerable: for he makes him a Species of himself, begotten by an Incubus on a Witch; but this as I have elsewhere provide, is not wholly beyond the bounds of credibility, at least the vulgar still believe it. We have the separated notions of a spirit, and of a Witch; (and Spirits according to Plato, are vested with a subtle body; according to some of his followers, have different Sexes) therefore as from the distinct apprehensions of a Horse, and of a Man, Imagination has form’s a Centaur, so from those of an Incubus and a Sorceress, Shakespeare has produced his Monster. Whether or no his Generation can be defended, I leave to Philosophy; but of this I am certain, that the Poet has most judiciously furnished him with a person, a Language, and a character, which will suit him, both by Fathers and Mothers side: he has all the discontents, and malice of a Witch, and of a Devil; besides a convenient proportion of the deadly sins; Gluttony, Sloth, and Lust, are manifest; the dejectedness of a slave is likewise given him, and the ignorance of one bred up in a Desert Island. His person is monstrous, as he is the product of unnatural Lust; and his language is as hob-Thegoblin as his person: in all things he is distinguished from other mortals.’   


    “ You taught me language, and my profit on’t

    Is I know how to curse. The red plague rid you

    For learning me your language!”




    This speech, delivered by Caliban to Prospero and Miranda, makes clear in a very concise form the vexed relationship between the colonized and the colonizer that lies at the heart of this play. The son of a witch, perhaps half-man and half-monster, his name a near-anagram of “cannibal,” Caliban is an archetypal “savage” figure in a play that is much concerned with colonization and the controlling of wild environments. Caliban and Prospero have different narratives to explain their current relationship. Caliban sees Prospero as purely oppressive while Prospero claims that he has cared for and educated Caliban, or did until Caliban tried to rape Miranda. Prospero’s narrative is one in which Caliban remains ungrateful for the help and civilization he has received from the Milanese Duke. Language, for Prospero and Miranda, is a means to knowing oneself, and Caliban has in their view shown nothing but scorn for this precious gift. Self-knowledge for Caliban, however, is not empowering. It is only a constant reminder of how he is different from Miranda and Prospero and how they have changed him from what he was. Caliban’s only hope for an identity separate from those who have invaded his home is to use what they have given him against them.



    “There be some sports are painful, and their labour

    Delight in them sets off. Some kinds of baseness

    Are nobly undergone, and most poor matters

    Point to rich ends. This my mean task

    Would be as heavy to me as odious, but

    The mistress which I serve quickens what’s dead

    And makes my labours pleasures.”




    Ferdinand speaks these words to Miranda, as he expresses his willingness to perform the task Prospero has set him to, for her sake. The Tempest is very much about compromise and balance. Prospero must spend twelve years on an island in order to regain his dukedom; Alonso must seem to lose his son in order to be forgiven for his treachery; Ariel must serve Prospero in order to be set free; and Ferdinand must suffer Prospero’s feigned wrath in order to reap true joy from his love for Miranda. This latter compromise is the subject of this passage from Act III, scene i, and we see the desire for balance expressed in the structure of Ferdinand’s speech. This desire is built upon a series of antitheses—related but opposing ideas: “sports . . . painful” is followed by “labour . . . delights”; “baseness” can be undergone “nobly”; “poor matters” lead to “rich ends”; Miranda “quickens” (makes alive) what is “dead” in Ferdinand. Perhaps more than any other character in the play, Ferdinand is resigned to allow fate to take its course, always believing that the good will balance the bad in the end. His waiting for Miranda mirrors Prospero’s waiting for reconciliation with his enemies, and it is probably Ferdinand’s balanced outlook that makes him such a sympathetic character, even though we actually see or hear very little of him on-stage.


    Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises,

    Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.

    Sometimes a thousand twanging instruments

    Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices

    That, if I then had waked after long sleep

    Will make me sleep again; and then in dreaming

    The clouds be thought would open and show riches

    Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked

    I cried to dream again”


    This speech is Caliban’s explanation to Stephan and Trinculo of mysterious music that they hear by magic. Though he claims that the chief virtue of his newly learned language is that it allows him to curse, Caliban here shows himself capable of using speech in a most sensitive and beautiful fashion. This speech is generally considered to be one of the most poetic in the play, and it is remarkable that Shakespeare chose to put it in the mouth of the drunken man-monster. Just when Caliban seems to have debased himself completely and to have become a purely ridiculous figure, Shakespeare gives him this speech and reminds the audience that Caliban has something within himself that Prospero, Stephan, Trinculo, and the audience itself generally cannot, or refuse to, see. It is unclear whether the “noises” Caliban discusses are the noises of the island itself or noises, like the music of the invisible Ariel, that are a result of Prospero’s magic. Caliban himself does not seem to know where these noises come from. Thus his speech conveys the wondrous beauty of the island and the depth of his attachment to it, as well as a certain amount of respect and love for Prospero’s magic, and for the possibility that he creates the “ sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.”




    ☆ Conclusion: 

    Prospero’s speech in Act IV, scene i emphasizes both the beauty of the world he has created for himself and the sadness of the fact that this world is in many ways meaningless because it is a kind of dream completely removed from anything substantial. When Prospero gives up his magic, the play will end, and the audience, like Prospero, will return to real life. No trace of the magical island will be left behind, not even of the shipwreck, for even the shipwreck was only an illusion.


    ☆Work citation:

    • Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616. The Tempest. Cambridge :Harvard University Press, 1958.


    • Shakespeare, William. The Tempest. Edited by Howard H. Furness, 6th ed., vol. 9, Classic Books Company, 2001, Google Books.

    • Shakespeare, William, Virginia M. Vaughan, and Alden T. Vaughan. The Tempest. , 2000.


    • Shakespeare, William, Barbara A Mowat, and Paul Werstine. The Tempest. Simon & Schuster Paperback ed. New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2009.