Monday 19 May 2014

Topic Video: life stages / history

Hi everyone!

We begin our round of topic videos for this end of the academic year. The first one is on the topic of life stages, with a little bit of history.

The video is an account of a teenager's life in Ancient Rome. Do you want to know about Lucius's day? He's seventeen and he lives in Rome. Come in for a glimpse of his life...



And questions, of course!

What's the liberalia?
What poses risks in the building?
At what age did Romans come of age? Why was it such an important milestone?
What things has Lucius learnt in the classroom? And out of it?
How can Lucius make business?
Who is he bound to marry?
Describe the appearance of the streets during the liberalia.
What does the expression "wars were a fact of life" mean?
What expressions of time can you find (particularly at the end of the video)?


Here's the key! And don't forget that these TED-Ed videos come with transcripts if you watch them on their website or on Youtube.

Enjoy!


2 comments:

  1. Hi,

    When the narrator talks about the amulet, he switches from present to past tenses.
    Is this related somehow to reported speech?

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    Replies
    1. Hi Ángel,

      A previous comment wasn't published, so sorry if this appears twice in slightly different forms :P

      The change to the past is not really related to reported speech. The narrator uses "historical present" tenses, which is a way of making events more vivid, among other things. This makes any shifts to the past more fluent and usual.

      The video being about "a glimpse of teenage life in Ancient Rome", you can expect a lot of historical present in it: a description of the ritual of placing the bula in the shrine is more forceful in the present. The shift to the past occurs when the narrator says: "The bula had worked. It had protected him", which is an evaluation of the significance of the ritual. In such evaluative comments it's usual to go back to our original, "people who reflect on the past" viewpoint. But a historical present would've worked just as well.
      The use of historical present and any shifts to the past create effects of closeness and relevance, which the speaker is quite free to use as rhetorical devices, so there is nothing wrong or right about tense use here.
      I hope it's been useful! Thank you for calling our attention to the tense use here.

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