Name: Additional Reading Meetup Followups
Start: 2013-07-08T18:45:00+01:00
End: 2013-07-08T21:45:00+01:00
Location: The Kings Arm

At our last reading group meeting, some of our members proposed to make the bi-monthly Reading Meetup a weekly event. Winnie and I have discussed and agreed to add 2 more non-timetabled meetups every month for you, our dedicated members who are passionate about continual growth in language and friendship, such that we will have

1. Reading Meetup in the odd numbered week => we will read an article/short story in English and Chinese, just as we do now, and

2. Follow-up Meetup in the even numbered week => we will discuss the article, and also do exercises like making short speeches/talks in the language you wish to learn, writing with new vocabularies, grammar points, etc

To summarize more precisely, let's take the meetings in this month as an example:

Week 1 (1st Jul): Reading Meetup announced on the site with materials to read and an RSVP list Week 2 (8th Jul): Follow-up Meetup further to Meetup on the 1st Jul Week 3 (15th Jul): Reading Meetup announced on the site with materials to read and an RSVP list Week 4 (22nd Jul): Follow-up Meetup further to Meetup on the 15th Jul

The level is basically upper-intermediate to advanced.

What have been READ in our last Meetup

This time following Rosie's suggestion we will look at a small article from the Financial Times about Edward Snowden - the man who revealed the operation Prism where the U.S authorities apparently looked through people's social media tracks on, it would seem, quite a grand scale. After that, there is another Ted Speech relating to issues of online liberty by Rebecca MacKinnon - which covers the role of social media in the Arab Spring, but also censorship and self-censorship particularly as it relates to China. In the text below sections 1,2,3 are from the Financial Times, and 4 onwards come from the TED talk.
The financial times article is here http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001050869/en
The TED talk is at: http://www.ted.com/talks/rebecca_mackinnon_let_s_take_back_the_internet.html
Here is the chinese text with paragraph numbers (http://files.meetup.com/1546389/chinese.txt)
Here is the english text with paragraph numbers (http://files.meetup.com/1546389/english.txt)
Here is a pdf of the chinese text with translation and pinyin (http://files.meetup.com/1546389/online_surveillance_printout.pdf)
A set of Flash cards for testing yourself on the translation of words (from Chinese to English) (http://files.meetup.com/1546389/onlinesurveillance.apkg)
A set of Flash cards for testing yourself on the visualization of words (or translating back from English into Chinese) (http://files.meetup.com/1546389/onlinesurveillancevisualization.apkg)

As per usual, we will divide up the cost of the room between everyone who turns up - which will mean between £1.50 and £3 per person

Meetup Format

For this meetup, we have booked the room upstairs in the pub so it should be sigificantly quieter. We will therefore will need to cover the cost (£20) which we will simply share by everyone who comes paying a contribution to make up that cost.

Since we have more exciting meetups other than this reading group, we won't post the follow-up session on meetup.com (except this one) but have it opened to interested members or those who came for the reading one in the odd numbered week.  Hope you will be able to make this. We have been told by the management of the pub in London Bridge that we can more or less have the room upstairs every week until November.

Finally, to help make these events even better, it would be great if some people could volunteer to record articles (by reading in English or Chinese), also if people could point to more bi-lingual short articles and short stories. By short, we mean something of maximum 8 pages size in English in an average book.
Do come and invite your friends who are learning the language too - in one language you will be mainly learning, and in the other, mainly helping others learn

steve

London Mandarin Learners

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Additional Reading Meetup Followups

The Kings Arm

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Additional Reading Meetup Followups

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