Club I Robert Louis StevensonPart 1. Training on concentration and ability to accurately reproduce visually received information from the written text
Robert Louis Stevenson (Biography)
(1850 – 1894) 1
Stevenson was the only son of Thomas Stevenson, a prosperous civil engineer, and his wife, Margaret Isabella Balfour. His poor health made regular schooling difficult, but he attended Edinburgh Academy and other schools before, at age 17, entering Edinburgh University, where he was expected to prepare himself for the family profession of lighthouse engineering. But Stevenson had no desire to be an engineer, and he eventually agreed with his father, as a compromise, to prepare instead for the Scottish bar.
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In 1873, in the midst of painful differences with his father, he visited a married cousin in Suffolk, England, where he met Sidney Colvin, the English scholar, who became a lifelong friend and Fanny Sitwell (who later married Colvin). Sitwell, an older woman of charm and talent, drew the young man out and won his confidence. Soon Stevenson was deeply in love, and on his return to Edinburgh he wrote her a series of letters in which he played the part first of lover, then of worshipper, then of son.
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Later in 1873 Stevenson suffered severe respiratory illness and was sent to the French Riviera, where Colvin later joined him. He returned home the following spring. In July 1875 he was called to the Scottish bar, but he never practiced. Stevenson was frequently abroad, most often in France. Two of his journeys produced An Inland Voyage (1878) and Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes (1879). His career as a writer developed slowly.
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In 1876 Stevenson met Fanny Vandegrift Osbourne, an American lady separated from her husband, and the two fell in love. Stevenson’s parents’ horror at their son’s involvement with a married woman subsided somewhat when she returned to California in 1878, but it revived with greater force when Stevenson decided to join her in August 1879. Stevenson reached California ill and penniless (the record of his arduous journey appeared later in The Amateur Emigrant, 1895, and Across the Plains, 1892). His adventures, which included coming very near death and eking out a precarious living in Monterey and San Francisco, culminated in marriage to Fanny Osbourne (who was by then divorced from her first husband) early in 1880. About the same time a telegram from his relenting father offered much-needed financial support, and, after a honeymoon by an abandoned silver mine (recorded in The Silverado Squatters, 1883), the couple sailed for Scotland to achieve reconciliation with the Thomas Stevensons.
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Soon after his return, Stevenson, accompanied by his wife and his stepson, Lloyd Osbourne, went, on medical advice (he had tuberculosis), to Davos, Switzerland. The family left there in April 1881 and spent the summer in Pitlochry and then in Braemar, Scotland. There, in spite of bouts of illness, Stevenson embarked on Treasure Island (begun as a game with Lloyd), which started as a serial in Young Folks, under the title The Sea-Cook, in October 1881. Stevenson finished the story in Davos, to which he had returned in the autumn.Treasure Island is an adventure presented with consummate skill, with atmosphere, character, and action superbly geared to one another. The book is at once a gripping adventure tale and a wry comment on the ambiguity of human motives.
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In October 1890 he returned to Samoa from a voyage to Sydney and established himself and his family in patriarchal status at Vailima, his house in Samoa. The climate suited him; he led an industrious and active life; and, when he died suddenly, it was of a cerebral hemorrhage, not of the long-feared tuberculosis. This happened in 1894.
1. Reading the text aloud (by paragraphs, phrases, chains and other options).2. Rewriting the text.3. Dictation.Part 2. Training the perception of English speeches via listening and ability to accurately reproduce the information received via listening
A brief video of his biography.
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A video of the film Treasure Island: #Invalid YouTube Link#
1. Audio and video presentation of the text.2. Defining the main idea of the text and retelling the content.3. Making a plan to the text.4. Slide display and giving talks about the slides.
Part 3. Preparations towards making a grammatically correct reproduction of acquired information. Prepared and unprepared speeches.
TREASURE ISLAND, 1883 (EXTRACTS) 1Treasure Island tells of Jim Hawkin’s boyhood adventure on a quest for buried treasure.
The story opens at Jim’s father’s inn, the Admiral Benbow. A wild seaman, Billy Bones, comes to stay, bringing with him a large sea chest. He frightens the locals by getting raucously drunk and singing the sea chanty:
“Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest –
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!”
2Bones asks Jim to keep an eye out for “the seafaring man with one leg” , who Bones fears above all else. One day, the pirate Black Dog comes to the inn and fights with Bones. Wounded, Black Dog retreats and Bones collapses. Bones confesses to Jim that he was first mate for the infamous Captain Flint, and that he knows where Flint’s treasure is buried. He also knows that Black Dog, another of Flint’s men, will bring the rest of the crew to find him so that they can seek the treasure for themselves.
3Meanwhile, Jim’s ailing father dies. While the house is in mourning, a frightening and evil pirate Blind Pew, delivers the Black Spot to Bones. The Black Spot, a summons which tells Bones he has until 10PM to tell the pirates where the treasure is, shocks Bones so badly that he dies of apoplexy.
Terrified that the pirates will descend at any moment, Jim tells his mother everything. They seek assistance from their neighbours who are too frightened to do any more than send for the revenue officers.
4Jim’s mother, angered that Bones never paid for his lodging, decides to take from his sea chest the money that she is owed. Jim finds a packet of documents and takes it. He and his mother hide and watch the pirates ransack the inn. At last, the pirates are chased away by revenue officers on horseback, who accidentally trample Pew to death.
5Jim asks the officers to take him to Dr Livesey, who is visiting Squire Trelawney. He gives him the packet which contains Flint’s treasure map. Thrilled by the possibility of adventure and buried gold, the Squire commissions a ship, the Hispaniola. He hires a crew to seek the treasure – Jim will be the cabin-boy and Livesey will be ship’s doctor. Jim bids farewell to his mother and arrives in Bristol, where the ship is docked.
6Jim tells the Captain, the Squire, and Livesey about Silver’s treachery. Because of the crew’s increasing agitation as they draw close to the island, the Captain resolves that the pirates should go to shore while he plans their next move. Jim sneaks ashore and hears in the distance one of the honest men being slain at the hands of the pirates. He also sees Silver murder a man who he was unable to convince to join his mutiny.
7Terrified that he will be next, Jim runs into the woods. Here, he meets the wild-looking Ben Gunn, another of Flint’s old crew. Gunn reveals that Flint had buried the treasure on the island with the help of six men, whom he had then killed. Gunn had returned to the island with a group of others three years before. When the treasure wasn’t found, the others marooned him on the island. Gunn, who is affable but slightly mad from his long solitude, has sought the treasure ever since. He now offers to help Jim and his friends if they will give him a passage off the island.
1. Exploratory reading of the text.2. Quoting the text.3. Making questions to the text and answering them.4. Internet search.
Homework.In writing: An essay on the topic: What I have found out at the lesson about R.L Stevenson and his work "Treasure Island"
Orally: Preparing a monologue on the written essay topic.
(0.5 - 1min)
