We're only a couple of months out from the opening of Serenity (the feature film based on the Joss Whedon Firefly, for those who missed it). I, for one, am really looking forward to this. And I definitely plan to have $40.00 saved up for the rpg. Sure, I'll probably never play it, but it should be worth it just to have it as a sourcebook -- especially if I ever decide to base a campaign in another system on that universe. So tell me, am I alone in my enthusiasm?
I had to respond to this since I am wearing a Serenity T-Shirt today. I bought this RPG and it is beautiful. I especially love the pieces of short fiction that is laced throughout the book. Margaret Weiss has a strong understanding of these characters and writes them very well. The book is just fantastic. I love Firefly and Serenity... not sure if I will run this game as written. Actually, I used to play Traveller years ago and when I first saw Firefly, I thought... "This is Traveller" This world looks and feels like Traveller to me. That's what I thought. And I was thinking... "I bet Joss Whedon plays Traveller." Did anyone else get that feeling from Firefly?
I am sure that airing episodes out of order didn't help. Every person to whom I have shown the DVDs has loved the show. Every person without exception. It was a great show that died before it's time. The Serenity RPG looks pretty nice but I ran a Firefly game once using Shady Gulch and Hard Nova (both Genre Division RPGs by Politically Incorrect Games) This was before the systems were revised. I see you can now get the revised versions of both games as a "Space Western" bundle pack. That's cool, but I thought of it first!!
Swain’s Output HypothesisSwain, in 1985, argued “ learners need the opportunity for meaningful use of their linguistic resources to achieve full grammatical competence, and that production may encourage learners to move from semantic (top-down) to syntactic (bottom-up) processing, forcing learners to pay attention to the means of expression” . The ultimately purpose of language learning is to significantly use in our daily life. Attention in output arise internally through production processes, in that learners themselves decide what they find problem in their production and what they pay attention to the input. In other word, English learners should not only increase the information input, but also efficiently output the language what they have learned. Speaking and writing belong to language output, which base on abundant of language input. That’s quite necessary and available to open your mouth and move your hands in reading to enhance your reading efficiency. 1.2.3 Constructivism TheoryThe constructivism theory of teaching and learning is based on a combination of a subset of research within cognitive and social psychology. The basic premise is that an individual learner must actively "build" knowledge and skills and that information exists within these built constructs rather than in the external environment. Learning is an active process in which the learner uses sensory input and constructs meaning out of it. Bruner provides the following principles of constructivist learning: 1.Instruction must be concerned with the experiences and contexts that make the student willing and able to learn (readiness). 2.Instruction must be structured that it can be easily grasped by the student (spiral organization). 3.Instruction should be designed to facilitate extrapolation and or fill in the gaps (going beyond the information given) . Reading is a process of positive thinking, studying and information accepted. It needs learners to study it by themselves. Only in such a process, can they finally enhance their reading competence step by step.1.3 Necessities for utilizing ENR in English teaching1.3.1 New requirement The New Standards of English Curriculum, in 2002, carried out by China’s Ministry of Education National Curriculum Research Committee has clearly stated:(a) In the present English curriculum, learning resources should be fully utilized and exploited; the resources should be closely related to the student’s experience, life, and modern world. (b) Learning materials from English audiovisual programs, TV news, newspapers, periodicals, and Internet information should fully be made use of in the curriculum through various teaming tasks.(c) Students should be encouraged to develop and use the resources actively. The standards have also put forward that students should learn to appreciate and comprehend simplified original works, English newspapers and periodicals provided for them. Hence, ENR course quite live up to the requirement of China’s Ministry of Education and available.