Dear Miss Taylor,

To start, I strongly disagree about how teenagers are portrayed in the article you wrote for The Times. The way you describe teens as unsociable creatures is just false. Not all teenagers are addicted to their phones; if you had a look at the test results of 20 random teenagers I guarantee that at least 6 will have good grades and the rest will have bad, most probably because they were computer gaming rather than, as you claim, being glued to their phone. However, back to the point, it’s not all teens who behave in this way, a huge majority of adults use social media these days as well as us teenagers. You are simply stereotyping.

There was one phrase I didn’t like and it was Jonathan Franzen’s description of us as “enslaved social inadequates”. The word ‘enslaved’ was used, which is saying that social media is taking control of teenagers’ lives and attaching them to their phones as though social media is some sort of a powerful worldwide drug – I think Franzen has not done in-depth research and does not have the correct information to refer to teenagers in this way. He makes it sound like all teenagers are addicted to their phones, however it’s not all teens, it’s only a certain amount that are; I think he gets that impression because he met one girl who texts 150 times a day, and I think he just takes his thoughts too far. After that, he brings up video games and how it will affect teenage social behaviour, his concerns and the rest of it; he then says the trend is turning kids into ‘emoticon-addled zombies’ unable to connect and not even capable of making eye contact.

In the next paragraph you bring back the girl who texts 150 times a day and you describe how all teenagers are the same, constantly texting and spending no time with their family or friends. I myself have been told numerous times to get off of my phone and interact with the people in the house – the last time I immediately thought of your little rant and it kind of helped me to understand your point of view about how some kids are always on their phones. However, the thing that grinds my gears with you is that you act like the games teens play and the amount of texts teens receive/send is going to permanently damage their lives and cause them misery, when in reality it’s not. In fact it’s something that they choose to do and that keeps them in a way happy.

In a recent survey, it says that 25% of teens are ‘almost’ addicted to their phones, and 71% have one or more social media accounts, so that means the remaining 75% are not addicted to their phones and the remaining 29% are not involved with social media at all. Therefore, not all teenagers are addicted to their phones: only 25% are addicted; out of 100% a quarter are constantly on their phones, leaving a massive percentage of 75% – again out of 100, three quarters are not addicted to their phones, so perhaps you should do a bit of research before you speak about all teenagers being enslaved by mobile phones. If 25% of teenagers are addicted to their mobile phones, presumably the other 75% of teens are doing revision and exams.

Teenagers in this day and age are now under more pressure than teenagers in previous generations when it comes to exams because the grade boundaries have been raised higher than ever before, meaning that teenagers have to work at a much higher standard. Not only do teenagers have to work hard, commentators like you are stereotyping them as inadequates when they are simply using an efficient new form of technology to communicate with one another. This technology is nothing to be feared: if anything, it has made communication much faster if you go back and compare it to where it first began, with pigeons and letters. Texting is instant; it empowers teenagers to communicate with each other in a way that they are not constantly being watched over and it allows them to cross the social boundaries which they would not have been able to access many years ago. Maybe the ‘socially enslaved inadequates’ are in fact embodied in you, yourself – an older generation who grew up in a era where they didn’t have the technology we have, where communication on telephones was considered a luxury and was so much more unavailable, making it harder to find friends and meaning a lot of people would be extremely lonely.

Yours sincerely,
Karver

COMPARISONS:
In the poem at the border the narrator is describing her experience from when she was with her family at the border between Kurdistan and Iraq and what happened was her and her family where getting ready to cross the border and her sister saw the thick border chain and she put her legs across it and made a joke and the border guards told her off and the mother got upset. The poem come on come back is about girl who is captured by military troops, drugged and is left in a critical state and her memory is also been erased and in the end she takes her own life to take away the pain and the comparison between the two is a young girls is the centre of the poem, the summary of the comparisons are conflict can effect anyone and it can be so deadly that they have to take there own life in order to get away from the conflict.

The poppy has a long association with Remembrance Day. But how did the distinctive red flower become such a potent symbol of our remembrance of the sacrifices made in past wars?

Scarlet corn poppies (popaver rhoeas) grow naturally in conditions of disturbed earth throughout Western Europe. The destruction brought by the Napoleonic wars of the early 19th Century transformed bare land into fields of blood red poppies, growing around the bodies of the fallen soldiers.

In late 1914, the fields of Northern France and Flanders were once again ripped open as World War One raged through Europe’s heart. Once the conflict was over the poppy was one of the only plants to grow on the otherwise barren battlefields.

The significance of the poppy as a lasting memorial symbol to the fallen was realised by the Canadian surgeon John McCrae in his poem In Flanders Fields. The poppy came to represent the immeasurable sacrifice made by his comrades and quickly became a lasting memorial to those who died in World War One and later conflicts. It was adopted by The Royal British Legion as the symbol for their Poppy Appeal, in aid of those serving in the British Armed Forces, after its formation in 1921.

How does the poet create desperation in the poem?
This poem is written from the perspective of a man who is stuck in the twin towers during the 9/11 bombing, the man in the poem is talking got those who watching him. The man in the poem is captured on film twirling a white cotton shirt trying to gain attention so somebody could find him, in the poem it says ‘you have picked me out, through a distant shot of a building burning’ the need of desperation occurs when he says ‘i am trying and trying, because he is stating that he is trying his best and he is currently out of options and the only other option would be to kill himself or just stand there and burn in the sweltering heat.

HOW HAVE STRUCTURAL CHOICES MADE BY THE POET ENHANCE OUR UNDERSTANDING OF THE THEMES EXPLORED IN THE POEM?
1. The poem centres around the hawks actions and it describes the hawks thoughts and movements in great detail, The hawk is seeing the world as its playground, the hawk mentions that he holds playground, the hawk mentions the holds creation in his foot and that give me an impression that he feels even more powerful than god. The hawk is portrayed as a careless, violent and a fixed figure, the hawks describes in details the way he slaughter his pray and the way he says it shows him having no remorse in taking another creatures life. The hawk is portrayed as a man in battle with another man and describing how the man thinks,performs actions and what he does when he kills.

They both mention some type of law enforcement, and they both are based on a setting and how there are certain rights which should be followed and in the poems the setting is described as barbaric.The way war and conflict is described is sad because its because a little girl with an imagination put her feet on between two country and the girl got told off and the mother got upset and said that in the other country people are much kinder as in Belfast confetti there is a man who is caught in the middle of a riot and he cannot leave and the riot was about land for the Protestant and Catholics and they want independence and land.

The conflict in Iraq is no longer occurring and the writer was writing about how she felt so happy to be home she said that the roads are much cleaner, the people are much nicer and the landscape is much more beautiful, that states that she is not happy with the way her and her family has been treated and she wants to go back home where everything is much nicer and she can compare to Belfast confetti by the conflict going on in her location and she is in the middle of a argument about a little girl and a border guard.In Iraq the conflict was about oil and fighting for the most oil and I think the conflict is still going on today but the most dangerous and shocking conflict is occurring in Syria where little girl and women are sexually abused and innocent people are killed day after day and it still goes on as I am writing, if a child is shouted at for playing on the border then what would happen if she did something worse? she might have been killed.

It was the same in Ireland but not as bad as killing innocent people and the other but the war lasted 30 years it was between the Catholics and protestants and the IRA used car bombs and nail bombs which killed or seriously injured because the nails would be travelling at a high speed.In Belfast confetti the character is stuck in the middle of a riot between the Catholics and the protestants

1.the first stanza sets the death by saying that Vandevue sits on the flat stone all by herself and the word alone is repeated more than twice and that gives me an idea that no-one will witness her death and when it says she taps the ground, why would she tap the ground by herself sitting on the rock.
2.The the way the landscape is described it gives me a idea that it is set in the future because the word ominous is used and ominous means something bad is going to happen and it gives me an impression that this is a future poem and it gives the reader an insight of what is expected.
3.RHYMES OF SADNESS:
1:Sitting alone at midnight on a round flat stone.Is sad because she is a girl soldier sitting alone and a flat stone without knowing she might die.
2.M.L.5 has left her just alive suggests that

THE RIGHT WORD

WHAT IS THE POEM ABOUT?
The poem is about a woman who is trapped in her space because there is a young child outside her home who she thinks is going to harm her if she doesn’t let the child in.

WHY DID THE POET WRITE THE POEM?
The poem was written in response to the 9/11 incident when 3 planes where hijacked, 2 planes crashed into the twin towers and the remaining plane crashed into the pentagon.

WHAT IS THE EMOTION OR MOOD OF THE POEM?
The emotion of the poem is fear, she is fearing because there is a child outside and she believes that he is going to harm her.

Over the years, dozens of innocent people are murdered by the police for no reason, family’s have destroyed because their beloved family members has been murdered.
I personally think that those police officers should be sentenced to at least to a minimum 28 years in prison.

In the borough of Islington a young man named Henry Hicks was was brutally murdered when an unmarked police car rammed him off the road where he unfortunately died . the police officers claimed that he had marijuana in his possession but when he was searched after death he was clean.So the police officers murdered a 17 year old boy because he apparently had marijuana in his possession.His father was the most distraught, every where he went he would carry around a photo of his son.

On another occasion last year, a man named Dean Joseph was shot twice for having a knife to his girlfriends throat.They were in the middle of an argument until it got out of hand.The person who called the police said that they saw a black man climbing through a window trying to break in but he wasn’t, no body knows what he was doing. the interrogation lasted quite a while but the police charged in and shot him twice:once in the armpit and once in the chest which went through all of his major artery’s.What I don’t understand is why did they not just taze him instead of killing him.

INTERVIEW 1
NAME: ABID RAHMAN

Where were you stopped?
“I was stopped at the elephant and castle underground in the morning”
Why were you stopped?
“that morning the police officers where searching Black, Asian and Hispanic people and the officers where white and they stopped me because i was asian then when i was against the wall my friend walked by so i told him to hold my bag until this is over and the officer replied with whatys in th