Get to Know Jane Austen

Jane Austen is one of the famous authors from United Kingdom. She brought the beauty of love to the literature world. Her novels contain the pure and innocent side of love. She had died hundreds year ago, but she is still loved by thousands of her fan and her novels-admirer. One unique facts from her is she never married, even though she made many beautiful love stories.

The Early Year of Jane

Jane Austen was born on December 16, 1775, to George and Cassandra Austen in Steventon Rectory, Hampshire, England. She had six brothers and one sister. Both of her parents were from the lower ranks of the landed gentry - the sort of people Austen would later portray in her novels. George Austen served as rector of several nearby Anglican parishes.

The Austen children enjoyed reading books from their father's large library. She wrote "The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid' in one of her works, "Northanger Abbey"

She ever studied at Mrs. Crawley boarding school in oxford, but her family couldnt afford it anymore, she had to continue learning at home. On that day, she started to write short stories.

The Romance

Jane never married in her life. She ever fell in love with Tom Lefroy, a neighbor's nephew who was studying to be a barrister, but  it didn't work well. Later on, she was offered a marriage from Harris Bigg-Wither.somehow she never married to him

The Novel

As early as 1795, Austen began work on what would become "Pride and Prejudice," one of the most-read novels in the English language. It would not be finished and published for eighteen years.

A few years later, she started writing "Northanger Abbey." In early incarnations it was titled "Susan" or "Catherine." When the novel was finished, in 1803, Jane's brother, Henry, submitted it to Crosby & Company in London for publication. Benjamin Crosby paid Jane Austen 10 pounds, but he never published the book.

In 1809, Jane wrote to Crosby & Company, demanding that they either publish her book or return it. They countered that no deadline had been agreed upon, so she could either wait or return the 10 pounds she had been paid. She did not have the funds to buy back the rights to her novel. At last, in 1816, Henry Austen was able to repurchase the copyright to "Northanger Abbey."

The Final Day

In 1816, at the age of 41, Jane Austen became ill. She lost energy and her skin was discolored. Despite her illness, she started a new novel, "The Brothers," which would eventually be published as "Sanditon."

Ultimately, she became too ill to write or get out of bed. On July 18, 1817, she died in Winchester, Hampshire, England. Experts conjecture that she may have suffered from Addison's disease, Hodgkin's lymphoma, bovine tuberculosis, or a relapse of typhus.

Now,  her novels are adopted to movies, read by thousand people, learned at school. Her name is widely known among literature's lovers. 

Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings.

- Jane Austen

TOEFL TEST

TOEFL test

Right now, TOEFL isn’t something new anymore. When student want to study abroad, they need to have a TOEFL test first, some companies want their new employee to take TOEFL test, to write the final paper, TOEFL test is also needed. We can say that TOEFL is widely used in some sectors.  Some people think that TOEFL isn’t an easy task.  It force to think, so What is TOEFL?

TOEFL  is test of English as a foreign language. So basically TOEFL is only used by the country whose language isn’t English. TOEFL is used by country which considered English as a foreign language. TOEFL is used to measure the level of English language proficiency o non-native speakers of English.  Now, TOEFL has become one of requirement at over 2.000 universities around the world.

TOEFL test is divided into 4 sections. They are listening section, structure and written expression,reading, and test of written English. The test contains of 140 questions. 

• listening comprehension

this section contains of 3 parts, mini dialogue, longer conversation and short talk. there are 50 questions in this section. T o answer this section well, people need to listen careully to what the speaker has said and try to find the key words from each dialogue

• structure and written expression

this section is another form of grammar. it's basically a grammar test. there are 40 questions to answer all the section. concerning to grammar, the students should learn hard to know about grammar.

• reading comprehension

this section is a reading comprehension test. students are given a passage and they have to answer the question based on the passage. the challenging part from this section is the difficult vocabulary. It will be difficult for students to answer the question because they are many words which is difficult to understand

• test of written expression

in this section, students have to write an essay about a topic.

here is more explanation about TOEFL ;

What is British Parliamentary Debate?

Tanpa disadari, debat sudah menjadi bagian dari hidup manusia. Mulai dari debat skala kecil, membahas siapa yang akan menang dalam pertandingan bola, debat memilih ketua kelas, bahkan debat antarcalon presiden sampai debat antara delegasi negara - negara tertentu membahas masalah terkini. Di kalangan mahasiswa seluruh dunia, debat juga salah satu bagian yang populer. Bahkan di beberapa universitas "debate" menjadi salah satu mata kuliah, berbagai debate society juga didirikan. Apa sebenarnya debate itu ? Apa itu British parliamentary debate?

Debat adalah pembahasan dan pertukaran pendapat mengenai suatu hal dng saling memberi alasan untuk mempertahankan pendapat masing-masing. Ada berbagai jenis debat bahasa inggris yang populer, mulai dari Asian parliamentary debate, Australian debate, bahkan British parliamentary debate. Yang akan dibahas kali ini adalh british parliamentary debate.

British parliamentary debate atau yang sering disebut BP adalah suatu jenis debat yang terdiri dari 4 tim. 2 tim berpihak sebagai government dan 2 tim lainnya berpihak sebagai opposition. Government tim adalah tim yang mendukung tema debat, sementara opposition team adalah tim yang menentang tema debat.  Tim debat juga dibagi menjadi opening branch dan closing branch. Opening branch adalah tim yang menentukan arah suatu debat. Closing branch adalah tim yang menyimpulkan jalannya debat. berikut ini format debat british parliamentary :

1. Prime minister bertugas utnuk memberikan definisi mengenai tema debat yang dibahas.
2. leader of opposition bertugas menyanggah pendapat prime minister, memberikan alasan yang jelas
3. deputy prime minister memberikan tambahan alasan mengapa suatu tema itu benar
4. deputy leader of prime minister memberikan penjelasan lebih mengenai pendapat leader if opposition
5. member of government dan opposition memberikan penjelasan yang lebih detail
6. government and opposition whip memberikan ringkasan atas jalannya debat