Antoine de Saint Exupéry was born at the beginning of the XX^th century and when he disappeared above the Mediterranean Sea, he was 44. His novella The Little Prince was translated in 250 languages and sold over 140 million copies. Apart from the Bible and the Quran, this is one of the widest spread books ever. His philosophical writings, collected in the memoir Terre des hommes, have become the central theme of one of the greatest universal fairs of the XX^th century: Expo 67 in Canada.

Saint Exupéry was a writer, poet, philosopher and aircraft pilot. He was born in Lyon to an aristocrate family. However, because of the premature death of his father, when Antoine was not yet 4 years old, his family had to move to Le Mans, where he had a happy childhood. After a failed attempt to enter the Naval Academy and after taking some courses at the Academy of Fine Arts, he joined the Army to perform his military service. Here, he was trained to be a pilot and was transferred at an Air Force base in Casablanca, Morroco. Then Antoine left the military to marry novelist Louise Lévêque de Vilmorin, and worked as a clerk in Paris. The marriage was short lived, and in 1926 Saint Exupéry resumed his activity as a pilot, working for Aéropostale on the Toulouse-Dakar route. Shortly after, the company transferred him to a Spanish location, at Cape Juby, and then to its subsidiary in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

In 1931 he published his novel Night Flight, and from that moment on, Antoine became a famous and prestigious writer. In Buenos Aires he married the Salvadoran artist Consuelo Suncín Sandoval, with whom he had a rough relationship that lasted for thirteen years. Durig his on and off relationship with the artist, he had other love affairs. Nevertheless, it was the bond he had with her that gave birth to one of the characters in his best known book, the Rose in The Little Prince. The writer’s aristocratic family was not willing to accept his wife, who was a widow, and called her `a wanton`, and `countess of the movies`.

In December 1935 Antoine, together with André Prévot, crashed in the Sahara desert, while they were competing to win the air race between Paris and Saigón. The big prize consisted of 150,000 francs. They survived the accident and spent three days without food or water. They experienced hallucinations and were on the verge of death when they were rescued by some Bedouins. This experience in the desert sands inspired Saint Exupéry to write two of his greatest books: Wind, Sand and Stars and The Little Prince.

Shortly after the Second World War started in Europe, Antoine left for the United States and settled in New York, determined to convince the American government to enter the war against Hitler. He also traveled to Canada and, after staying on the North American continent for two years, he applied for admittance in the Allied Air Force operating in the Mediterranean. Saint Exupéry was 43 and had health problems when he was granted special permission to fly reconnaissance aircraft. In the last day of July 1944, he took off from Corsica in his unarmed P-38 reconnaissance plane, on a mission from which he never returned.

Saint Exupéry’s writings offer us a vision of the world seen from the sky. And it’s a world of proportions much different from what we can perceive from the land. In order to follow an aerial route, the pilot devises some plans that describe the reality in different terms than a geographer would use.

In The Little Prince, he tells the story of a prince who comes from a small remote planet, and meets a pilot from the Earth who is stranded in the Sahara desert. The young prince recounts to the pilot the adventures he has been through on the six planets he has visited prior to arriving on Earth. He says he has got a rose flower in his care and he has to pull out baobabs. After meeting a few more creatures on Earth, the little prince goes back to his planet. Many people consider that Consuelo was the rose in The Little Prince, who fascinated the little man from outer space.

The writer had a very special way of seeing the world, as if he looked at it from the cockpit of a plane. Many times he wrote while flying. In 2000, the remains of his plane were discovered by a diver near the coast of Marseille; they were recovered in 2003. Although a German pilot, Horst Rippert, admitted that he shot down Saint Exupéry’s plane, this is still unconfirmed, since the exact reasons why his plane crashed are not yet known.

The learning of the literacy processes is one of the most important things in somebody’s life, because it opens the gates for many other learning, knowledge and development areas. But at the same time it is one of the most complicated, as learning how to read and write is not an easy task.

The learning of these mechanisms include the understanding of arbitrary rules that associate each letter with its phoneme (sound). Each sound of a language has a corresponding fixed letter, and different combinations of letters result in new sounds. This is the main difficulty: knowing what each letter sounds like and what graphical symbol is associated with each, is not the learning of any rules, but rather mere chance.

Despite this difficulty, all the people have the capacity to learn how to read and write. By learning this, we open the gates to a world of knowledge, we develop our language and our way of thinking.

The process gets more complicated when we need to understand the rules of simple and complex syntactic structures. We start by learning the letters and the way they associate in order to form words. Once we master this skill, we need to acquire a new challenge: how to combine adjective words in order to obtain clear, meaningful messages.

How do children learn to read and write?

The learning of reading and writing is tightly connected to the development and learning of language. Before starting these processes, little boys and girls need to have acquired and be able to use spoken language.

Children are curious to know the symbols of writing, to know what is written in the texts they see.

When can they learn to read and write?

Usually, from the age of 3 or 4 we can start teaching them the processes of reading and writing. This age is approximate, as it depends on the development of each child. In this step they must practise pre-reading skills in order to facilitate the later command of learning. The real mechanism of literacy is acquired around the age of 5 or 6. It is important to start practising the skills before the age of 3 and pay special attention to the moment of acquisition, between 5 and 6 years old. This process will continue for years, until the child gets command of the skill; this depends on the maturative development of the children.

Pre-skills for the learning of reading and writing

• Spatial orientation. This ability is crucial for writing. It is the key for putting the letters in order, writing from left to right, top to bottom.
• Definite laterality[1]. Before they start writing, children must have determined their laterality.
• Fine motor skills. The skill of writing requires a good hand control, for holding the pen and applying the right pressure for the letter strokes.
• Eye-hand coordination. Children must control the coordination between what they see and the movements they make. The hand movements, the strokes have to respond to what the eyes perceive.
• Discernment and auditory memory. It is essential that the children remember the sounds they hear, so that they can convert them into the right letters.
• Phonological awareness and acuity. Little ones must be aware of the fact that each sound has a corresponding graphical image, and they must also be able to make the distinction between different sounds.
• Language. Control of spoken language is absolutely essential for the learning of written language.

Skills for the learning of reading and writing.

• Phonological awareness and acuity. Little ones must be aware of the fact that each sound has a corresponsing graphical image, and they must also be able to make the distinction between different sounds.
• Language. Control of spoken language is absolutely essential for the learning of written language.
• Understanding of sintactical rules and structures. For the learning of these processes, children must possess the ability to understand the rules of putting letters and words together. The same letters, ordered distinctly form a different word, or no word at all. And, in order to convey a meaningful message, the words must be in a particular order.
• Understanding of what is read. It is not enough to just know the different sounds and recognize the word that we see written. It is important to also understand a message that is read.
• Planning of the writing. Before beginning to write, the difficulty of how to order the ideas is common. We have to train the little ones to have the ability to plan what they want to put into writing before starting expressing themselves.
• Reading and processing speed. Once literacy is acquired, we must start exercising with the little ones, because for them it is essential to practise their processing speed, which will result in quick and fluid reading and writing.

[1] Laterality (in this case): the use of the right or the left hand in writing.

Activities used to teach children to read and write are composed of a sequence of exercises that can be performed at home or at school, by parents or by teachers. The advantage of this type of exercises meant to teach reading and writing is that children have fun playing these games during the class or at home, while teachers and parents rest assured that their children improve their writing abilities.

Activities for teaching children to read and write

Before performing these activities to teach children to read and write, we need to ask ourselves if the children are ready to grasp this new knowledge. Before learning to write, the child must be able to make correlations between symbols, speak fluently, have a good eye-hand coordination, and be properly stimulated at home and in the classroom. If the child has grasped these abilities, then we can proceed with the activities for learning to read and write.

Writing letters on the back: This activity for teaching to read and write requires dividing the group of children into pairs. One child in the pair writes a letter or a short word on the back of the other. The child in front has to guess the letter or word that has been traced on his back.

The shopping game: In this activity for children, that can be performed either at home or at school, you need to set up a market with a food department and some toys to represent groceries. It is much more fun if you can set up several departments. The adult dictates a list of foods that the children have to write. Nobody can go shopping unless their list is written correctly. The winner is the child who buys all the foods on the list.

The animal encyclopedia: This is an activity for teaching to read and write that also reinforces attainments. Each child needs to draw an animal they know on a card, then write their name and some features that they know of. For example, if the child draws an elephant, he/she could write that it is grey, eats plants and lives in herds. These are simple facts that the child could have heard during a class, or he/she simply knows.

The train of syllables: In the first part of this activity for teaching to read and write, pupils must make cards on which they write combinations of consonants (P, T, N, M, R, S, D) to which they add vowels. Once the children have finished doing this, the teacher will ask them to build words starting with a certain letter, using the syllables they have written.

GAMES FOR LEARNING HOW TO READ

Each letter has a pair.

In a previous article, we have talked about the best method to teach children to read. We mentioned when and how to do it, some advice for helping them read and other things related to this task, and also the fact that it is best to start from early infancy, in order to ensure a good psychological and educational development.

Leaving aside topics like the ideal age to do it, which is always a reason for controversy, now we are focusing on fun ways to make reading happen. In other words, we will present a few games for learning to read. The good part of this method is that it is not constricted by age, as it practically is a way of having a good time.

The road to mastering one of the most important abilities specific to human beings.

Whenever you pass any assigned school papers in your English High School subject, you need to ensure that you will use the MLA format in all part of the assigned paper as well as utilize the correct way in making citations in the MLA format method.

Before submitting your take-home English paper, make sure that the following standards should be followed.

• The margin should be in the proper MLA paper format.
• Make sure you use proper grammar and part of speech throughout your work.
• The used font, font size, and line spacing should also be in the MLA format.
• Utilize MLA heading format in the first page.
• Follow a proper MLA title page.
• Use a header featuring MLA heading format on each page of the paper.
• Whenever a quotation or references is used in a page, include extra comments about it.
• Make a MLA works cited page where you will enumerate all the works that were quoted in the paper.

You must understand that the subsequent standard guidelines on using the MLA formatting style are only applicable for MS Word. So, if you are not using this word processor, check out your available manual.

Specific Instructions Regarding the MLA Format:

Margin, Font, and Line Spacing Settings

Every MLA paper format requires a 1 inch margin on every border. It is advisable to set your processor’s default margin to 1 inch by going to the Page layout Page and then set it up. As to the line space setting, MLA format requires double-space spacing. Make the necessary adjustments on your MS Word by going to Paragraph and choosing Format from the menu. All parts of the document should feature double space so it would be better to set the spacing at the start. Font settings should be at 12 font size and use a font face style that is not similar to handwritten forms or the other unusual scripts.

Heading on the First Page

If an MLA title page is not required by your teacher, you will have to do a so-called first page heading where you will have to input your full name, the name of your teacher, the subject, and the due date of the paper. All this information should be found in the upper left corner of the paper.

The Paper’s Title

The title should also be in a 12-point font size with no embellishments like boldface, underline, italics, or quotation marks. In case you added the title of a poem, story, or a book as part of your title, the correct title format should be used. That is, underline it if it’s from a complete work and utilize quotation marks if poem or a short story is included. Input your title one double-spaced from last line of the heading.

Header

This is a single line that features your last name and the page number. It will come out in every page of the whole document found in the upper right corner. You can find it either in the View or Insert menu, depending on the version of your MS Word.

Parenthetical Page Reference and Work Citation

When you make a quotation or reference, make sure that you properly make a parenthetical page notation following MLA format.

Essay writing is one of the familiar and unavoidable school papers that students need to do and pass, more than likely, more than once or even twice. For most people, essay writing is difficult particularly for the ones who do not really know how and what they are going to do. This is where the MLA citation format or Modern Language Association format is most needed.

Helps format your essay or school paper

It will help you format your essay paper or whatever school paper, you currently need to write. You should know that professors, those who are really expert in the field, are very keen to details. They would immediately know if there is even a small infraction from the rules of MLA book citation. If this is the case, your essay may be rejected that will lead to lower grades due to non-compliance of the requirements.

Teachers are always careful about references. You need to make sure that quotes and references are properly cited on your paper. If you don’t know how or if you want to avoid making mistakes, you need to utilize a MLA citation creation tool. This is especially true for students who still don’t have the experience to do their school paper properly. The MLA works cited generator will produce the paper’s citations automatically without any problems. Thus, rather than doing the citations yourself and probably making mistakes, why don’t you let the MLA works cited generator do the work for you. Simply input your references and the generator will produce your citations correctly. In addition, it will help you finalize your work faster and error-free.

Easy generation of citations

This MLA book citation generator will create the reference part of your essay without too much ado. It will generate the following information:

• The name of the author
• The data on the publisher
• Creator and content types
• Bibliography
• ISBN

You can now transfer the citation to your essay paper after you have copy and pasted the following information to the following fields of this MLA citation generator. This is a very easy to use generator that can help most students and researchers.

Excellent paper with properly cited sources

With the MLA citation generator, you can follow the standard format easily so that you can submit an excellent essay paper and avoid producing an average paper because of a wrong citation format. The key to creating a quality essay paper or research paper comes with following the standard and correct formats like the reference format of a school paper. With the help of a MLA citation generator, you can do your citations quickly and successfully.

Uniformity with MLA citation generator

By following the rules as provided by MLA, all the paper works will feature the same formatting so there is uniformity. There are two sources of citations namely: online and print materials. The MLA citation generator will help students produce the proper citation format while preventing the student from being accused of plagiarism by properly generating the references that are needed for the research or essay paper. Plagiarism is a serious offense so researchers should make sure that nothing of this kind will happen.

All in all, a MLA works cited generator will make a student’s school paper error-free from citation setbacks. You can check out this very effective generator that can make sure that you have your citations formatted correctly.