Four Worlds Autobiography

1. Four Worlds Autobiography ESL Level 7 MiraCosta College Instructor: Kristi Reyes

2. Four Worlds Autobiography Part I The Past: Choose a point in time from your past that will show how you and your life have changed over time. For example, write about your life in your country … • when you were young and in school • Or when you were older and in high school or working • Or when you first started to work • Or a memory about a special family gathering or other memory about a significant time in your past • Or the time just before or just after you decided to move or moved to the USA

3. Four Worlds Autobiography Part I • What was the date or year? How old were you? • Where were you living? Whom with? • What were you doing? Did you work? If yes, what was your job? Did you study? If so, what? • Describe yourself (appearance, character, attitude) at that time. • Describe your life (socially, economically, family). • What activities did you enjoy? • What difficulties or challenges did you face? • What was your goal or plan for your life at that time? ** Use past and past continuous verbs.

4. Four Worlds Autobiography Part II The Present: Write about your life right now and these days, pointing out similarities and differences about you and your life from what you wrote in Part I. • How old are you? • Where do you live now? With whom? • Do you work? If so, where and what do you do? When did you start working there? Do you like your job? Why or why not? If you do not work, what do you do to fill your time? • What do you study and where? Why? • Describe yourself now (appearance, character, attitude). • Describe your life now (socially, economically, family). • What are the major changes in your life from Part I (move to USA, marriage, divorce, deaths, children, family, living arrangements, financial, work, residency/citizenship, language, culture, etc.). • What difficulties or challenges did you overcome (conquer)? • What new difficulties or challenges do you face now? • What is your plan or goal for your life now? ** Use present continuous, simple present, and past verb tenses.

5. Four Worlds Autobiography Part III The Future: Imagine your life in 10 – 20 years from now. Make predictions about yourself and your life. • What will the year be? How old will you be? • Where will you live? With whom? • Will you be retired or are you going to work? If so, where and what will you do? If you do not work, what are you going to do to fill your time? • What do you think will be the major changes in your life? (appearance, character, attitude, social life, finances, work, study, family, etc.). • What new difficulties or challenges will you face? • What will be your plan or goal for the rest of your life? ** Use future (will and be going to) verbs.

6. Four Worlds Autobiography Part IV After you have left this world: Imagine what you want people to remember you for after you are gone. What have you lived for? Read Bertrand Russell’s essay. Based on this model, write a paragraph that explains the three main things that you have lived for.

7. The Prologue to Bertrand Russell's Autobiography:“What I Have Lived For” Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a great ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.  I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy - ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness--that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what--at last--I have found. With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.  Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer. This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.

8. Four Worlds Autobiography Part IV • Topic sentence: What have been your three biggest passions, goals, or dreams in your life? • Three Supporting sentences: Explain each one with an example or explanation. • Conclusion: If you could live your life over and could change anything from your life, especially with regard to your passions/ accomplishments/ goals, would you change anything? If yes, what and why? If not, why not? ** Use present perfect and simple past tenses.