Post-Reading Discussion

1-It was very surprising and unexpected ending. In fact, I wasn't sure that this is the end of the novel.I thought I may missed some pages. I don't know if I'm really satisfied with the ending or not. Although the ending is more realistic, it has been changed all what i hardly started to believe just before I reached the end of the book. However, the end pulled the whole book together very well in spite of some question that i couldn't find a clear answer to it. For example, why did Pi asked the investigators, Mr.Okamoto and Mr.Chiba "Which is the better story, the story with animals or the story without animals?". And what did he mean by better! did he mean what makes them feel better? or Which is more reasonable? Furthermore, why the author didn't want to declare the reason that cause the cargo ship to sink? I think he wants his reader to try to solve the puzzled questions.

2-In my opinion, the major themes of this book can be classified into three parts according to the three chapters of the book: First, the nature of god, religious belief describing three religion: Islam, Christian and Hindus and the relation ship between science and religions. Secondly,the relation ship between human and animals and the will to live. Thirdly, Life is story and you can choose your story.

Describing Pi's life through his childhood and describing how did he survive in a life boat with a tiger for 227 days after the cargo ship sink with his whole family was clear illustration to these themes.In fact, the clever way of the storytelling makes you believe that it's a real person life.



3-While I'm reading, I think I felt that the characters in this book are real. The main character is Pi a son of a zookeeper from India. His family including his father, mother and brother Ravi were in Pi's life only in the first chapter of the novel cause they died when the ship sank in the ocean.Since the whole book is focusing on Pi, makes u feel as he is a real person.There is other main character which is the tiger called Richard Parker.Although, he is an animal but since the story was describing him in details for many pages while he was in the life boat with Pi, make you believe or at least have the doubt to believe that it was a real tiger.



4-In my opinion this story was clear and easy to read. However it was hard to understand or imagine what the author is really talking about . What kept me reading this story is to know how did Pi survive with a tiger in a life boat. In fact, I became so bored with the length of pi and the tiger survival story and only in the last chapter the author very clearly spelled out the meaning of the book.

What stuck me as most interesting in the second languge learning unit

I think we all notice either from our schools or universities or even from our own experience that some people learn languages more quickly that others. And we all believe that there are several personal characteristics that can predict success in language learning such as intelligence, aptitude, motivation and age at which learning begins. In fact, the most interesting part for me is how challenging is to find the relationship between any characteristic and success in language learning. Specially about the age at which learning begin. Although the age was easy to define and measure compering to other characteristics, it's relationship with success was complex and controversial. On one hand, some studies show that children can learn faster and better than older people. Even their pronunciation will be much better when they begin to learn from younger age. On the other hand, other studies show that older people learn more efficiently than children due to their use of memory strategy and problem solving skills. I believe that younger people learn faster than older. From my own experience, when I was in school I could memorize much more vocabulary than today. Finally, we have to take the opportunity to learn as much as we can before we lose the strength of our memory as we get older.