Bitácora / Journal 3 (Units 5 & 6)

Instructions:
1. Read the information of the document “Pamplona Bull Run” in the San Fermín Festival. Then write
your opinion about this cultural event in a 250-word text.
2. Use the following questions, and other additional ones you can have, to develop your ideas. Use as
many participial adjectives (ending in “ing” and “ed”) as you can. Remember to make good use of
connectors, punctuation and capital letters in your writing.
3. Use the given strategies to achieve your goal.

Name : MARIA CECILIA CAICEDO Group: 2 Level: IV

Ability Activities
Writing and Read the the document “Pamplona Bull Run” in the San Fermín
grammar Festival. Then write your opinion about this cultural event in a 250-
word text using the strategies below.

Additional information: Use the following questions, and other additional ones you can have, to
develop your ideas. Use as many participial adjectives (ending in “ing” and “ed”) as you can.
Remember to make good use of sentence connectors, punctuation and capital letters in your writing.

1. Do you like this event? Why?

2. Why do the organizers of the event still celebrate it?
3. What do you think motivates people to participate in this event?
4. Is that motivation something reasonable enough to make part of it? Why?
5. Should this event and others similar be banned? Why?

“Pamplona Bull Run”

The event

Pamplona, 7 July 2005. People climb to the fences as the bulls run by and cross the Town
Hall Plaza

Before the running of the bulls, a set of wooden or iron barricades is erected to direct the bulls along
the route and to block off side streets. There may be a double row of barricades along the route to
allow runners to quickly exit in case of danger. The gaps in the barricades are wide enough for a
human to slip through, but narrow enough to block a bull.

Pamplona bull run

The Pamplona encierro is the most popular in Spain has been broadcast live by RTVE, the public
Spanish national television channel, for over 30 years. It is the highest profile event of the San Fermín
festival, which is held every year from July 6–14. The first bull running is on July 7, followed by one on
each of the following mornings of the festival, beginning every day at 8 am. Among the rules to take
part in the event are that participants must be at least 18 years old, run in the same direction as the
bulls, not incite the bulls, and not be under the influence of alcohol.

Fence
In Pamplona a double wooden fence is used in those streets where there is enough space for it, while
in other parts the buildings of the street act as barriers. It is composed of around three thousand
separate pieces and while some parts are left for the duration of the fiesta others are mounted and
dismounted every morning.

Preliminaries

Police barrier at the beginning of the running stops people until the first rocket is fired.

The encierro begins with runners singing a benediction. It is sung three times, each time being sung
both in Spanish and Basque. The Spanish version is as follows: "A San Fermín pedimos, por ser nuestro
patrón, nos guíe en el encierro dándonos su bendición" ("We ask Saint Fermin, as our Patron, to guide
us through the encierro and give us his blessing"). The benediction is a prayer given at a statue of
Saint Fermin, patron of the festival and the city, to ask the saint's protection. The singers finish by
shouting “Viva San Fermín!, Gora San Fermín!” ("Long live Saint Fermin", in Spanish and Basque). Most
runners dress in the traditional clothing of the festival which consists of a white shirt and trousers with
a red waistband and neckerchief. Also some of them hold the day's newspaper rolled to draw the bulls'
attention from them if necessary.

The running

.
Pamplona, 2007. Bulls following some runners enter the bull ring, where the event ends.
The bulls can be seen in the foreground and background of the picture.

A first rocket is set off at 8 a.m. to alert the runners that the corral gate is open. A second rocket
signals that all six bulls have been released. The third and fourth rockets are signals that all of the herd
has entered the bullring and its corral respectively, marking the end of the event. The average duration
between the first rocket and the end of the encierro is four minutes.
The herd is composed of the six bulls to be fought in the afternoon, six steers that run with the bulls,
and three more steers that leave the corral two minutes later. The function of the oxen is to guide the
herd. The average speed of the herd is 24 km/h (15 mph).
The length of the run is 826 metres (903 yards). It goes through four streets of the old part of the city
(Santo Domingo, Town Hall Square, Mercaderes and Estafeta) and a section called Telefónica before
entering into the bullring. The fastest part of the route is up Santo Domingo and across the Town Hall
Square, but in the past the bulls often became separated at the entrance to Estafeta Street as they
slowed down. One or more would slip going into the turn at Estafeta, but, with the use of the new anti-
slip surfacing, most of the bulls negotiate the turn onto Estafeta and are often ahead of the steers. This
has resulted in a quicker run.

Injuries, fatalities and sanitary attention

Two injured runners are treated by medical services

Every year, between 200 and 300 people are injured during the run although most injuries are
contusions due to falls and are not serious. Not all the injuries require taking the patients to the
hospital: in 2013 50 people were taken by ambulance to Pamplona's hospital, with this number nearly
doubling that of 2012.
Goring is much less common but potentially life threatening. In 2013 for example, 6 participants were
gored along the festival, in 2012 only 4 runners were injured by the horns of the bulls with exactly the
same number of gored people in 2011, 9 in 2010 and 10 in 2009; with one of the latter killed. As most
of the runners are male, only 5 women have been gored since 1974. Previously to that date running
was vetted for women.
Another major risk is runners falling and piling up at the entrance of the bullring, which acts as a funnel
as it is much narrower than the previous street. In such cases injuries come both from asphyxia and
contusions to those in the pile and from goring if the bulls crush into the pile. This kind of blocking of
the entrance has occurred at least ten times in the history of the run, the last occurring in 2013 and the
first dating back to 1878, whereas a runner died in one of such pilings in 1977 due to suffocation.
Overall, since record-keeping began in 1910, 15 people have been killed in the bull running of
Pamplona, most of them due to being gored.
To minimize the impact of injuries every day 200 hundred people collaborate in the medical attention.
They are deployed in 16 sanitary posts (every 50 metres on average), each one with at least a
physician and a nurse among their personnel. Most of these 200 people are volunteers, mainly from the
Red Cross. In addition to the medical posts there are around 20 ambulances. This organization makes
possible to have a gored person stabilized and taken to hospital in less than 10 minutes.

History
The history of the running in front of bulls is not completely clear. It started when bullfighting became
a popular pastime, and many bullrings were built. The only way to get the bulls from the corral to the
bullring was by running them through the streets to the ring. Eventually, people started running with
the bulls. As every year passed, this became more and more popular, and has grown into this
extremely important festival.

Taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Running_of_the_Bulls

 Learning Strategies

Here are some writing strategies that you can use to improve your writing skills.

Before you write:

Ask yourself:

 What do I know about this topic?

 What will it most likely be about?

 How is it likely to develop?

Remember the title and any headings will help you to make informed guesses about all of this. If you
find it helpful, read the questions before you read the passage.

As you read:

 Ask yourself: is it developing as I expected?

 Re-read paragraphs you are not so sure about

 Don't worry too much about unknown words; try to guess their meaning from the context.

After you have read:

 Ask yourself: what were the main points?

Writing Production
 Writing Rubric
Student’s name: Date:

% To have a successful accomplishment of Needs

Poor improvement Fair Good Outstanding Total
your bitácora task, you must…
10 Turn in your bitácora all completed. 1-2 3-5 6-7 8 9-10

30 Write clear and organized ideas taking into 1-6 7-14 15-19 20-25 25-30
account grammar structures, vocabulary,
punctuation, and spelling in English.
40 Make a deep reflection and analysis of the tasks 1-9 10-19 20-27 28-34 35-40
developed in this bitácora by providing strong
examples, evidence or supporting details.
20 Demonstrate good understanding of the 1-4 5-9 11-14 15-17 18-20
learning strategies studied in the course.
Comments:

Final score:___________