Final entry

Throughout the semester we have been exposed to many kinds of literary texts and methods of teaching them. My personal opinion says that some of texts are a little bit difficult for the students to handle, for example, the inaugural speech. I was never exposed to speeches before. So I guess it will be a challenge to teach the student something that is out of their context of learning. On the other hand, the use of songs and lyrics are very helpful. Students get excited and motivated every time when songs and lyrics are involved. If the singing can boost up their moral, confidence and interest towards the language, why not we use it in class? All the tasks and group work is a new experience to me. This is the first time I am working the members of my group. For seven semesters I have not once did any group assignments with Iskandar, Fazlina, Zafira or Mimi. Their way of doing group assignment of course differs from the people that I usually work with but I had so much fun with them. They were a little bit playful, but are committed in their works. Thanks you friends for the new experience that we had together. And last but not least, thank you to Ms Dzeelfa for the hardship and effort that you put yourself into to ensure that the class is interesting. I thought the class would be as boring as other literature class, but you have made it our most interesting literature class ever.

Dialogue- performance of the contemporary version of Pyramus and Thisbee

We have come up with our version of Pyramus and Thisbee. Personally, I think it was kind of stupid but hilarious. We decided to take the secret meeting scene and make a contemporary version of that scene. We sat as a group but still, ideas seem to avoid us. Then Ami came up with this idea of changing the blood on Thisbee’s veil to menstrual blood. This is the part that sounds stupid, all of us agreed that it is stupid but at the same time it is hilarious. We could actually imagine the whole class reaction towards our version of the story. Well, as expected, the class burst into laughter and the loudest was from Yuen Thien. Maybe it was not because of the dialogue after all, maybe because it was performed by Ami and I. once again, I made a fool of myself but honestly, I enjoyed it so much. As I said in my earlier posting, the students might face a challenge in writing their version of the story, but I feel that they would love to perform it to the class. Most of the students they like to show their talent to their teachers. Once the teacher said that they need to write something, they would definitely tend to shut down and avoid the task. The teacher needs to grab their attention by asking them to do things that most students love to do-perform in front of the class. It would be a bonus if the teacher feels that their performance is good enough to be performed during the school’s special occasion. This will be a moral booster for them to work harder in class.

Dialogue- Based on Ovid’s Pyramus and Thisbee

We were all asked to read an extract entitled Pyramus and Thisbee. Looking at the title, it sounds so boring…Thisbee??? Out of the many names in the world, why Thisbee? It sounds like someone who can’t pronounce the consonant ‘s’. Anyway, after reading the extract, we were asked to form a group of six and came up with the contemporary version of Pyramus and Thisbee. This is the most challenging yet interesting part. We can change the story the way we like it. But there was one problem. We were required to perform our version in front of the class. Writing a new version is not much a problem, but performing the newly written version is so not my league. I’m just not a good actress. I usually make a fool of myself every time I performed in the class. But this is a requirement, so not much that I can say. I guess I just have to go with the flow. Adapting this activity in the language classroom would be something new and interesting but I doubt whether the students would be able to write a contemporary version of the story. Perhaps students with higher proficiency level would be able to this well, but the students who are not comfortable with English; they would find this activity as a threat to them

Song lyrics- activities

My group have decided to use the song entitle You Belong with Me by Taylor Swift to teach the short story entitle Cinderella Girl. We have come up with three activities. The first activity is during the while reading stage. The students are required to underline the differences of the two girls mentioned in the lyric. The other two activities are for during the post-reading activity. The first activity requires the students to draw an anti-war poster and the second activity requires the students to express their feeling in a form of stem poem. After presenting the activities that we have designed to the class, we felt that some changes need to be done in order to make the exercise more comprehensible to the students. Students with higher proficiency would be able to do the activity but the lower proficiency students might face some problems in doing the activities.

Song lyrics

Out of all the topics that we did throughout the semester, this is the most interesting topic indeed. Songs are something that is common to us, and almost everyday we listen to a song. So when we were asked to choose an appropriate song to teach a literary text, we were all excited! All of my group members have many songs in carved or printed in their head, all the new songs. I am the only one who still listens to ABBA, Michael Jackson, Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston. I felt like I was in the dinosaur’s era when I did not recognize any of the songs that they were all excited about. Gosh, how outdated I am! I guess I need to polish myself and listen to new songs if I were needed to use songs in the classroom. Definitely the students don’t listen to my kind of songs, and I don’t listen to their kind of songs. So, after the cats-and-dogs discussion, we decided to use the text entitle Cinderella Girl by Vivien Cook and the song entitles You Belong with Me by Taylor Swift. This activity made me realized that using songs in the classroom can be very interesting because it can grab the students’ attention towards their learning.

Jigsaw reading- Malcom X

This time around we were asked to work in groups, but not in the same group that we did all the assignments before. We were not allowed to choose our group members. Each of my group members were put into different groups and in that group we need to work on an extract from a text. Each group were given a part of the text about Malcolm X. Ms Dzeelfa said that we were going to do jumble reading, which means we will be working on a long text, and the text will be divided into parts. Each group will get a part or an extract from the text, and we need to read and understand it. Then, we were asked to form back our usual group and discuss about the different parts of the text. At first, I was reluctant to do this task because I really don’t like to read long literally text, especially from Malcom X! How interesting could it be? After I read my part in my newly performed group, I fully understood the extract that I read. Then when I got back into my usual group, we discussed about each of the different extract, and guess what? I finally understand what the whole text was about without reading it! I really like this method. I mean, it saves our time a lot. I don’t have to crack my head reading all those stuff about Malcom X. In my opinion, this kind of method will probably work best in school, especially when you are teaching a very long text. If I got bored reading long text, just imagine how the students would feel about long text. This method somehow will definitely help them in understanding a long text without having them to finish reading the text.

Speech-inaugural, implication towards students

Honestly, I am pretty sure that I was not introduced to inaugural speech during my school days. The only speeches that we looked into were speeches during school assembly or sports day. Thus I personally think that the teaching of inaugural speech to students would be a little bit boring as the subject and the content of the speech are more serious, and students don’t really understand the necessity of learning the speech. To the teacher, the content of the speech might not be so important but emphasize is put more on the presentation of the speech. But students rarely understood this, and they tend to shut down when they feel the content is boring. So I strongly feel that as a teacher, perhaps the teaching of this type of speech is suitable for pre-university students as to prepare them for the university style of learning but to incorporate the inaugural speech in the English language classroom would require a lot of effort from the teacher to ensure the learning would bored the students.

Speech- inaugural address

Today when we were given a copy of inaugural speeches, I was speechless. Don’t tell me that we are going to write an inaugural speech! Then Ms Dzeelfa explained that we were actually needed to write an inaugural speech. What a nightmare! I hate speeches! Our group was assigned to read the speech from Franklin Delano Roosevelt about the Pearl Harbor Address to the Nation. I have this negative mindset that all speeches are boring. But after reading this particular speech, it turned out to be that the speech was marvelous. I could really feel what Roosevelt was trying to convey, how angry and depressed he was about the attacking of the Pearl Harbor. After reading my assigned speeches, I ended up reading another speech from Earl of Spencer about Princess Diana’s death. I was touched! Then we were required to answer some questions about the speech. I was never introduced to speech reading before, thus this experience of reading inaugural speech is something new and quite interesting.

Parody Presentation

At last, we are going to present our own version of parody. At first, we were thinking of doing the parody of The Three Musketeers. But after a few cats and dogs arguments, we have decided to change our parody to The Hunchback of Notre Dame. It was so difficult to choose the appropriate scene from the Musketeers, and Hunchback was much more easier. We came up with the dialogue and did some last minutes practices. We were kind of worried that we might not be able to perform it well due to the last minute changes. But fortunately, things went quite smooth and we enjoyed ourselves very much. The others did a wonderful job in presenting their version of the parody. I really did not realize that parody can actually be a stress-release things to read. After all the introduction of parody by Ms Dzeelfa, I realized that now sometimes I do google parodies and actually read it. It was fun, and by reading it you could actually release your tense. But of course, I only read the funny ones, an dkeep myself away from those serious and politically address issues.

Malaysian marginalized literature

First of all, thank you Ms Dzeelfa for all your comments-I know you are a very busy woman!!In the Marginalized Literature post you commented about Malaysian marginalized literature. Honestly,I am not very familiar with Malaysian English literary works. I hope that i haven't lost interest in reading story books. I used to have collection of Nancy Drew, Francine Pascal and Christopher Pike's books during my school days, but they weren't returned back to me everytime I lend them to someone. So after that I have stopped buying books, and since then I realized that I haven't read as much as I used to. Back to marginalized literature in our country, the only writer that I am familiar with is Muhamamad Haji Salleh, and we know that Malaysian do not have the habit of reading. Perhaps in Bahasa Melayu, the marginalized literature is more voiced compared to the Malaysian English literature. But I am not familiar with any of the Malaysian minority ethnic groups literary works. I would love to read their work. They are often discriminated, and I would like to know how they express themselves in a literary work.If you knew any of their works, do let me know!

Remember that I said we learned about parody in class?Well, Ms Dzeelfa wants us to come up with our own version of parody!And guess what, we need to present our parody to the class. So it's play time! My group members and I cracked our head just to decide on what story should we mock on. First we decided to write on local legends like Hang Tuah or Mahsuri but then we opt to The Three Mustketeers...this should be fun!I mean and terrifying- I don't even know how to write a good piece of story and here I am, mocking about other people story. I guess we just have to wait and see our version of the three musketeers..

Parody

Today we were introduced to parody...am guess what?I am beginning to like parody! I mean, it's interesting to read about people mocking on other people's work!Ms Dzeelfa has given us a few examples of parody and I like the one about the Hansel and Gratel...very un-fairy tale. Sometimes it is enjoying to read other people views and perceptions of a literary works. I didn't realized that almost every literary works has its own parody.It could be exciting to the readers but I'm jusy wondering, how would the author feels about his or her works being mocked and published? Does it affects the author? Ms Dzeelfa told us that there is a book of parody about Harry Potter called Barry Trotter written by Michael Gerber. I have came across the parody version of Lord of the Rings-Bored of the Rings...I just have a glance at it and I think it is a non-humorous version...well, I don't really know. Personally, I don't think JK Rowling really mind about people mocking the world's famous witch boy because she is so famous and rich-but what about the unfamous author?Do they care?

Position Paper Presentation

I have finished writing my position paper but I haven't presented the power point slides. So this morning Agnes and I presented our power point presentations. Luckily Agnes and I went there early, so we didn't have to wait that long. There are some changes that I need to make, and there are also some points that I need to clarify in my stands. Having this little chat with Ms Dzeelfa made me realized how different people can have different perspectives and views on certain things. For example, I'm doing my position paper based on her short story, and of course as the writer she has her own views and expectations. I sees the story differently,and when she discusses with me about her views, I wondered how on earth I did not notice that before! Well, perhaps that is why I am not a writer!Anyway, I need to edit my position paper now before the disease of laziness affected me!

Marginalised Literature

When I got my handout about the marginalised literature, I was a bit lost on what are we actually studying now?I felt like I was in a history class rather in a literature class. But soon after I read the poem "Theme For English" by Langston Hughes, I began to make sense of my learning. Why on earth does the white people dislike the coloured ones? I mean we are all human beings. Then I realized that the literary works on marginalised literature are mainly concerned about the ethnic minority groups in the western.Reading works of Langston Hughes made me realized how serious the racial problems during those days. I especially like his poem Cross which he talks about his mix roots. I wonder how does he feels, not being white or black...

Position Paper Draft

Hi again! It's been a while since my last entry. Well, I was a little bit occupied with assignments here and there...and balik kampung. Last 2 weeks I had a discussion with Ms Dzeelfa regarding the position paper. I showed her my dratf and she commented here and there. In the beginning I was a little bit anxious about proceeding with my position paper. I even tried to change my position paper. Well, the short story that I was doing my position paper entitled "The Competition", written by Ms Dzeelfa. Haha, the author herself! And of course she has her own views and perceptions of the story. But after some thoughts, I decided to continue writing the paper. So, after my first meeting with her, I started to edit my stand for the paper. Hey, that was not so bad! Yes I stumbled in the beginning of the process but after our discussion, I had a clearer views of what I am supposed to write. Well, I better start writing!See ya!

Position Paper-what is that thing???

Hi again.Earlier in the semester we were told that we need to come up with 2 written assignments...position paper and reseach paper.So, Ms Dzeelfa asked us to find a topic and write our thesis statement...haha... I took my own sweet time to come up with a topic and a thesis statement which I was not sure whether it is a well-written thesis statement or not! I have chosen "The Journey" by Catherine Lim but after a week or so, I decided to change my topic. I read 1 short story and I really like it. I would love to write my position paper based on the topic but there are some problems...the author of the story is Ms Dzeelfa...well, having the author herself as my lecture and as the 1 who's going to grade my paper is 1 thing, can I come up with claims that are strong enough to suppport my topic?Will Ms Dzeelfa let me to do my position paper based on her short story?? I guess I have to try my luck and ask for her permission later in class today..

Fable, tales and writing Thesis Statement

Hi there again! It's 4:30 am and I usually wake up early in the morning. The morning peacefullness usually gives the extra energy and a peace of mind to complete my assigments. Weeks before we had learn about folktales and fables. How I love folktales and fables!!! Yes, they are imagitative and are usually for children. But they are so interestinng- the way the story is presented and how the writer incorporated the moral values are different from other types of literary work. I personally think that fable and tales are simple a revelation of the marvels and beautiful things in the world. Can u imagine if talking animals really exist??That would be interesting!!
We had also been introduce to other types of literary work, and based on some of the texts, we were told to come up with a thesis statement. Haha, I remembered learning about thesis statement during my second semester, and that was the only semester that I really pay attention to what thesis statements are.Apart from that, thesis statement doesn't exist in my life! I didn't even realized my assignments had a thesis statement.Well, I believe I am not the only person who forget what thesis statements are for.So there again all of us learned how to write a thesis statement. I really don't know why our brains so easily got short-circuited. Even during the lectures, we remember all those "selingan" that our lecturers told us to keep us awake, but we forgot about the content of the lecture!Is there something wrong with us?

First class for Readings & Project Work For Teaching Literature in ESL Context

We are already in the middle of the semester and I just started to write my blog! Ms Dzeelfa, I'm so sorry. Well, at first I thought I would love to try my art skills ( which I knew sucks). But then I realized how bad my handwriting was, so I opt to write a blog. Back to business, in the beginning of the class, I was a bit lost. I don't really know what the course is all about. But my first class was fun, and I get to read literary works that I have never read before. But the position paper and the research paper...well...why are the allocation of the marks are so high??Help me please!!!!