Meeting Miss Shu Jien

Last week, Dr. Edwin invited one of his ex-students to share her teaching experience with us. According to him, this person was special because she believes that whatever that we practised in the universities, I mean during our micro teaching and so on can be applied in classroom. I find it quite interesting because there are some teachers who have problems in applying what they have learned while they were in teacher training because they said it is not suitable and the situation is different. Miss Shu Jien introduced herself. She had been teaching for 14 years and now she is still a secondary school teacher and at the same time continuing her master in literature. She had taught some schools in urban and rural area. According to her, students need time to accept literature as part of their syllabus because for all of this time, they have been used to the concept of right and wrong when they answer question. Whereas there is no right and wrong in literature. So, they need time to accept this new concept. Therefore, don’t expect our students to like literature immediately. She applied whatever had been taught to her while she was studying in the universities. She did ask her Form Two students to come out with the play “Phantom of The Opera”. She asked them to select their group members, choose their director, scriptwriter, actors and actresses and the prop members. I am fascinated with her because I don’t think that Form Two students can come out with play. But she proves that she had done it successfully. All her students participate in the play and they claimed a lot of things they learned from the activity. Well, I am amazed because when I was in secondary school, I never had such experience but now, I believe whatever activities that we had done either in the universities or teacher training college can applied in classroom. However, I admit that it is not going to be an easy task. A lot of time and money will be spent to ensure its success. Miss Shu Jien also told us to do whatever that we think can work for our students and don’t easily get discouraged when others against you. Have confidence in ourselves and proves to others that we can create miracle if we want. Yes, it might sound an imagination, but I believe when there is a will, there will always be the way.

Finally, I have chosen topic for research paper...

Previously, I have written in this blog that I was torn into two; either to do William Blake or Wilfred Owen. Finally I made up my mind to do on Wilfred Owen, the famous war poet ever. Some of my friends asked me the reason for choosing poem instead of short story or novels. I also question myself the same thing but seriously I didn’t know why. I am not good when it comes to poems because I always have problems in understanding the underlying meaning of such poets especially Shakespeare. But I think this might give me a challenge because I work on something that I never thought I would do. For my research paper, I plan to compare the writing style between two war poets; Wilfred Owen and Rupert Brooke. After I went through all their works, I decided to compare and contrast “Dulcet Et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen and “The Soldier” by Rupert Brooke. The message of these poems is basically about war. Thus, I am interested to know why Wilfred Owen views war negatively whereas Brooke’s poem is full of patriotism. Doest it has anything to do with their background? All I know is both poets live during the World War One. Wilfred Owen had the experience of being in the front line while was in war and he got injured a few times. On the contrary, Brooke also went to war but he went at the beginning of war which was before the reality of war was known.

Watching classmates’ presentation

Finally, all of us have presented our position paper. I was lucky to be chosen to present my work on the first week. Lots of things I can see from my friends’ presentations. Some of them have ideas but their argument is not strong enough to support their ideas. They were able to find the textual evidence but they do not elaborate it well or relate it to their thesis statement. However, there are also a few of my friends whom I think successfully presented their thoughts because they were able to relate them to their thesis statement. As I reflect my paper, I think there are also one or two points that I did not elaborate well because I only stop after providing the evidence. I do not show how this evidence is connected to the point. So my argument is not strong and I plan to redo it since Dr. Edwin still give us a chance until the end of this week to resubmit our position paper. After all presentations, Dr. Edwin made his comments. He said we are still immature in our discussion. Besides, he advised us not to judge characters based on conventional notion. We cannot say this person or that person is good or bad simply because there are no such things as good or bad people. Everyone has their own flaws but it does not mean they are bad people. In addition, he reminded us to be extra careful with our language because we are going to be English Teachers, not English learners. This is why it’s important to listen to our speech and be aware of what we are saying. He believes that we can do it, that we can be great teachers but we need to improve ourselves. There is still room for improvement if we have the intrinsic motivation to change for the better.

Diaries

Last Tuesday, we learned about diaries. Dr. Edwin asked us a few questions about the topic but one of his questions draw my attention. His question was “how diary is different to autobiography?” A few of us came out with various answers but none manage to tell the difference between these two genres because if we look at the superficial level, both diary and autobiography may look the same. Both contain the inner thought and the experience of the writer. But how are they different? Luckily, Fariha successfully gave him the right answer which was quite easy actually. I don’t know why I don’t think of that reason in the first place. Diary is private and confidential whereas autobiography is meant for others to read. As for diaries, we are our own readers, but for autobiographies, they are written to be published and read by others. Learning this topic reflects my own experience. I love to write in diary but lately I don’t write at all because I have been busy doing other things. To some people, it may look stupid or childish because if you feel angry or sad at other people, you should tell the other person so that they know your feelings. However, to me, letting everything in the diary does help me to stabilize my emotion because whenever I write, I feel relaxed because I manage to express my anger, sadness, or any negative feelings without hurting other people. I think this is better than some people who prefer to keep everything inside their heart because you know that this person will going to explode everything like a bomb when they can no longer deal with their mixed feelings.

The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela

For the upcoming lesson, we were assigned to read the autobiography of Nelson Mandela and answer some questions on the topic of autobiography. The title of the autobiography is “The Long Walk to Freedom”. After I read it, I sympathize him for the way he was treated while in prison. His passion for other’s equality even though he was in prison impressed me. This reflects his responsibility as politician and especially the president of Africa. Well, some may say that this autobiography is unreliable because it was written from the point of view of the author. So, we cannot sure whether such writers really write the truth or exaggerate to make their story more dramatic. However, I feel that there is a sense of truth in his story because as Kuo Wei said, he managed to describe events in detail and when I read it, I feel that his story was real. On the contrary, I feel dissatisfied because I have limited time to search for reference on the Internet regarding Nelson Mandela. I admit that I know nothing about him except that he was the president of Africa. So, I feel that if I have some extra knowledge about him and his contributions, I will be able to decide whether this autobiography is reliable or not.

Malaysian Celebrations

On 14/2/08, Dr. Edwin’s class was quite different from any other classes. When we entered the class, suddenly he asked us to list down Malaysian Celebrations. It was quite interesting but I still have no idea what he was going to teach because in the previous lesson, he asked us to answer some questions about autobiography. So, I thought, he will start his lesson by looking at our answers but he said he would do that after we discussed about Malaysian Celebrations. At first, we were asked to list down these celebrations on a piece of paper. So, I have listed about 15 celebrations.
Then, Dr. Edwin asked a few of my friends to write their answers on board and classify the celebrations according to groups. It can either be race, religion or culture. To me, this activity is very interesting and informational because it exposes us to many kinds of celebrations. Thus, I am grateful and admit how unique living in Malaysia because we are able to see different festivals, celebrations and cultures around us. Only after that Dr. Edwin claimed his purpose of this activity. He said he wanted to publish a book on it about Malaysian Celebrations. I also feel proud because we contributed on his project even though our contribution is only a little. By the end of the lesson, he gave us a task which is to identify any information/ pictures regarding the celebration that we are assigned to do. In my case, I was given the event ‘Awal Muharam’ and my group members are Adibah and Rhodhila.

Finding Topic for Research Paper

Finding topic for research paper is harder than what I think. It’s not that easy compared to position paper. I think it’s because this time, we need to compare two texts. Therefore, our focus will be wider. However, for this assignment we can also put our references that we use in order to complete this assignment. Therefore, it helps to make this assignment longer and KUKUH. Actually, I have been thinking about the topic all the time but I still cannot find the suitable one. I asked a few of my friends to see what story they have chosen. Some of them did Educating Rita and Pygmalion, Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice, Kate Chopin’s short stories, and many more.

For this assignment, I will be supervised by Dr. Nooreen Noordin. Before the break, she had a meeting with us to see our progress. After the meeting, I had a quite clear picture about some of her requirements; we can focus on one topic if we want as long as we make a deep research about it and the step to come out with a research paper is similar to position paper. The first thing that we must do is to write a thesis statement that will sum up everything about our research. Up to this point, I still haven’t chosen my topic because I am torn between these two poets; Wilfred Owen and William Blake. Well, Wilfred Owen is one of my choices because he was known as war poets. All his poems deal with issues of war. His poems are special and different from other poets because he wrote these poems based on his experiences going to war. So, this is why his poems are all about the futility of war and even though his choice of words is quite difficult to understand sometimes, it motivates me to keep on reading to get the underlying messages. On the contrary, I’m also interested to do a research on William Blake regarding his poem, “The Chimney Sweeper”. This poem deals with issue of child labour which is also attracts my attention. I hope by the end of this week, I can make a decision on which story should I go for.