blogs...

It was a real disaster for me when I started my first blog. Anyway, things were so much easier after that. In fact; I started to enjoy blogging and reading other’s blog. A special thanks to our lecturer who had made the blogs as one of the requirements in this course. Blogging actually helped me in many ways. It is a way of being reflective. Studying is not merely reading books and answering test papers. Reflection is important to make sure how far we have learnt and understood what we have studied. Blogs regarding this course had helped to know how people think of plays and the issues in it. Everyone has a different way of looking at things.It was very apparent when I read my friends blogs as all of them have different perception on the same topics. All of us were dealing with same topics but none of us have the same idea on the topic. So, it is clear that blog guides us to be different from the other through the way of our thinking. We look at things from different perspectives thus we have different things to share about in our blogs. Reflecting about the plays through blogs encouraged me to enjoy reading the play. My focus has shifted from reading for exam to reading to appreciate the newness in the play. It was enjoyable to reflect about the issues in the plays to what we see and do in our daily life. I really love my blog on Teiresias. I would apply blog postings when I am a teacher because I realise blogs are a way to express ourselves. Students who are quite in classrooms may have brilliant ideas in mind. Blogs would be one of the best ways for them to show their creative thinking and application skills. Literature students should always be reflective in order to love literature.Blogs gives birth to a lot of reflective thinkers.So, I think it should be something familiar to all the students.

A meeting with the writer

Recently we had a meeting with a writer who had actually contributed on of the plays that we are dealing with in this semester, Mr.Kee Thuan Chye.I should tell that it was a great moment to see a well known writer from that distance because normally writers are the persons who would socialise less with ordinary people especially undergraduate students like us. Thanks for our lecturer who made an effort to give such opportunity for us. The way I imagined him to be was totally different from the way he was that day. He looks simple; with a broad smile always in his face. It was something different from other writers. I have seen writers who are very serious when they meet public but this man is an exception for all of them. The best part that I liked about him is his openness. It is very hard to see people who accept critics in a positive way. For an established writers like Kee Thuan Chye, I had never thought he would ask for our opinion about his play, The Swordfish, Then the Concubine. I mean, we are very young and immature to evaluate his piece of writing. His experience in writing is much longer than our age. I respect him for his way of thinking. He accepted our suggestions and critics and said he would consider about it next time. Isn’t that wonderful to have a writer who actually takes into account the need of the audience? At this time, many people write to satisfy themselves but not the readers. It is rare to find someone like him. He has instilled the interest to write among us. Writers are not born as writers. They had actually worked for it. Everyone has a talent. It’s just that no one cares to polish their talent to make something out it.Kee Thuan Chye had actually been an inspiration for many of us to start writing. The meeting with him was actually a starting point for many of us as young writers.

the satisfaction of teaching...

The last part of my micro teaching was the while reading activities. I have to admit here that the only part that gave me satisfaction was this part. I was glad to get some responses from my classmates in the form of answers for the questions. Here, I would like to be proud of myself as I had never provided the exact answers in any of my task sheets. What is the point of giving all the answers written in task sheet and pretend that the students have done it own their own? That is a kind of cheating. Actually, we are cheating ourselves by doing those kinds of things. Of course, it would help us to get marks when the students are able to answer the question on the spot and no one wants to lose their points. Anyway, what kind of satisfaction that we would get by that? As for me, I feel happier when the students can understand the questions and come up with their own answers although they take time and do mistakes. I helped them to arrive at the answer but I never put the answers on the task sheet. What happens when there is answer in the task sheet is everyone would be doing their own work and they would just answer the question when the teacher asks them. Although, it is only micro teaching, it is actually our first step in the career. As a teacher, I think honesty is important for us. Micro teaching does not really reflect how good we would be in future because we still have time to polish our skills. This is just training for us on how we would handle the subject. So, if we really do the best, I think we would not face any difficulties to get the response from our students. I am happy with what I have done for my micro teaching and I accept all the comments from the tutor because I know I’m not a perfect teacher yet. In future, I need to improvise my skills of teaching to make students enjoy my lesson.

I'm confused...

What can a teacher actually do for her pre reading activity? The answer is still vague for me. For this semester, we have been assigned to do micro teaching for three subjects and each of lecturers has different definition and expectation for the pre reading activity. Some say it must be done without introducing the text and some say it must be held with the text in the students’ hands. So, which is the actual way of conducting pre reading? I have chosen some extracts from the play “The Ring” and asked the students to match it with correct explanation. The extracts and explanations were related to the character traits of the main character, Raj. I thought that would be an introduction for the students to actually know about the character Raj in the play. I was still dealing with the text but I did not use the whole text as reference. For a change, I have chosen 8 small pieces of extracts from the play. After that presentation, the tutor commented me that what I did was not pre reading but actually while reading. He suggested that I should give the play and ask them find the characters in the play. Can’t we do any other activities for pre reading activities other than circling and highlighting the characters? Wouldn’t that be so easy for the students as they do not actually need to go through the play? They can just find the characters by looking at the side of the paper. The conclusion is I’m still blur of pre reading activity until now...

my set induction...

Set induction is supposed to be an eye- opener for the students on the topic that they will be studying on the day. As I had chosen the play “The Ring” for my micro teaching, I planned to show about demons in my set induction. At last, I had ended up with a video clip from the movie Twilight .I thought students would actually enjoy the video clip as it has some scary scenes where the vampire would suck the blood of the girl. Anyway, it was rather a great disappointment for me this time as i did not get the expected response from my classmates. Maybe, it was Monday bloom for all of them and they were still in their weekend mood. I was the first person to present early in the morning, so it might be one of the external causes for the failure of my teaching. But, I won’t put the whole blame on the other factors. Maybe, my approach was not good enough to grab their attention. I should have come up with more interesting presentations such as cartoons or songs to get their full participation in the classroom. I realise the importance of having interesting set induction now. If a teacher fails to attract the students at the first stage of the lesson, it will lead to the failure of the whole lesson. When my classmates who are aged 20 to 23 were not able to concentrate, how on earth would I expect the kids who are just 13 to 17 years to respond to my teaching? I think I badly need to talk to the kids in that age to know what actually interest them when it comes to learning. I should come up with activities that meet their expectation rather than simply picking up activities that I assume will interest them. In order to be a good teacher, I need to consider the students need too so that all my teaching would bring some impact to their learning. I do not want just to excite myself by teaching when the students are simply not listening to me because they feel it’s boring. Maybe, it’s time for me to meet the students to know what they want from a teacher.

Watch or read play????

My personal view on this question is to do both in order to learn to appreciate the effort that the play writers and directors put to come up with a good play .Recently our class started to have another activity which is watching play. I feel it is something beneficial for me as I enjoy watching the plays. There are so many things in the play that I cannot imagine or visualise especially for those plays of past era. So, through watching plays, I manage to understand to setting and lifestyle of the people in those eras. Setting really influences the story line of a play. For example, the play Oedipus Rex is an Athenian tragedy by Sophocles that was first performed in 429 B.C. Maybe, those who read the play will be able to understand it but it would be hard for them to really get into the play and enjoy it. Moreover, the texts that we read now are mostly translations of the original text. For example, when I read Oedipus Rex, I had difficulties to imagine most of the scenes because it was written many years ago and the writer would have something different in his mind when we wrote those words. Even a single word such as “garland” would have looked different in his era compared to the garlands now. Besides, reading dramatic scenes in the play leaves less impact than watching the same scenes in movie. So, I think it is good for us to have the movie session because in a way it exposes us to different eras. I am able understand the plays better when I watch the movies. Reading plays enable to understand the story and watching plays helps me to enhance my understanding of the plays. The movies give me extra knowledge of the play. We have already watched “Elizabeth” and “Macbeth”. Now, i am looking forward for the movie “Oedipus Rex” as we had already discussed the play in our class.

i am a writer too.....

At first I thought writing a play would be merely like writing a conversation between two friends. I only realise the procedures that a play writer should follow and the important things that a writer should consider when we were assigned to write a play. It took us a few days to arrive to the theme of the story. A simple conversation could be of any topics, but for a play that would be assessed; there are a lot of things to be considered. My group members had decided to write a play based on the theme friendship. We planned to give some suspense at the beginning of the play and reveal it at the end. I am not sure how far the situation that we created in our play happens in real life. Anyway, we enjoyed creating the dialogue and the incidents in the story.It were fully based on our imagination. I still remember a part when we ourselves were confused of the story and we read the play from the start to understand it. The play was only for 20 minutes but we spend a few nights to write and edit it. From this experience, I had learnt that it is not easy to convey a message through plays. Sometimes, we simply run out of ideas and stuck in the middle of the play. The choice of the exact word is very important for a play. There are situations when the words that we use in our play could not really create the expected effect from the readers. We did a lot of editing after our lecturer commented on our play. I saw my classmates’ reaction when they got back their play from our lecturer. Some escaped a great sigh when they got good remarks. Those who got “YAWN” comment were happily showing their papers to other classmates and they made fun of their own product. Apparently, what had been interesting for them in their play had been boring for the lecturer. Therefore, what we should take into account when writing a play is not how far it amuses us but the audience. This is why so many plays did not hit the target when it is being performed. Play writers should put the audience in mind before they write a play. Overall, it was a nice experience to write play on our own. I enjoyed reading my classmates’ plays too. This might be a starting point for many of us who plan to be play writers in the future.