Finally Finished.....

After writing my research paper for weeks, I have at last completed it. And I have handed in my final paper. I would say in doing my rserarch paper, I had learn more indetail about different societies and their way of thinking which is very much the same. While doing the research paper, I hardly had much references because the text I chose was Malaysian literature texts and as we know there are not much about MLIE texts online so I had to refer to MLIE books. Overall, I would say that my supervisor was real helpful in guiding me through the research paper writing. Now all I hav to do is cross my finger and hope to get good marks. Hopefully I will not be disappointed as I was in my position paper.

“THE END DEPENDS UPON THE BEGINNING”

“THE EMPEROR’S CLUB” is an interesting story of a group of students in the history class of St. Benedict’s Academy. I found out that his movie is based on a short story by Ethan Canin, “The Palace Thief”. Eventhough in the end, Mr. Hundert felt he has fail as a teacher, he says his other students taught him back. While watching the movie, I really think Mr Bell is such a spoilt brat and a nuisance. I admire how Mr Hundert managed to keep quiet and tolerate such a behavior although lucky Mr Hundert made it a point not to let Mr Bell win by cheating in the “Mr. Julius Caesar”. It is such a pity that even after 25 years; Mr Bell still had the guts to cheat in the rematch of “Mr. Julius Caesar”. However, eventhough the final three participants was not suppose to be Mr. Bell but instead Mr. Blythe, I would say that Mr. Bell did not do wrong by providing a chance to Mr Bell to show that he has talent. Mr. Bell only did not see that opportunity coming and did not make full use of it. One thing that I have learnt from this movie is that as a teacher if we cannot change one person for the better, there are many others that we have changed and over the time, there are many more people that we can change.

HISTORY BOYS...

Last class we watched an interesting British movie” History Boys”. It’s a story on how a teacher teachers a group of boys to express themselves in history subject. He directs his students to express an outstanding and original point of view even if they don't believe a word of what they say or they do not agree on it. I really enjoy the style of teaching the history teacher has. Bringing his students to historical places is a fantastic idea besides just looking down at book the whole time. I would say visual is one good and effective way to learn and remember. I wished I learnt history that way during my school days. With all the efforts of a teacher, all his students were granted into Oxford. I would say this story is a simple story with a smooth story line.

Research Paper Outline…

Once I have discussed my thesis statement with my supervisor, I proceeded with the outline of my paper. After handing in my outline, today I received comments on my outline and it has been approved…hurray to me! For many days I was in fear that my outline was not going to be approved probably because of irrelevant points. However I was wrong, my supervisor said I had sufficient points and can proceed to my draft. I can now start with my 1st draft. I have chosen to discuss two Malaysian literature texts in my research paper. Both the literature texts are “Mala’ by K.S Maniam and “Josh and Gold” by Shirley Lim. I could say it is not that easy to do a research on both this texts but not too tough. I hope I can complete the research paper without much difficulty as I would say that both this texts are Malaysian texts and the language and settings are familiar to me. In addition, I enjoy reading both this short stories. The sad part is there are no online references for any of the texts or even the author’s background. I spent so long trying to find at least the background of the authors and it was unsuccessful. The only resort left is to refer to books. Lucky I do have a few MLIE books that we used during the previous semesters. It will take time for me to write the whole biography of the authors and the summary of the two stories as there is no references. Time to start drafting my 1st draft.

Worth watching “FREEDOM WRITERS”

Last class we were given a movie “Freedom Writers’ to watch. For me this is a real great inspiring movie. If I am to count, I can confidently say that I have watched this movie almost 10 times since they played it on Astro few years ago and still recently. In this movie, we can see how a teacher tries all sorts of methods to make her class full of multiracial students to mix with each other and work together without differentiating themselves. It is definitely not that easy of a task and I would say to be that teacher is real inspirational.
Asking students to write journals on what they want is a real good idea and I would say it is one effective way to learn more about your students. Using this method enables students to freely express their feelings that have been trapped in them. That’s why it is called Freedom Writers! I remember in lower secondary school, my English teacher asked us to write a journal once a week. Exactly like in the movie, it was kept private. Only my teacher will read the journal and leave some comments and encouragement.
All those out there who are going to be teachers and who are already teachers go and watch this movie “Freedom Writers”. There is a lot to learn in one movie.

"The Long Walk To Freedom"

The last class with Dr. Edwin this week, we went through an autobiography of Nelson Mandela, “The Long Walk to Freedom”. The description Mandela gave in his cell and the things happened in the prison provides a clear picture of how people were treated in the prison. He was moved from one prison to another many times as a way not to make him and other prisoners comfortable in one place. This is one way to give psychological torture so it will disorientate a person and emotionally break your will. Nelson Mandela spent most of his youth in prison. Reading his autobiography passes a message that he was sending out, he is not fighting a personal battle but a battle for everyone. Mandela refused to wear the long trousers he requested because all the others were not given long trousers to wear. Mandela is willing to sacrifice wearing the long trousers because of the inequality of his friends and the other black people there.

Using autobiography in class is effective and interesting. Students might get bored over the time just reading literature and their text books. Therefore by using autobiography, it will capture students attention because it is something different that what they everyday learn. In addition since this kind of text is referential, students would not face much trouble in understanding the meaning/message/idea in the text. Just by reading an autobiography in class, students will be able to understand and have an idea about a person, their beliefs, their point of view; their experiences as well as it can inspire students.

Marginalised Literature

Dr. Edwin read to us several poems in class which were all feminist writings. Dr. Edwin discussed about the marginalized literature which refers to writings by minorities. In marginalised literature, female writers emerged much later because of the patriarchal society that only resulted in more male writers. Because of this, many female writers were not taken seriously. Even, Mary Anne Evans used a male pen name, George Eliot when she stated writing. One of her famous writings was “The Mill on the Floss”. Some of the feminist writings that we read in class were “For My Husband” and “The Rose” by Erica Jong and “Becoming a Woman” by Hilary Tham. These poems are real interesting and I admire the way the poems were written. All the message or ideas were written indirectly and some writings are on feminist issues.