edu3234: project paper ( Ist meeting with Dr. Arshad)

My group member consists of 9 people including me. Mimi, Yin Chean, MinHui, Auni, Geeta and me managed to attend the first meeting. The other two members went back home .We met at 9am today at Bilik Am FPP. We discussed about our project paper which will contribute 40 percent of our overall marks for this course. I asked whether I can use the same text as my position paper and Dr. Arshad said that he has no problem with it. He insisted us to put quotation for our research papers or else he will penalize us for it. He also suggested us to make comparison between two texts in our task. Dr. Arshad wanted to see our first draft in two week’s time.
At 11am today, Auni and I went to FPP library to search for the suitable materials. Unfortunately I left my pendrive at my room so I just jot down the important and useful points in a piece of paper. Hopefully, I will manage to retrieve all the info later. Right now I am having problem in trying to connect the theme in Barn Burning with the theme of A Rose for Emily but until now, I have no idea how to make the idea tally each other. I have read at a website which commented that these two texts actually portrayed the conflict within one self. I think the best way to do it is by asking for Miss Dzeelfa or my friends’ opinion. Who knows maybe I can gain new insights from them.

edu3234 feminist writing

Feminisms poem by Hilary Tham and Erica Jong portrays woman’s pride. The puberty experienced by women is portrayed in poem “Becoming a Woman.” This poem should be read by both genders since it will definitely benefit them. For men, they will understand the process women undergo in their life and for women they may learn something new from this feminisms works. A married woman’s feeling also can be discovered in feminisms works as in Erica Jong’s poem “For My Husband”.

In sum, marginalized literature should be acknowledged by people around the world. After all, up until now most works’ published are not centred around women, thus women’s issues are seldom being portrayed in literature texts. The society should appreciate feminisms writing as it provides variety of literary texts to be read on.

edu 3234 zoo story

On 21 July 2009, Dr Jaya entered our class and promoted ICELT, a conference organized by him. I do not think I managed to go there since I have already faced financial problem. After all, I felt so embarrassed to ask money from my sister. I need to carefully organize my budget for this semester so that the money would be enough until this semester ends. Miss Dzeelfa started the class quite late this evening. She discussed on the text I received earlier this morning. After the first reading, I failed to make sense of the story. I am also unable to understand the gist of idea of it. Then, Miss Dzeelfa’s explanation about the playwright made me realized that I have heard of the name Edward Albee before. He is the one who wrote ‘The Sandbox’, a play that I learnt in the previous semester. Edward Albee is famous for his theatre of absurd.

On the second reading of the reading, I managed to trace a few important details in the play and i felt relieved that I finally understood the storyline of this play. Then, we were asked by Miss Dzeelfa to create three supporting details from the text to support a given thesis statement, “Jerry’s death signifies the birth of his pride and dignity.”At first, my group was able to find two supporting details to support it. Fortunately before the presentation started, a group member of mine suggested the line that is suitable as the third supporting detail.

The last part of the lesson is the discussion of the questions stated by Miss Dzeelfa in the handouts given. For me, it is silly to create a scene in which you force somebody to kill you. Life is so precious and we should not end our life like that. After all, I think Edward Albee is such a brilliant person since he managed to come out with that story. The unexpected event is beyond my thinking.

edu3234 thesis statemet for position paper

Last night, i worked on my position paper . I choose a short story by William Faulkner, 'A Rose for Emily". Actually, i don't like such a gloomy story which portrays the life of a fallen aristoctarac family. I love romantic story..hehe...Well, there's a long story happened before i picked up this story. I wanna avoid sexually-related topics and topics which are quite sensitive like racial and religious issues. So, here i am...cracking my brain to really understand the story... I'm even looked through my big red Oxford dictionary for the meanings of words which i'm unfamiliar with....haha...there's a long time ago since i opened up that dictionary...seriously, i think i need to do my very best in this assignment so i'm willing to invest time and energy to do it. Wish me luck..hehe

edu3234 bio-poem

I enjoyed my class today. Part of the reason why i said is because of the activity itself. We practiced bio-poem today, 11 August 2009.. This activity is easy as we have already being given a template and we just need to fill in the blanks with appropriate words or phrases about our dearest friends. I benefit a lot from this activity as I knew my friends better in terms of their likings and their interests.

My activity will definitely being a refreshment into our student’s interest of literature classroom. They will be given a ‘room’ to express themselves through poems. The template given to write bio poem will serve as their guides on how to write it.
Instead of writing a poem to my partners, i will dedicate this poem to myself. This is what i have done in the class today:

Shazrina
Cheerful,Talkative, Sentisive and sometimes outspoken,
A big lover of shopping,
Who loves variety colours of shirts, plenty of shoes and money,
Who is afraid of snakes, worms and
Who wants to see crystal clear beaches, lots of food to be eaten, and my famliy and friends happy,
Residents of mum and dad’s heart,
Shazrina Mustapa.

edu 3234 literary canon vs marginalized literature

Today, we learnt about literary canon, marginalized literature and feminisms. Literary canon refers to a classification of literature. A group of literary works that are considered the most important of a particular time period or place will be considered into literary canon. The works that had been accepted into the canon are widely read such as William Shakespeare’s works. Nevertheless, marginalized literature indicates the social process of becoming margin. This work is opposite of literary canon since it is not well known and not even widely read. Marginalized writing brings up the works of minority group.

Literary canon is indeed important as it helps us the readers of literature texts to choose marvelolous and of course suitable texts to read on. However, we should also pay attention to the texts by minory groups which are good as well as our options when we want to teach in the classroom. A balance between these two will help us to provide the best resources to students.

edu3234 le morte d' Arthur

On 14 July 2009, we were instructed to answer questions from Sir Thomas Malory’s work, “Le Morte d’Arthur”. I searched on the internet for the resources. King Arthur, the main character in this story is believed as legendary British leader, he led the defence of Britain against Saxon invaders in the early 6th century. He befriended with wizard Merlin and became the King of Britain by pulling the enchanted sword “Excalibur” out of the stone of destiny. He was said established an empire over Britain, Ireland, Iceland, Norway and Gaul (France) during the early 6th century.

Actually, by reading information from the internet about this text surprised me as I have never been exposed to England legends before. Then, I remembered about quite a few movies in the cinema that had the same character as this legend. The name “King Arthur” and “Wizard Merlin” are quite famous as I have heard these two names before in the movies. To me, this information was really helpful as I began understand England’s history, which in my opinion, quite interesting to learn about it. I only remembered two movies that relates to this legend, one of them is The Da Vinci Code and another one is Tristan and Isolde.
I think that such information is helpful for English teacher-to-be like me since I can share this information with my students. It is indeed important for us to know this as it will broaden our knowledge about the historical background of native English speakers.