Blog 12: How Do I Evaluate My Friends’ Simulated Teaching?

Hi, everyone! There are several aspects that I consider most when I evaluate my friends’ simulated teaching. As I have said in my previous blog entry, the set induction activity should be interesting enough for the students. Instead of using pictures, teacher can also use songs, games and so on to attract students’ attention in the class. For the exercises, teacher must make sure that they are not too easy or too difficult for the target students. If the exercises are too difficult, students will have a hard time doing them and eventually they would just leave the exercise unanswered. However, if they are too easy, students will get bored and it is not surprising to see that they will start talking to each other and the class becomes so noisy. Furthermore, a teacher must also have a loud voice projection to enable students to hear the instructions clearly. Give a clear and easy- to- understand instruction so that the students get the messages that the teacher tries to convey. Lastly, a teacher should be a good example to students; dress nicely and show your passion and enthusiasm for teaching. I hope that all of us will be an excellent teacher in the years to come.

Blog 12: How Do I Evaluate My Friends’ Simulated Teaching?

Hi, everyone! There are several aspects that I consider most when I evaluate my friends’ simulated teaching. As I have said in my previous blog entry, the set induction activity should be interesting enough for the students. Instead of using pictures, teacher can also use songs, games and so on to attract students’ attention in the class. For the exercises, teacher must make sure that they are not too easy or too difficult for the target students. If the exercises are too difficult, students will have a hard time doing them and eventually they would just leave the exercise unanswered. However, if they are too easy, students will get bored and it is not surprising to see that they will start talking to each other and the class becomes so noisy. Furthermore, a teacher must also have a loud voice projection to enable students to hear the instructions clearly. Give a clear and easy- to- understand instruction so that the students get the messages that the teacher tries to convey. Lastly, a teacher should be a good example to students; dress nicely and show your passion and enthusiasm for teaching. I hope that all of us will be an excellent teacher in the years to come.

Blog 11: How Do I Want Others to Evaluate My Simulated Teaching?

Hello again, everyone! I have done my simulated teaching last week. I had chosen the play, A Streetcar Named Desire for my teaching because to me, the play is quite simple to understand. (I would like to thank Ira for being my teaching partner!) Before I do my simulated teaching, I always wonder what my friends (friends= students= evaluator) would say about my teaching. Do they would understand my instructions? Are my exercises too difficult or too easy for them to answer? Is my extract of the play appropriate to portray the characters’ traits? These are some of the questions that keep popping up in my head.
How do I want others to evaluate my simulated teaching? First of all, I would like all of you to know that I am not good at teaching. I still have stage fright when doing any presentation.
There are several aspects that I want my friends to take a good look at when I do my simulated teaching. For the set induction stage, I want to know whether the activity that I do is interesting to the students. From the peer evaluation checklist, I have found out that some of them find my set induction is interesting and quite plenty of them said it was too boring. Come to think of it, it is true that my set induction is boring because I did the same old thing over and over again which is showing some pictures (this time around, I use myself and Ira as the models- we got a bit technical problem that morning!) and asked the students to describe us. Cik Siti Norbaiti said that it is good for us to do something different, but the problem with using ourselves as models is that, we are subjected to criticism which will later lead to humiliation. I have to agree with her as I would never have thought that might happen to me if she does not tell me. The next aspect that I consider is whether my extract and exercises are all related to one another and appropriate for my students. Most of them said that they were okay. Well, I cannot say much about the exercises because we (Ira and I) did them in a short period of time. Last but not least, I want them to consider about the instruction that I gave, the language that I used and also my voice projection. Most of them said that my voice is too soft. Other than that, they said that everything else was okay; my language has few grammatical errors and my instructions are easy to understand.
To me, the peer evaluation checklist is very important because from it, I got all the comments from everyone in my class. With it, I know my strength and my weaknesses and I try to improve myself from time to time. I hope that I can give my very best during my teaching practice in 2 years time.

Blog 10: As You Like It

First and foremost, I find it hard to understand the dialogues of the characters in this movie maybe because the English used is of the Elizabethan era. As You Like It was written by William Shakespeare and it is hard for me to understand and comprehend almost all of his works that I’ve learned. Basically, the movie, As You Like It tells you about Rosalind the daughter of a banished duke and she lives among a community of Westerners living in 19th century Japan. When her father is suddenly banished, she is forced to flee for the Forest of Arden because she faces the risk of being executed by her uncle. Joining Rosalind on her flight to the forest is her cousin Celia, who helps her to dress as a man in order to avoid detection. Later, Rosalind meets her beloved Orlando, another exile like her while making her way to the Forest of Arden. She determines to use the disguise to get the devotion of Orlando. In the end, they lived happily ever after, after facing several challenges. As far as I remember, this is the first Shakespeare’s comedy that I know of (in Now Read On) because Shakespeare to me is famous for his sonnets.

Blog 9: A Streetcar Named Desire

Hi again everyone! I’ve read this play by Tennessee Williams before and I am very excited to watch this movie. The play that I’ve read is very interesting and I do not known whether the movie will be as good as the play. After watching A Streetcar Named Desire, I am satisfied with it because from my observation, the movie is much similar to the play. The story evolves around Blanche DuBois, Stanley Kowalski, Stella Kowalski and Harold ‘Mitch’ Mitchell. Blanche comes to New Orleans to seek refuge at the home of Stella, her sister and her brutish Polish husband, Stanley Kowalski. As the play progresses, readers get to know more about Blanche and the type of person she really is in contrast with the type of person she would like other people to think she is. Blanche is the protagonist of the movie but she degenerates into madness at the end of the movie. She cannot let go of her past and accept the present world because she lost the love of her life and she feels that she fails as a woman because her late husband is a bisexual degenerate. The present to her is very painful and she prefers to live in her own world without pain. The movie enhances my understanding of the play as I can see the setting of the play and how the characters in the play are portrayed in the film. In my opinion, this film is worth watching, especially to those who read/ learn A Streetcar Named Desire.

Blog 8: From A Flower Girl to an Elegant Lady…

Pygmalion to me is a very interesting film. The story evolves around a flower girl, Liza who is from a low class society and a phonetic professor, Henry Higgins. Liza seems to challenge the professor to teach her how to speak ‘standard’ English and how to behave like a lady. He manages to teach her all the things that are necessary to become a lady and throughout the learning process, he grows fond of her and eventually, he falls in love with her. He is very fortunate because Liza too loves him. From this movie, you might discover that when you learn about one’s language, you do not only pick up the language but also the culture and you can see this in the film when Liza seems out of place when she goes back to her previous neighbourhood. She feels awkward being around the flower girl and sees the girl as herself in the past. Frankly speaking, I like this film!

Blog 7: The Tragedy of Macbeth

Macbeth is the second film we’ve watched so far and I’ve heard there are more films to come. Well, let me tell you what I know about Macbeth. Macbeth is one of William Shakespeare’s plays. It had been staged and made into films for quite a number of times. The film that we’ve just watched is the 1971 production. To tell you the truth, I’ve never read Shakespeare’s Macbeth before but through this film, I manage to get the main idea of the play. The story is basically about how Macbeth together with his wife, Lady Macbeth are trying to gain power to rule Scotland. They manage to kill the King and Macbeth is crowned as the King of Scotland because the next King-in-line which is the King’s son ran away. Lady Macbeth eventually commits suicide. She is guilt ridden by her wrongdoings in planning the murder of the King. Because of his greed and arrogance, Macbeth is not well-accepted by his people. At the end of the film, Macbeth is beheaded by Macduff in a war to retrieve back the King’s throne. Macbeth’s triumph in becoming the King and his tragic death are all fulfilling the prophecies that is told by the three witches at the beginning of the story. All in all, this film is very interesting and a bit gory because the way Macbeth is beheaded is shown explicitly. I hope that I won’t get a nightmare tonight!

Blog 6: Shakespeare Wallah

Hi, everyone! The topic for my blog this time around is about the film that we’ve watched recently, Shakespeare Wallah. I do not know what to expect when I first heard we are going to watch this film. Even the title is alien to me. What is wallah? I’ve done some research and wallah is actually a person connected with a particular job, for example, office wallahs. This term is usually used in India. This story is about a family troupe of English actors traveling in India. Tony Buckingham and his wife Carla are the actor-managers of the troupe. They travel around the towns and villages giving performances of Shakespearean plays. Lizzie Buckingham, the couple's daughter, falls in love with Sanju, a wealthy young Indian playboy who is also involved in a romance with the glamorous Bombay film star Manjula. Through their travels we see the changing face of India as the old is replaced by the new, Maharajas become hotel owners, sports become more important than culture and the theater is replaced by Bollywood movies.

Blog 5: Teiresias, the Theban Seer

Teiresias was a blind prophet of Thebes. He appears in several stories and Greek tragedies that concerns Thebes such as Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex and Antigone, The Bacchae by Euripides and Seven against Thebes by Aeschylus.

Teiresias is not blind by birth but it is believed that he is blinded by Athena because he accidentally came across her while she was bathing naked. His mother, Chariclo who is Athena’s nymph begged her to undo the curse but she was not able to undo it, instead she gave Teiresias the gift of prophecy. Teiresias had served Thebes for 7 generations, beginning as an advisor to Cadmus, the founder and the first king of Thebes.

In Oedipus Rex, Teiresias is ordered to meet Oedipus to aid in the investigation of King Laios’ murderer. Teiresias refuses to give an answer; ‘Teiresias: Let me go home. Bear your own fate, and I’ll bear mine. It is better so: trust what I say.’ (Scene I, page 1392, line 105-106). He reveals the answer at last after being provoked by Oedipus. He loses his temper and reveals that it was Oedipus himself who had murdered King Laios, his own biological father. Oedipus was outraged and threw Teiresias out of the palace. At the end of the play, Oedipus realizes that Teiresias’ prophecy is true.

In a nutshell, Teiresias is an important character in Greek plays because his role as the prophet or the seer gives insight to the audience on what will happen in the later part of the play, thus contributing to the plot development of the play.

Blog 4: Stage Performance; an Actor for a Day

A drama or a play can be either open or closed. As a play text is mostly comprises of dialogue, it is up to us, the readers to imagine who the characters are, where they were at the time of the conversation, how they speak, what is their relationship with each other and so on. When you are working with an open text, you can interpret the text freely as the open text permits ambiguous stage directions. This is because the play writer gives little or no stage direction unlike in closed text where the stage directions are abundant and sometimes it is impossible not to follow them.

During the previous class, we were required to act out a play entitled ‘Bingo’ by Edward Bond. The play is an open text, so we are free to interpret what the play is all about. It is surprising on how many versions of the play that we can come out with despite its short text (only 10 lines!). Some of us interprets that the characters in the text were two strangers in a bar and another version told of kindergarten children who were eager to know what one of their friends was doing. Based on the characters that we have chosen, we consider the two most important elements in acting out a play which are the body gestures and the tone of voice. We did use a lot of our imagination to make the activity a success.

Blog 3: Different People Perceive Life Differently

Different people perceive life differently. The theme of life is common in poems and plays. Among the poets and play writers that use this theme in their works are William Butler Yeats, William Shakespeare and Sophocles.

In Shakespeare’s two famous plays; Macbeth and As You Like It, the characters in both of the plays perceive life quite differently. Macbeth feels that life is meaningless. He gives up on life. He sees life as a ‘walking shadow’ and a ‘tale’ that signifies nothing while in As You like It, Jacques compares the stage or the theatre to the whole life of man (seven ‘ages’ altogether). Although Jacques’ view on life is quite similar to Macbeth, he merely tells about the development of a man’s life while Macbeth perceives life as a ‘poor player’; a more negative statement than what Jacques perceives life is.

In Yeats’ Supernatural Songs, he perceives life as full of conflicts; Man must first ‘fight’ his body, then ‘struggled’ with his heart before struggling with his mind and finally he must ‘struggled’ with his faith in God. In Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, life seems to be lead by fate. Oedipus tries to escape from his fate but he did not succeed as it finally turns out that everything that had happened to him is his fate all along just like what the prophecy told; he will kill his father and wed his own mother. Both of the works by Sophocles and Yeats are similar to each other. This is because both characters of the two works endure suffering throughout their lives.

Based on all the examples given, it is true that different people have different views about life. Life should be celebrated even though it is full of challenges. Live life to the fullest!

Blog 2: Reflection of the Handout of Drama

In the second class, the lecture was based on the handout given to each of the students. To me, the handout really helps a lot because it serves as a guide for me. The handout is about the essential elements in drama. Although it is only comprises of main points, I still prefer the notes because without it, I will not be able to follow what the lecturer taught us that day. Furthermore, I will be having difficulties in spelling certain terms in drama such as ‘farce’, ‘catharsis’, ‘harmatia’, ‘hubris’ etc. These terms are alien to me. Let’s say that our lecturer did not provide the notes for us; it will be no problem if he spelled the terms for us but are we expecting him to spell all those alien terms for us? Not really! All in all, the handouts given are really helpful. It is not to say that we are too tired or too lazy to take down notes but as I said earlier, they serve as a guide and also as an aid in learning drama.

Blog 1: Reflection of the Test on Point of View (Narration)

Wow! This is the first time I’m writing a blog. How cool is that? I never really imagine myself writing a blog but here I am, WRITING A BLOG! Okay, let’s proceed to the core business.

I’m writing this blog as a requirement for the subject of EDU 3217: Teaching the Language of Drama that I’m taking this semester. During the first class session, we were required to answer several questions on ‘point of view’ (narration). I got really stunned and shocked because I don’t expect our lecturer will give us a test on our first day of class. Furthermore, I kind of get short-circuited on receiving the question paper. This is the result that you get when you study or revise just to pass your exams. Serves me right! I am quite grateful though because after several minutes of pondering, I managed to recall some bits and pieces on what point of view or narration is about. Although I did not manage to recall all of them, I am still able to answer the questions given. This test made me realize that I’m not suppose to study or do my revision for exam purposes only, but I need to learn anything (especially literature) by heart so that I will not easily forget.