a new perspective for reading.

I have the interest in reading story books since I was in secondary schools. They are mostly love story books. However,as time goes by and with the encouragement and recommendation given by Dr.Edwin, I feel that I have become more mature along with my interest in reading. I have expanded my reading materials to include non-fiction texts and ironically, those texts are now my favourite. After reading a few non-fiction texts such as The Last Lecture by Randy Paush and Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela, I have a whole new perspective about reading books. I am able to comprehend now with what people mean when they say reading is a discount ticket to everywhere. (Quoted from Mary Schmicd) It teaches me about life and widen my knowledge on what is happening around me. It is like a user manual that gives me some ideas on how to face the challenges in life. I am looking forward to obtain more reading texts especially those that are recommended by Dr.Edwin. I am confident with his taste of books..heheh

My final thesis statement......

After having my first thesis statement rejected, I was thinking of using another texts that discussed on issues that I was more familiar with. After searching through the texts that I had learned in the past 5 years, I decided on choosing the novel, "Sense and Sensibility". My first intuition was to write something on the positive side of the quality of sensibility because most of the readers seemed to think that sense was a better value and sensibility leaded someone to make irrational decisions. However, I faced some problems in justifying my points. So, I tried to look at another aspect which was on the character, Elinor. Besides being sensible, Elinor was not much of a chatterer, she often observe people and incidents that happened around her before making a statement or decision. Then it was like.."Bang! I got my thesis statement". My thesis statement was Elinor's silence is a mark of her self-restraint, trustworthiness, consideration of others and personal strengths. Throughout the process of forming my thesis statements, I had Jasmit to help me. She helped me to search for supporting statements to test out my thesis statement and restructured my thesis statement so that it was clearer. Thank you alot! Owe you big time!

Thesis statement for position paper!

During the tutorial session with Mr. Omid, he had explained to us on what thesis statements was about and what was the criteria of a good thesis statements. According to him, our thesis statements need to be argumentative, specific and based on our personal views of the texts. We can either do our position paper based on poetry texts, short stories, novels or plays. My first thesis statement was based on the short novel, "The pearl" by John Seinbeck. I chose to talk about the evilness of the pearl that had caused the downfall of Kino's life. However, when my other classmates were presenting their thesis statements and based on the comments given by Mr.Omid, my thesis statement will definitely be rejected as the idea was already mentioned by the author so it was not really my idea. So I was like, "Arg..god help me to think of one thesis statement" Furthermore, the facts that most of my friends had already come out with their thesis statements and Mr Omid had already approved them made me even more stressful and worried. I must come out with a brilliant thesis statement soon!!!!

Simplified text for Daedalus and Icarus

After having discussion of the text, Daedalus and Icarus in the class, we were told by Dr Edwin to come out with a simplified version of the text in order to be used to teach secondary school students. I believed that having a simplified text was useful in order to make sure that students understand the major events in the story especially for lower-level proficiency learners. It was better to get something than nothing. The reason for it was if we were to use authentic texts in the class but most students were not able to read it, what is the point? It will lower down their self motivation to read as the students felt they were not good enough. In this activity, we worked in group of 3, Pui looi, Jasmit and I were in a group. We discussed on the main events in the story together in the class but due to shortage of time, I volunteered to write out the simplified text based on the points that we had discussed. The simplified text was then given to Pui Looi and Jasmit to check for any grammatical mistakes and they can add in points if relevant. I think we worked well together. We were now anxiously waiting for Dr. Edwin's opinions regarding the simplified text.

The fall of Icarus.

I fell asleep when I read the text for the first time. It all seemed so confusing. Then i realized that the extract given in our texts was not a complete version. I was supposed to start reading somewhere in the middle when it started with Icarus's father trying to find a way back to their country and suddenly it all made sense. I believed that the proverb, "Curiosity kills the cat" can be applied as one of the moral lessons in this text. Icarus was warned by his father to fly in the midway as the heat from the sun might melt the wax of his wings. He obeyed his father's instruction at the beginning of their flying journey but he became more adventurous and went against his father's words as he wanted to fly higher like the birds. Due to that, the wax on his wings melted by the heat of the sun and caused him to fell from the sky and drowned. In a way, he represented a sense of freedom, Romantic spirit, aspiration and individualism as told by Dr.Edwin. This was proven when he tried to do something that he felt right and different from others. During the lesson, Dr Edwin asked us to bring a picture and a poem of the "The fall of Icarus", there were a various different pictures and poems. I managed to get the right picture but the wrong poem.
It was true that pictures said a thousand words. From the picture, we can see that there was a boy drowning with one of his leg still on the surface of the water. However, as a whole picture, we can see that the other characters in the pictures were not aware of what was going on around them. They were just continued doing their routine jobs as a farmer and fisherman. Well, what i can say from this picture was in life there were two choices one can make, they can either take the risks in doing something different and accept the consequences or choose a monotonous lifestyle where everything will always be the same and risk free. I was rather curious to see the expression of Icarus's father seeing the fall of his son but it was not shown in the picture. Too bad..

The Mahabharata

After reading the first the story, 'The Son of The Turtle-Spirit', I was rather looking forward to read the second myth story as the language used was rather simple and there were some sort of supernatural elements in the stories. In this story, there seemed to be a love at first sight situation when King Santanu proposed to the goddess Ganga upon seeing her. "You must certainly become my wife, whoever you may be." Although she had set some outrageous terms upon agreement to be his wife, the king still wanted to marry her. The decisions made by the king were indeed illogical because it was obvious that the goddness Ganga was a rather suspicious character and as a king, he can get anyone to marry him easily . Yet, he still obeyed to her requests. As the story developed further, the king's action became more insane when he chose to suffer in silence upon seeing his wife killed their children by casting them into the river, and then returned to the king with a smiling face. I think the king finally came to some senses when he stopped his wife from killing their eighth son. I did not understand the reasons why she had to kill her children and took her no eighth son with her and later returned him to the king. This story seemed somehow more complicated as it involved some aspects of the Hindus goddesses which I was not familiar with. The king and his son, Devavrata were happy with their life until the moment the king fell in love at the first sight for the second time with the beautiful maiden, the daughter of the chief of the fishermen. He wanted to marry her but the chief had requested that the son borne of this maiden should be the king after King Santanu. The king was wiser in making his decision as he was concerned about Devavrata. However when Devavrata knew about it, he on behalf of his father made an agreement with the chief so that the king will have the maiden as his spouse. Although the king seemed to be a weak character in this story, I did feel that he was a respectful character as he was loving toward his first wife and his son and tried to keep to his promise. Bhishma's willingness to give up the throne for his father's happiness made him a noble and godlike character. I believed that there might be some hidden message in this text and looked to the discussion in Dr. Edwin's class. Hopefully it matched my understanding of the text.