Meeting Shirley and Phui Nam

It was such a pleasure to meet Shirley on last Thursday. This was my first meeting with an English author. When I was young, I did meet with some Chinese authors before. I was happy that I had this honour to listen to Shirley's talk. When I first reached the hall before the meeting started, I bought her book Among the White Moonfaces from the counter. I did not have time to read the book yet, I will do so during my long break. When Shirley talked about her latest novel in the meeting, I felt that a writer will still write in a way that will ensure the sale of his or her book.
Yesterday, Mr Wong Phui Nam came to our class for an afternoon talk. I personally appreciate him because he is such a knowledgeable man. He is very humble and I could see that he was a bit nervous to talk in front of us. But when he was deep into his talk about his feels and thoughts, he was very natural and there was a light on his face. I like his sensibility. I am hoping to attend his creative writing workshop and also the play Anike.

Simulated and tense

Another simulated teaching session that will be carried out before our semester ends really makes most of us feel tensed and pressurised. In my opinion, King Lear is a very complicated and difficult text. Even when we study the text, we have difficulties in understanding the text explicitly and implicitly. However, we have have to teach the text at this moment to students, which is certainly a very challenging task. I had spent a lot of time trying to find an appropriate extract to portray the characteristics of Lear's daughters. This is because one will not find a single extract that will contain all the criteria that one wishes to work on. After cracking my head, I managed to find an extract that portrays Cordelia's traits. One will find that Lear has all the negative connotations for his daughter. In the contrary, France values Cordelia as an unprized precious maid. I will try my best to carry out this teaching.

Pinter's The Homecoming

Wow! Interesting! I just came back from a stage play that ended two hours ago. I would say that it was an amazing experience for me to watch a live play for the first time. Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming, that was the show I watched tonight, left me to think a lot about the human or family relationship. The play was about Terry’s homecoming with his wife, Ruth, after six years of living in America. One would find that all the members in the family were so much in unstable emotions and anguish. They were all different, even Ruth was different. She flirted with all the other brothers in the family in front of her husband’s eyes. How weird it is! Another thing that I would like to mention is that I could not stand the smoke of both cigarettes and cigars caused by the father. I was close to the actors as I took the seat at the second row. However, I enjoyed the play very much and I especially liked the lighting of the play. I was captured by every move of the actors. I enjoyed scrutinising other characters’ facial expressions while one talks in the play. The ending of the play was shocking because the family would ignore a dying person who fainted on the floor while they were busy buzzing around the flirtatious Ruth. Lastly, I would say that KLPAC is placed in a beautiful park which is in tranquillity and serenity.

Desires......................................

A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennesse Williams is a play deals very much with the theme of illusion and fantasy. The protagonist in the play, Blanche, is a thirty-year-old lady who dwells in her own illusions. This is why she keeps telling lies to people around her because she could not confront the truth and also her own weaknesses. She is a very inconfident person who loses her faith in herself day by day as she grows older. How sad if one has to put herself in her own fantasy world just because she could not face her real true self and reality of life. On the other hand, Stella also is a victim of her own illusion. She has married an abusive and brutal man but she does not intend to make a change. In the end, she chooses to let go of her own sister but stay with her wild husband. I think this thene is even relevant to our life because we do find someone that they do not believe the truth because that will lead to the tragedies and problems which they do not wish to confront with. However, avoiding a problem does not promise the resolution of the obstacles.

Educating Rita? My Fair Lady? Pygmalion!!!

Pygmalion
The legendary sculptor.

Image by permission of the online edition of © Bulfinch's Mythology.Permission is limited exclusively to the Encyclopedia Mythica.



Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, interesting! When i read the play, the feeling is just like reading Educating Rita, a play by Willy Russell. When I was young, i did not quite enjoy the movie My Fair Lady, most probably because I did not understand the language issue that is discussed in it.
Pygnalion discusses about education, which I think it influences an individual's personal growth a lot. Education will train a person how to behave and know which is right or wrong. For the cas of Eliza, she makes up her mind to be more educated than she was, so that she could work in a flower shop or even be a duchess! However, the product of education does not succeed in its best way in a short time of period. Look at just how we educate a child, we take at least eleven years to nurture him and prepare him to face the world with his learned things. It takes time to learn. Therefore, Eliza can act as a duchess, but that is not her, that is just her acting.

An Uneasy Task

This week is the third or fourth week that we are going through our simulated teaching. I find that it is really a challenging work to do. Firstly, the most important thing is the suitability of the activities that one is going to carry out. There are many factors that a teacher needs to consider to do an activity in the classroom. Students’ language proficiency is one of the factors that influence a lot. Besides that, one has to ensure that the activity provokes students to think about the issues that are involved in the literary test.
Secondly, the language used is very important. As a teacher, not only one has to speak without any grammatical mistakes, but also give instructions and utterances that are clear and prompting. This is really not an easy thing to do and one needs time to improve on the language used in order to speak like a teacher.
Lastly, confidence and active interaction with students are what one needs in the teaching lesson. Standing in front of the class, one needs enough confidence and courage to carry out the planned activities. Without these, even the best lesson plan will lead to failure. Besides that, students will only be attracted to an interactive teacher because no one will like someone who talks to the wall.
evelyn
28.2.2006

Edgar Tom

King Lear, Act 3, scene 3:Edgar
"Through the sharp hawthorn blows the cold wind"


I like the characteristics of Edgar in the play especially when he disguises himself as Poor Tom. It is very funny when he keeps saying nonsense like “Do de, de, de. Sessa! Come, march to wakes and fairs and market-towns. Poor Tom, thy horn is dry” (act II, scene VI).
Edgar is really a good and filial son where he becomes serious again when he finds that his father, Gloucester, attempts suicide. He does not want his father to die though he disowns him before this. He refuses to see him in despair and wants him to live. Edgar awakes his father when he says “Thy life’s a miracle. . . . /. . ./The clearest gods . . ./. . .have preserved thee” (IV.vi.55, 73–74).
Edgar is a very encouraging son who not only stops Gloucester from thinking about death, but also shocks him into a rebirth.