position paper

During tutorial with Mr Omid we were given the 10 texts to work on for our position paper. They consisted of a few poems and the others short stories and myths and legends. Some of it we had worked with in previous courses with Dr Edwin such as Boys and Girls by Alice Munro, The Great Injustice, and also The Open Window by Saki.

I still haven't decided on which text I'm going to work on. I thought I need to ponder in each texts before I make my decision. I read all the texts and try to get an indepth understanding of each texts and value its potential issues to discuss about. However, I found that it was hard for me to grasp the underlying motives of the myth of The son of Turtle Spirit (a chinese legend). It tells about how a turtle impregnated a girl by disguising as a man and come to her at night. When this was found out it were killed by the girl's parents. The heart-broken girl collected his deceased husband's bones and kept it in a pouch. when their son was born he was not given the attention a child his age should get with the thought that he was not deserving. When one day this boy saw an advertisement that offered a fortune he did'nt hesitate and ask his mother's blessing. His mother told him to put the wealthy's family ancestor's bones at the horn of the dragon and put his father's bone in the mouth instead. The boy then became a great man.

It seemed to me that it was dense with chinese beliefs and folklore without any strong coherent message imbued, but rather a collection of shared social values. Therefore, I think perhaps the society in that era used tales to impose values and social rules towards its member in a subtle way. Tales had been presented as a form of oral storytelling or presentation to the youngsters as a form of entertainment to fill pastimes. This had been the practice through ages therefore the tales preserve the essence of beliefs and values of the society.

Nowadays, tales no longer circulated in our society by word of mouth, but rather becoming more exclsive and elusive, an antiquities in the libraries for those who seeks for wonderments. We can see its effect in the way we easily holds onto the western culture, since it was the only way of life we know and had been exposed to, oblivious to the way our ancestors had lived

Readings and project work for teaching literature in ESL context

At first I had no clear idea of what this course would offer me and what we were expected to do. But the minute we were handed the reading materials I was secretly elated. First of all I had always this affinity towards literature and the materials given were interesting that I could not stop myself from reading it when I was intending to only have a glimpse through. We were given literature materials that is mythological in nature and also those that is bibliographical/ biographical. I have to say that even though reading myths and legend exciting but it might also be confusing due to its classical language structure and choice of words. It felt like invading somebody's privacy reading the diaries entries, but it is also interesting pieces of writing that allows us to look at world through their perspectives. This is the second week of lecture... we have only been working on Pyramus and Thisbe. There were a lot of terms and people and places that were unknown to us. I did some research online to help me in understanding the story.