Learning Log 7

" Madam, your mother craves a word with you" 
" Mary bachelor, her mother is the lady of the house and a good lady..."
  Even though the 'play' is over, these lines in the script Romeo and Juliet will always be etched in my mind. This is my second time acting and I act as the role of a nurse in Romeo and Juliet. From this 'play', I now realized that being an actress is not an easy job at all. I have to memorize the lines beforehand, and while saying my lines, I have to have emotions in it or else it will be monotone. In order for me to act out my role as a nurse, whenever I rehearse with my group members, I will always try to think that I am really a nurse so that I can act out more naturally in my role as nurse. I find my role quite easy to act as compared to the other members who acted Capulet, Tybalt, Romeo and Juliet. After that Thursday-the actual day of the 'play', I personally felt that I fare greatly. I did not forget my lines as I usually might do during rehearsals and I also felt that my group fare greatly too as everyone did their best and put in their emotions while saying their own lines, especially Liang Wei. It was a really great success considering all the hard work we have done.
During rehearsals, there are hiccups on the way. One example is that all of us cannot meet up as a whole group as we are all very busy with our ccas and our studies. Another thing is that when a person forgets his/her lines while acting, we will have to rehearse it all over again, so this takes a lot of time. However, overall, we still managed to overcome all these hiccups.
In my opinion, I would recommend this program to my juniors as this program can help those quiet ones to speak out more and they will further understand how important teamwork is.
Through this program, I would really like to thank Mrs Woo on helping and guiding us on how to go about acting in Romeo and Juliet.  

Learning Log 6

"My love is like a red, red, rose" 
"My love is like a melody"


These are phrases from a poem written by Robert Burns. They are what we called simile. 
Simile is one kind of literary devices that I have learnt during the past week. It is a comparison between two distinctly different things, indicated by the use of 'like' and 'as'. There are other different kinds of literary devices such as personification, metaphor, oxymoron and many more. I find most of the literary devices quite easy to understand as I have learnt it last year. Literary devices are fascinating to me as a literary device can make such a big effect on a poem like the one written by Robert Burns or just a text. It helps the readers to better understand what the poem or text is all about as it convey a certain meaning to  the reader. The effect that is 'made' from the literary device can also struck a feeling in the reader. This makes literary devices all so fascinating! 
Personification is the literary device I like most. It is the attribution of human beings to inanimate objects. Examples of personification are: " the sun is smiling" or " the wind whispered into my ear". I think it is kind of fun knowing that an non-living object can also be alive in poems or texts, don't you think?
That is all that I have learnt from literary devices. I hope to learn more of such fascinating stuffs! :)

Learning Log 5

It seems like a long time since i have write again. Now, i am writing on my fifth learning log! Like all the other literature lessons, I will always gained lots of knowledge in them. However, this time, Mrs Woo told us to read up on a booklet on how to tackle with unseen poems or prose and on how to write an excellent literature essay. Once again, after reading the whole booklet, I have learnt and knew more on how to tackle with these questions in the exams. 


Now, let me tell you more on 'What I Have Learnt'...........


From the booklet that Mrs Woo had given me, I have learnt that we must read an unseen  prose passage thrice. For the first reading, it is just normal reading. For the second reading, we must know who are the characters and how they relate to each other. Also, we have to observe the mood and the setting but the tricky part is the third  time you read it. We will have to annotate the text as we read and make notes in the margins. We must take notes of where we might find answers to the various questions and quotes to support them. I learnt that we should not quote long sentences and make general statements without explaining why.  It is more or less the same instructions to do for reading an unseen poem. 


NEVER never just say what is happening, even if the answer asks you to do just that. Whereas we should use the method PEEL to help organize your answer. P- point, E- explain/elaborate, E-evidence and lastly L stands for link. If you do not know how to quote, you should use the ABCs method. A is for attention, B for brief and C for context.


As for writing an excellent essay, firstly, we must have a clear awareness of the text's meaning,  logical interpretation of the text, a detailed analysis and evaluation of the text and finally, an insightful response to the text. The steps on how to demonstrate each of these levels in the essays is quite easy. All we have to do is follow these steps: Comprehension, Interpretation, Analysis by Identifying techniques and by Tracking development, lastly Insight and response.


That would be the end of my 'What Have I Learnt' !!! I can't wait for the next lesson and hope that i will gain more knowledge on the next lesson. Ciao! 

Learning Log 4

After numerous literature lessons, i am now writing my forth learning log. It seems as if it is just yesterday that i have written my third learning log!
That is not my main point.Last Wednesday, my friends and i had the priviledge to perform the three witches in Macbeth in front of Mrs Woo. This time, i found myself in the company of Huimin and Calisa.Both of them are quite a loud speaker... a perfect group for me since i am kind of shy. Anyway, all of us tried our very best to act in this skit as this was our first ever perfomance in class, thus we were all very determined to give it all and show our talents in acting to Mrs Woo.
At first we did have some difficulties in preparing the skit, especially the props and the time management. We barely had enough time as all of us had SYF but we still manage to prepare the skit :) On that very day, we still had some problems as our prepared slides could not produce the sounds that we had initially save it together. Luckily, we solve the problem at hand.When it is our group to perform, i was surprised that our perfomance was better than i thought!!
I cannot wait for the next perfomance in Semester 2! - Romeo and Juliet.

Learning Log 3

Time flies! Two sensational Literature lessons have past and we are on our third.Like what I have thought, the lesson was awe-inspiring. It was kind of different than the second but still, I have to say that I had lots of fun!

We were still discussing on the topic of "Superstitions" but unlike the second lesson, like i have said earlier on,we discussed more about "Predictions" in our various groups. Mrs Woo had told us to recall an incident when someone had predicted something and it came true. I guess many of us will find this question quite difficult as they will need to think of a true story. Some of them either could not think of anything or made up a story as it did not happen to them before. As for me, I did not felt it was quite a challenge as something like this had happen to me before. The story was like this: My mum once dreamt of a picture on a market on the day of one of my Chinese exam. I studied on all the pictures on a market and when it is my turn to take the exam, I found that all my "studies on markets" had not been in vain. I guess it was fate that my mum dreamt of this picture

I was grouped together with Rebecca, Tarif and Jeron and in the end, my story was chosen as it was the only true story in the group.After rephrasing the sentences, Tarif was the one who read my story. Everyone in the class was surprised as they all gasp when told the story. I have found that others were also interesting and some were kind of scary,like Amanda's story. Fortunately, it was not true.

Anyway, I had a wondrous time and tons of fun. I enjoyed the lesson very much like the and I hope that the next lesson will be as entertaining as this lesson had. (I bet it will!) 

Learning Log 2

 I have learnt that superstitions are unreal and it is formed when people are uncertain about things. For example: When you see a black cat means bad luck. I believe some of the superstitions like “Never open an umbrella in the house or ghosts will come.” So I do not play in the umbrella at home. I guess it is better safe than sorry!

From the story Macbeth act 1 scene 1, there are three witches at the start of the story. Well, in my opinion, I think that someone in the story (maybe the main character) might die. This is because witches usually mean death as they wear black clothes. Black clothes are usually worn during a funeral. Maybe this is also some kind of superstition. After that lesson about Macbeth, I realized that acting can be so difficult. We have to make high pitch voices to match the witches’ voices. We also have to act like a witch! You have to be daring and courageous to act in a play, or else it is not that fun anymore. I like to act as I think it is kind of fun and exciting, not boring. I am not very fond of acting as witches but maybe as other characters?

Anyway, I felt that we should act some other characters and keep practice acting in front of the whole class. This can help overcome stage frights and increase our confidence in acting plus practice makes perfect!

That is all.

Thank you                                                                          

Learning Log 1

From the Literature lesson, i have learnt how a Cinquain is written .This is my first time i have come across this word Cinquain. I realised that a Cinquain is actually quite easy to write as it does not requires the need for any words to rhyme. To write a Cinquain, you only needs five lines. The first line is for the title( one word), the second is the description of the title (two words), the third is the action(three words).The fourth and the fifth lines is for the feelings(four words)and the reflection on the title (one word). These things are what i have learnt during Literature lesson.

To me, i think that it was a interesting and fruitful lesson. I think that it is a good idea to showcase our written Cinquains to the whole class as we can see each other's mistakes and we can correct them. In my opinion, I suggest that we could find examples on Cinquains on the internet so that we students can write better Cinquains based on these references.