MORAL VALUES FROM LITERATURE TEXTS

  
  I really admired the masterpiece from Che Husna Azhari. Before this, I only read novels for my leisure. When I come to this PJJ course, it opens my eyes that there are plenty of talented Malaysian authors. Through Malaysia Literature In English or MLIE, I can feel the scenario. It is sad that they are not been so recognized although they are so talented.
     One of the Form 1 Literary text is Of Bunga Telur And Bally Shoes by the talented local author Che Husna Azhari. At the beginning of reading, I can sense the beauty of ideas the author in this short story. Although it is simple short story but I learn a lot from the story. Through the story, I can see that it is important to live within one's means. in Malay culture, a wedding is a big event. The story teaches us not to overspend or borrow money unnecessarily then we can get serious trouble. it is also to be practical although we have to uphold the traditions and learn to solve problems carefully.

    This story also tells us to be patient and co-operate with others. Of Bunga Telur And Bally Shoes is indeed the correct and relevant literature text for the lower secondary school. I feel that the students will  learn something from this short story.Thank you to Dr Che Husna for the brilliant story she has wrote and thank you the Ministry of Education for giving the opprtunity to students to study this story in their literature component.

DRAMA OF OUR LIFE

 

      In EDU3217 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE OF DRAMA, I found it difficult at first and I also wonder why we need to teach them as one of the component part in Literature in school. The drama that assigned to us were King Lear by William Shakespeare, Oedipus Rex by Sophocles and The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde. to go through the language of drama that were published at their aged were extremely tough for me. Eventually, I can feel the beauty of these drama and I appreciated more of their works.

     Children benefit greatly from participating, even in small ways, in drama. They gain poise, self-confidence, and the ability to speak in front of others. They learn patience while they are waiting for their cue. They learn to be supportive when they have a small role, and they learn that they can't do it all alone when they have a bigger role. They learn to work as a team, take turns, and cooperate.

     Theater happens to be my personal favorite because in drama we pull together a wide variety of skills from different people and throw them all together. In addition to actors, dancers, and singers, a theatrical production needs good electricians, visual artists, carpenters... the possibilities do seem endless.

     And children stand to benefit from being exposed to the many individual and interconnecting disciplines in life.

WE ARE TEACHERS

                                                  

ARE WE FAIR ENOUGH TO OUR STUDENTS?

                   When in 1999 the Ministry of Education integrated the teaching of literature in English to all students in secondary schools as part of the English syllabus, amongst the aims of the components highlight contribution to personal development and character building, and broaden students’ outlook through reading about other cultures and world views. that short stories offered in the literature component does provide us with insights into cultural practices of others.  
        For example, in Ali Majod’s The Pencil, we are put in a situation where the boy, Zahid, was unjustly accused by the teacher, Mr. Jamal, of stealing a pencil and even hit Dolah, the boy he believed had stolen his pencil. It creates a flashback of a situation where perhaps we had also gone through some sort of accusation or had wrongly accused someone. When we put ourselves in the shoes of Zahid, or the selfish Mathilde in the Necklace, Heidi Munan’s patient Galau from How Dalat Got It’s Name and even any character involved in the short stories, it enables us to examine ourselves and also understand others. We tend to feel the way others have felt, why is it that they reacted in a certain way? What is it that led them to think in such a perspective? What are their concerns? What are the beliefs that they hold? We ask these questions in our head and go through the story from beginning till the end in search of an appropriate answer. We teachers, need to be more patients and try to be fair to our students.
             For me, literature components provided in Malaysians school a few years ago do provide us with insight into cultural practices of others, Malaysians and non- Malaysians. The Form 1 short stories selected revolve around the Malaysian context, which would depict various Malaysian cultural practices and aspects, issues and concerns of life, experiences and even the daily lives of people in Malaysia.

.....NOVELS.....

     ......Great Expectation by Charles Dickens, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, Wuthering Height by Emily Bronte and The Awakening by Kate Chopin. Those are the novels that we have to study for EDU3215 Teaching The Language of Novels with Puan Juridah Md Rashid in Semester 6. Those novels are good and gave me a big impact on the views of women roles.

       In Great Expectation and Pride and Prejudice,both novels have the common theme that is love and expectation in the context of human relationships. Love plays an important role in life and through love; one has their own expectation in life. Love lies in everyone’s heart. Love can be defined in various meaning. To find true love or soul mate is another matter in life. Great Expectation is written by the first points of view while Pride and Prejudice is written by the third point of view. These two novels are snobbish concern for status, especially in terms of appearances or show. The main characters in both novels have a very strong characterization.  Thus, at once, the question is held up to scrutiny, whether a man's wealth exists at least partly to secure a wife. 
       We do need love to shower our lives. Wuthering Height and The Awakening, their themes consist of strong loves. Indeed, love is everyone’s needed in life. Love is strong and passion. It grows and changes in one’s life. The strongest love develops the characters in both novels. They can therefore show us how the authors of this time became more daring and defiant in the creation of these characters. Kate Chopin was ostracized from society when The Awakening was first published. This was because her character, Edna made such a departure from the female characters of earlier nineteenth-century novels, which shocked and appalled her society. In Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte evokes us the character of Heathcliff. He becomes strong because he has love and also strong to fulfill his desires. 

     All those authors are brilliant. Their novels were written at their aged but the issues they highlighted still remains until now. Through the novels, I am more appreciate novels and also l learn a lot about life especially in women roles and what the women will do if they are facing those conflicts. It widen my experience about moral, love and women attitude.

Poems In MY Heart

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening  (1923)
Whose wood these are I think I know.

His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farm house near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives  his harness bell a shake
To ask if there is some mistake
The only other sound's the sweep
of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have to promise to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.  
                                                     ROBERT FROST (1874-1963)

     This is one of my favourite poems. It soothing me to imagine the woods covered with snow...pure and innocent! This is one of the poem we have to study in Semester 7, in EDU 3216 with Dr. Arbaayah Ali Termizi.

When I was a little girl, I love to read poems. Love to recite simple poem. Sometimes, when I wrote my diary, I try to express my feelings into a poem. Poems in English, of course. I feel satisfied on what I wrote although it didn’t well at all but it’s all about me. Only me and my poems. When I was in secondary school, my poems faded. I don’t know why. I just couldn’t find my calming time to write. All school stuffs need to be completed! When I was in college, when love came knocking my heart, I wrote poems again. Simple romantic poems I guess… when there was a paper on poems, I knew I’m going to enjoy them. From then on, I learn a lot about poems. Sometimes, there were certain poems that very difficult to analyze. 

     I realized the beauty of poems and they opened my eyes to see what happened around the world in different ages! I once dreamed to be a poet. A poet for myself. May be I can be one day. I know it’s impossible to be like Langston Hughes, Robert Frost, Shirley Lim or Hilary Tham. I just want to write about me, my family and the journey I had in my life. May ALL S.W.T bless all us. Amiin.

    

   

Literature... Experience Though Inspiration

      Dear friends, do you all still remember our assignment, EDU 3209 Literature In English Teaching Materials with Dr.Jayakaran during Semester 6? i do hope so. The title of the assignment was "Discuss the problems teachers face when trying to teach poems in the literature component." It is really puzzling for me!
      First, I have to reacall my teaching experience. I am a primary school teacher with 8 years teaching experience. The literature compenent has been introduce to the students of year 4,5 and 6. Literature is used in the language classroom in a single period every week in primary schools. The term literature is indeed broad and it does include rhymes and other literary materials that are used to teach language. Indeed, it was enjoyable to excellent students but for the low proficiency students, they just learn it as an ordinary lesson with nothing to enjoy.
      Secondly,i have to have a closer look at the Malaysian syllabus for the literature component that will reveal the purpose of incorporating literature into the language classroom. One of the purpose are to create awareness and understanding of content, issues and cultures. One big challenge, however, is for us to find ways to make the language, content, issues and culture accessible to learners with poor proficiency.
      I strongly advocate the teaching of literature. I am glad that we have a literature component in the language paper at both the primary and secondary school levels. Teachers seem to be getting comfortable with the idea of teaching literary texts in the language classroom. However, we have not seen of any findings from research conducted by the Ministry of Education on the implementation of the literature programmes at both the primary and secondary school levels. Through literature, they widen knowledge, see the other side of the world, understand people and perhaps learn a good lesson through literature.

MY CONCERN

HILLS LIKE WHITE ELEPHANT BY ERNEST HEMINGWAY

                When I was in Semester 6, in EDU3214 Teaching The language Of Short Stories, we were assigned to discuss the characterization of one the listed short stories given by Dr Edwin. I always admire him for his widest knowledge and experience. To be one of his students was a great opportunity for me.

He had listed 8 stories altogether. At first, I don’t know which is the best or the simplest story for me. As a PJJ student, time is very consuming. After I have read all the stories, then I knew that this is the story. Again, the story I chose is about woman and decision she that she make for her future.

The story is about a young couple but they are not married and the polemic issue of abortion. Though the word ‘abortion’ is nowhere in the story, it is doubtlessly understood through Hemmingway’s powerful use of two literary elements, setting and symbolism. The story defines a two-part theme. The first is a commentary about the way selfishness can corrupt a relationship. The second comments on life and what it means to bear life. Though the setting is heavily symbolic, and characters are drawn mostly in dialogue, both are strongly evocative of the theme.   

Everyday people make decisions that affect their future lives. The man wants the girl to do the abortion while the girl is not sure. The tension between the two is almost as sizzling as the heat of the Spanish sun. Conflict is created through dialogue as these characters face what most readers believe to be the obstacle of an unexpected pregnancy.

From the man’s point of view, the hills don’t look like white elephants, and the hills certainly don’t have skins. The girl, however, have move away from the rational world of the man and into her own world of the intuition, in which she seemingly knows that the things that she desires will never fulfilled. This insight is best illustrated when she look across the river and sees fields of fertile grain and the river, the fertility of the land, contrasted to the barren sterility of the hills like the white elephants. She, of course, desires the beauty, loveliness, and fertility of the fields of grain, but she knows that she has to be content with the barren sterility of an imminent abortion and the continued presence of a man who is an inadequate. What she will ultimately do is beyond the scope of the story.

                During the very short exchanges between the man and the girl, she changes from someone who is completely dependent upon the man to someone who is surer of herself and more aware of what to expect from him. At the end of their conversation, she takes control of herself and of the situation: She no longer acts in her former childlike way. She tells the man to please shut up and note that the word “please” is repeated seven times, indicating that she is overwhelmingly tired of his hypocrisy and his continual harping on the same subject.  

               Actually, deep in my heart I am very concern of these phenomena. The pregnancies out of wedlock and abortions among teenagers are our critical social ills nowadays. As a muslim, a teacher, a woman and a mother, I always pray to ALLAH S.W.T that all of us will be always protected by HIM. Amiin…