By doing the practice papers, I’ve realized I definitely need to reread the books and go over my past notes because I get the stories mixed up. But at the same time, I start to learn how to structure my answers and how to work under time constraints. So while it is kind of boring, [...]
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This book is the one I enjoyed the most for Part 4. We learned about the history of slavery in America before reading the book and I think this helped me have an interest because I could sort of imagine it in real life. While I couldn’t relate to most of it because first of [...] This book is really different from the other books that we have read so far because its more about the thoughts rather than the actions. At first its kind of hard to distinguish whether its the thoughts of the author or the characters. But as we find out, more so than the plot, this book [...] I actually liked this novel a lot more than I expected. The characters were the most interesting part of the novel. I couldn’t really understand the housekeeper. I wanted to know whether or not she really understood the governess or whether she was on the children’s sides.She seems to be the only one that [...] The first thing I noticed when reading Heart of Darkness was that there was a lot of mention of ethnicity. For example on the first page where Marlow is sitting representing a Buddha “idol” and the description of the map. Also Heart of Darkness is full of irony, starting with the title itself. The heart [...] Helen Vendler analyzed “On first looking into Chapman’s Homer” and used it to explain how to analyze poems in general. I agree that her methods are a way to start analyzing poems but I think it’s difficult to generalize all poems to this method because poem has different things to offer. I thought it was [...] From this essay, the author says the theme of death runs dominantly throughout the play and Hamlet represents Death. Everything that surrounds him is clouded by death. I found this interesting because I thought he was the one who was trying to take revenge for the murderous actions of his uncle. Then, I realized that [...] After reading Hamlet, the general plot of the play is understood tentatively but I still didn’t understand certain decisions that Hamlet made. The movie portrayed Hamlet as crazy and it was more difficult to tell whether or not he was actually insane or acting insane to make sure that people are unaware of his plans [...] Act 2 was a little bit shorter than Act 1 which was probably why I felt it wasn’t very “action packed.” However, many things confused me. For example, I don’t understand why Hamlet acted crazy and called Polonius a fishmonger. I thought it was interesting how small things that Shakespeare did lets us understand how [...] Scene 1 of Hamlet was very short and even though we start to understand the main characters, we still don’t know the main plot of the play. Because it is a short play, there isn’t time wasted and we meet most of the characters early in the play. I actually enjoy reading this play a [...] My favorite IOP’s were the ones about Joy Luck Club and The Odyssey but that may be biased because I like that book and poem respectively. The IOP’s were very descriptive and it went in detail. The questions at the end were interesting because it made the presentations more interactive and the presenters got to [...] After reading Mr. Macknight’s commentary, I realized that my own is lacking a lot in detail. It focussed on individual effects and its literary effects and the effect on the poem as a whole. My commentary consisted of some explanation of detailing but I realized that it lacks more connections and explanations as to why [...] Evan Carton’s essay on Civil Disobedience focuses on students and their reactions after reading Civil Disobedience. This essay was different from the other two that we read because it focused on the reaction of other people that read it and how Carton interprets why his students acted a certain way after reading the essay. [...] Reading the 20 pages Civil Disobedience took a lot of time to read and reread because it was very difficult to understand but the worksheets helped a lot. I felt that I spend a lot of time trying to decipher what each paragraph meant so I didn’t get the general idea of the whole 20 [...] I agree with many of your points for example the fact that the Odyssey really displays a lot on human nature and how it hasn’t changed over 3000 years even though much of the world and society has changed. We no longer have the etiquette rules that we perform to strangers and no longer give [...] After finally finishing the story of Odysseus and his 20 year journey to finally get home, I was a bit surprised to see how short it was. Of course, a 400 page poem is not ‘short’ but to think that a 20 year journal can be summed up like that is pretty scary. Also, most [...] Before she came to our school to give the speech, I did some research on her and watched her speech online at the TEDx Talk she gave in Beijing. She is really interesting and has a world of experience that most people only hear about and never even dream of living. I find it really [...] In these 3 books, we learn more abut the culture difference and how it differs from our society but at the same time certain aspects still continue on to our society now. For example, the etiquette that they practice to strangers is not common nowadays because it seems over friendly and people are more guarded. [...] The Odyssey is actually a lot more interesting than I thought it would be. At first, hearing someone say it was a gigantic poem about 400 pages long just doesn’t exactly sound appealing to everyone but the characters are interesting and its nice to see that even though as times change there are some characteristics [...] This last section was the most touching out of all of them in my opinion because we could really see how the mother’s had suffered in their past and how their stories make them who they are today and it shows us why they want the best for their daughters. The last chapter where Jing [...] The last chapter is again written by Jing Mei because her mother had died. In this chapter, she talks about how she boarded a plane to China and found her relatives and eventually her long lost half sisters. She tries to find similarities between them and she doesn’t immediately see any and thinks that the [...] Chinese culture believes that certain placement or size of facial features determines whether a person will have good fortune later in life and Lindo Jong says that as a girl she was told that she would have good fortune, however, she thinks that since she came to America, her face has changed and she no [...] In this chapter, Ying Ying talks about her childhood and how wealthy she was. She talks about her first marriage to a man who didn’t love her and soon after they got married, he became unfaithful. She had seen that her baby would be a boy but she decided to abort the baby after she [...] In this chapter, An Mei talks about the time during her childhood where she lived with her mother at the house of her second husband as the third concubine to a wealthy man in the merchant industry. She is the mother to his only heir however, the second wife is much more cunning that she [...] The third section of the book is called American Translation and I really think that the title suited this section because there was a lot of examples where the daughters couldn’t understand the mothers. It is similar to translation because when one language is translated to another, some meanings and connotations are lost and so [...] Jing Mei talks about how a few months ago, her family had a dinner party at their house. Her mother took her grocery shopping for some crabs and Jing Mei tries to help by picking out one but it has a defect and the leg gone and her mother doesn’t want to buy it but [...] Rose Hsu thinks that her mother is trying to make her obedient and listen to her but her mother is actually just trying the teach her the stories and lessons that her mother taught her before. Her mother thinks that she understands her daughter better than any psychiatrist would ever understand her. But, Rose doesn’t [...] This chapter slightly differed from the last because it starts out with a memory from more recent times after she has grown up. In this story, we can see how the mother and daughter doesn’t understand each other and because of some misunderstandings they do not get along. Waverly thinks that her mother doesn’t approve [...] This chapter really emphasized some aspects of Chinese culture that even I find hard to understand sometimes as a 100% Taiwanese person. For example, most people believe in feng shui and if something is not in balance then something will go wrong in the future. When Lena was younger, she believed in the symbolism that [...] This section was all narrated by the daughters of the members of the Joy Luck Club and they all told of stories of their childhood. They were most likely the one that impacted them the most and morals that came out of that particular experience. The anecdote before the section “officially” starts seems to be [...] In this story, Jing Mei talks about her childhood memory of how her mother wanted her to be a child prodigy and constantly told her to try to do something after seeing it on the television. Jing Mei at first tried to tell her mother that she wasn’t a child prodigy and to stop having [...] The narrator, Rose Hsu Jordan, talks about a traumatic childhood memory in which her brother, Bing, is lost in the ocean under her watch and the guilt she feels after it even though everyone in the family is blaming it on herself. Her mother tries to find her lost son by making sacrifices to her [...] This chapter starts with a summary that links to the problems later mentioned. Lena St Clair tells readers of the time when her mother started to decline mentally until the point when simple house tasks become difficult. After her mother’s second baby was born dead, Lena’s mother began to see signs in the house that [...] Waverly Jong, one of the daughters, shares her story of her childhood and how she came to become a chess champion. She started playing with an old set that her brother got as a Christmas present from their church and soon began playing with the old men in the park. In this chapter, we also [...] An Mei Hsu, one of the mother’s in the book, tells her story of how her estranged mother left her and her brother to be raised by her grandmother while she went off to marry another man who already had 3 wives. Her grandmother teaches her to not mention or even think about her mother [...] This section mainly consisted of telling the stories of the mothers. The first one was narrated by the daughter of Su Yuan Woo because her mother had died, however, the rest were narrated by the mother’s themselves. It tells of their past and it shows a great difference from the casual and not so serious [...] Ying Ying St Clair, tells the story of her childhood as the daughter of a first wife of a wealthy man. She remembers her first celebration of the Dragon Boat Festival and going to see the Moon Lady. She falls off the boat at some point and is rescued by some fisherman. She remembers this [...] Lindo Jong was promised as a bride to a wealthy family’s only son at the young age of 2. In this chapter, she describes how she grew up knowing that she belonged to another family because her mother constantly told her so, not to hurt her feelings but so she wouldn’t feel so sad when [...] The first chapter is narrated by June (Jing Mei Woo), who is the late Su Yuan Woo’s daughter. It starts when Jing Mei walks into one of their friend’s house for their usual Joy Luck Club meeting which she is now head of following the death of her mother. She tries to quickly learn their [...] Question: How was your understanding of cultural and contextual considerations of the work developed through the interactive oral? Work used: Antigone by Sophocles Antigone is a play written by Sophocles around 442 BC but the story actually takes place in Thebes around 1200 BC, before Sophocles was born. This play clearly showed how Greek [...] Question: How was your understanding of cultural and contextual considerations of the work developed through the interactive oral? Work used: To Live by Yu Hua In “To Live ” Fugui, the main character, goes through many hardships and tragedies after he gambles away the family fortune and is forced to work as a peasant [...] Question: How was your understanding of cultural and contextual considerations of the work developed through the interactive oral? Work used: Inferno by Dante Alighieri From my understanding of Dante’s Inferno, Dante the traveler starts out in a forest and meets the three beasts, leopard, lion and she-wolf. This is an introduction to all [...] After we got our exams back I wasn’t really surprised with my grade because I didn’t understand that poem at all and I seem to have missed the main idea completely. Whatever I wrote was based on personal opinion and whatever I thought I saw when I read it. Reading through the comments, I [...] Reading Confucius was challenging in its own way but at the same time it was easier to understand compared to Dante simply because to me the language was much easier and more like modern day english. However every single sentence had a lot of meaning to it and there are many ways to interpret things [...] I think that the paragraph is about how important filial piety is to one’s upbringing. In my opinion, he is just trying to show that those who do not have filial piety are more likely to be rebels and not conform to society’s norms. When the book says, “if the root is firmly planted, the [...] I felt that reading Dante’s Inferno was difficult in the beginning. At first, I thought it was just because the language is different from how we normally speak English but then I realized it was because of the many metaphors and similes in the poem. Also, a lot of the text and names mentioned in [...] Sorry, I don’t know why my post didn’t show up. I’m jsut technologically challenged I guess. Laziness Disrespect Bullying Lying and Deceit No Appreciation No Compassion Selfishness or Greediness Stealing Seeking Revenge Manipulation and Sabotage Murder I put laziness as a sin because we are duty bound as humans to try and constantly improve ourselves [...] This book is the saddest book I have ever read. Even though I really enjoyed reading it, I felt that some of the plot was a little bit too tragic to be possible for real life. Each situation seemed plausible but all put together it seemed very unlikely. When I was reading about the [...] I really enjoyed reading Antigone. I felt that after reading the story of Oedipus and Polynices and his brother’s story, it helped me understand Antigone’s story much better. I understood the general story and plot but whenever the chorus had a part, I didn’t really understand much. I also felt that the ending stopped at [...] After reading this poem for the first time, I felt as though it was like a poem that was written when the poet was distracted or couldn’t really foucs on the topic at hand and left me more than slightly confused. But after reading it multiple times, I began to think the contrast between [...] This week I learnt that poetry can be read and understood in many different ways and not just the usual methodical understand every line and moving on. The different perspectives of reading the poem was interesting. I learnt a different definition to tone than I had before and realized that when analysing a poem we [...] Hi! I’m Angel and I’m from Taiwan. That’s all I have to say about me. As a reader, I generally enjoy all kinds of books. The only thing I really cannot bring myself to enjoy reading is science textbooks. To be specific, chemistry or physics. I haven’t read much recently but I hope I will [...] |
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