English 9A

After studying Merchant of Venice, we were asked to prepare for a performance of a speech. We had two choices: Portia’s speech and Shylock’s speech. I chose Portia’s not because it’s short. Shylock’s speech was needed to be angry and even screaming because Christians disrespected Shylock. I thought I wouldn’t be able to express [...]

“What did you discover by memorizing and performing your speech that you did not realize beforehand?”

There is a huge different between watch a play, studying and discussing a play or actually memorizing and performing a speech of the play. When you watch a play or even when you study and discuss it, you [...]

From last week, we all chose what speech we will do this week. There were two choices, Portia’s speech and Shylock’s speech, and I decided to do Shylock’s. I don’t know why, but it was easier than the other one to memorize. It was not the only reason. In those words, I could see [...]

Even though Portia’s speech is the shorter one (which might be the reason why many people chose to memorize this), Shylock’s speech has more pattern and rhythm, which I later realize that I had already memorize it without even noticing that I did. However, memorizing it wasn’t the thing that I was worried about. [...]

Performing speech was much harder than memorizing the speech. We can memorize the speech by reading many times but to perform the speech successfully, we need to know character’s feeling. I was doing the Shylock’s speech. To accomplish the speech perfectly, I needed to fully understand shylock therefore my mind and feeling can change [...]

Memorizing and performing the speech in front of many people feel like stand on stage with mask, which hides myself from audiences. However, the ‘mask’ is so weak and light and it is easily taken off as soon as I found out the fact that I am not real Portia and my audiences are [...]

    Memorizing a speech is not a hard thing to do, but I have discovered that performing the speech you have memorized is a difficult thing to do. People always say that, in order to make the performance perfectly, you first have to be the person you are acting it out. But it was [...]

I have memorized the speech and performed it. When I was memorizing it, I have realized that Shylock’s speech is very logical and it makes sense. By this speech, I realized what Christians in Middle age Europe have done. I see the site of Shylock representing the thought of Jew and other people as [...]

By memorizing Portia’s speech I discovered that repetition will get you everywhere, and once you have it down you can add in the little details that make the speech unique to the speaker. Memorizing takes a while, and when you think you have it all down, you really don’t. I made the mistake of [...]