Response by Emeliea - Teiresias

emeliea said...
Hi Waniey..I agree with you about the importance of Teiresias as one of the character in Oedipus Rex. It is true that he is the first man that reveals the truth about Thebes' king, Oedipus. However, I'm quite disagree when you say that "His talent was seen after all prophecies about Oedipus are happened." I'm focusing on the word 'talent' here. I don't think that being a prophet as talented. In my opinion, Teiresias is a really pure and holy prophet, not because of his talent but because it is a gift from God, which we as a normal human cannot have although we are talented enough in reading others' fate. In other word, Teiresias becomes a prophet because he is the chosen one, not because of his talent.

Response by Khairil - Teiresias

khairil said...
Yes, you are correct about Teiresias because I have the same thought as you are. To me whether we are blind or not, what is important is not things that can be seen with naked eyes, but our intuition. Another thing about Teiresias is that he is a prophet who can see the future and the past of anyone including the king himself. Besides, we also cannot escape from our fate and we must be prepared for it. As you said, do not mock others for his or her inability.
March 29, 2008 3:40 AM

Response by Hazelynn - Shakespeare's Wallah

Hazelynn Rimbar said...
The story Shakespeare wallah is one of the most boring film. I went out halfway because it was too boring. I loved Macbeth though... But i think that reading the play is much much better than watching the movie.You should read the pkay...u'll find it much favorable compare to the movie.
March 27, 2008 9:24 PM

Responce by Sophia Lina - Macbeth

Sophia Lina said...
You said that we have to be ourself. That is right. The most important thing we have to be greatful to be ourself. Macbeath was not proud to be himself that is why he is eager to manipulated the king and killed the king in order to get the king's position. At the rnd Macbeath was death because of his own fault.
April 3, 2008 9:33 AM

Response by Hoe-Yi - Macbeth

Joyce a.k.a Hoe-Yi said...
In my opinion, I see that Macbeth is blinded by prophecies told by the three witches. He accepts and believes completely of what the witches have told him and he acts accordingly to achieve the prophecy of being a king.It is true that he has been hiding from others about the truth that he has murdered many people, but I also think that he is a blind man. Blind in the mind and not physically. It is because in the play, we can see that actually Macbeth does not show to others that he is a good man. He is only playing a role of a king. Sometimes he is fierce to his helpers and orders them to kill Macduff’s whole family. What kind of “good” king he is? Commanding people to kill other people’s wife and children. He is indeed a cruel, inhuman king and totally blind to the prophecies.
April 3, 2008 7:57 AM

Response byHoe-Yi - How it is to be evaluated by others in simulated teaching..

Joyce a.k.a Hoe-Yi said...
Hello, Wani. First of all, I would like to comment on your blog. It is very beautiful! Through the blog, it reflects your personality. You have put in effort to decorate your blog.In being evaluated by others, I agree that it is a good learning ground for us in order to prepare us to become a better teacher in the future. If we are not evaluated, how are we going to know our weaknesses that need to be changed and improved?From your blog, you have given me a new thought that actually teacher’s attire is being evaluated as well. Although I knew it, I put it in my subconscious mind. It is true that our attire will be evaluated as well. Besides that, we learn to accept friends’ comments in evaluation. It is good that you know your voice volume now than being commented by students in the future. It is true that a teacher needs to have loud voice in order to attract students’ attention and show your confidence.In my opinion, an evaluator should not be afraid to tell the truth to their friends since this is a learning process for everyone. It is true that sometimes we do not like others’ comments. However, by telling the truth, we only can learn. It is better to put the name on the evaluation paper because the teacher candidate can refer to the person who has commented him or her to get further clarifications.
April 3, 2008 7:56 AM

Response by Hoe-Yi - How To Evaluate Others In Simulated Teaching

Joyce a.k.a Hoe-Yi said...
Once again, you have alerted me that the attire of a teacher is very important. I have learned from you that we have to put attire as our consideration in order to reflect a good teacher’s image. Thanks Wani for your reminder. I will always remember the importance of the attire for a teacher.I agree with you that set induction is very important. Without an interesting set induction, it is hard to draw students’ attention to the teacher for the rest of the activities. For me, I have to also be more creative in my set induction during teaching because I love to put pictures only in set induction. In future, I will try to put more interesting set inductions to make my teaching effective.Besides that, it is also true that we can put students into consideration during evaluation because the effectiveness of a teacher’s teaching can be reflected by students. If the students pay attention and responds well in class, it can be said that the teacher is good and effective in his or her teaching.
April 3, 2008 7:55 AM

Passion..

Bold! Seductive! A mesmerizing experience! That is all I can tell you about ‘Passion’, a play that I have watched two days ago at KLpac. Passion is a dance drama, we never gifted a chance to hear any voice from the players. The story was told through the body language. The anger, passion, frustrated or happy, al of these feelings is shown through the body movements. From my understanding, the main character, a man was betrayed by her beloved one. His girlfriend is having a relationship with another man. His boyfriend watched their passionate with his bare eyes. So he was so frustrated, but one girl has opened his eyes that he can find another woman as he wanted it. Her disloyal girlfriend is having a relationship with another man, but at the same time, that man was also having relationship with another woman. It means that the man is having two women. At one point, the first man, I mean the main character is taking over his place. Both of the women want him. He was caught in the middle. He did not know which one to choose, finally he just let them go. Both of the women fell in love with each other. Here I can see they are actually bisexual. Both of them are frustrated in previous love. After all, they are having their own relationship.

How to evaluate others in simulated teaching..

In evaluating others, we have to consider a few aspects. Evaluating also can be divided into several stages – set induction, pre-reading, while-reading but not including post-reading.
The first thing that should be considered is how my friends dressed up. This is important thing because a teacher must wear attire like a real teacher. May be some of my course mates did not think so because this is only a practice but for me, even though it is only a practice, we must consider all things.
Second, set induction is a very important stage for me. This is the very beginning of a lesson so, the teacher should do something to refresh students’ mind. Teacher can do something interesting as a set induction just to relate to the lesson and at the same time trigger students’ interest.
The pre-reading and while-reading stages are also important. A teacher who can make students pay attention to him is a good teacher. The activities must be appropriate with the level of proficiency. If the students are in intermediate level, the activities or exercises should not be too difficult and not too easy. The evaluation should not be focusing on the teacher only, but also the students. Either they pay attention to what is taught in front or they do something else.
Finally yet importantly, the language used by the teacher should be considered also. A teacher must show to the students that he or she speaks in correct grammar and fluent. The language is evaluated whether it is good or has a lots of grammatical error and sentence structure.
With all those aspects, I hope my course mates and I will approve our skill in handling a simulated teaching in class.

How it is to be evaluated by others in simulated teaching..

As a teacher candidate, simulated teaching is almost synonym with me. It is not easy for me because I think it is difficult to teach in front of crowded. Sometimes I got problems with my voice because I have tried to speak louder, but my friends still cannot hear my voice. Therefore, I have to work out harder to have a louder voice. Yeah.. I am going to be a teacher, and a teacher must have a clear voice to let students listen to you.
Being evaluated by others is good, because we will know our weaknesses and then, we can try to improve it. We usually do not know what our mistake is, or where is our weakness. Whether our dress is suitable for teaching or not, the preparation and the way we teach students. All of these elements are important for teaching.
In my opinion, the important part of simulated teaching is the set induction. Why I said so? It is important because it is the starting of simulated teaching. The beginning of the lesson should be interesting to trigger students’ interest and to open their correct schemata about what will be taught to them after that.
Although I have attempted several simulated teaching, I still feel nervous in handling the teaching. Nervous can make my simulated teaching disaster, but I try to control my nervous just to make sure that my teaching process is going smooth.
Evaluation by others should be namely secret so people can evaluate me frankly. Putting name on evaluation paper makes people tend to lie.

Macbeth

After we have watched the movie of ‘Shakespeare Walla’, then we were asked to watch the second movie, the famous one which is entitled ‘Macbeth’. This story is more fascinating because I already familiar with the name. ‘Macbeth’ is synonym with Shakespeare, so it is impossible if anybody of my course mates have never heard the name since it is very famous. The story line is very interesting I think and the most important thing is, I understand what the story is all about. It is a story of kingdom and royal family and Macbeth is one of the men who want to get the throne. He was willing to do everything including murder the king and then he accused someone else to hide his sin. He wanted people to see him as a good person and has honor to raise him as a king of the kingdom, but at last people know his trick. No matter what mistake we want to hide from people, they will know at the end. So guys please don’t cheat! Just be yourself.

Shakespeare Walla..

It was so exciting when my lecturer, Dr Malachi Edwin let us to watch a movie. Since we are studying the language of drama, he wanted us to watch ‘Shakespeare Walla’, an ancient movie. I was at a high spirit to watch it, but when my leader started the movie, my interest was going down. It is a black-and-white movie! May be it is a great movie or story to watch, but I got sleepy after a while. It is performed by most of Hindustanis and the languages were mixed, English and Hindustan. Sometimes I lost the meaning or plot because of the different use of language. Some other time I fall asleep, but I awoke after few seconds. It is a story about performers’ life. They performed plays, including Shakespeare’s. On stage they will act as written in script, but in their real life, it is very different. Although they had a quarrel among them in the real life, they will ignore about the quarrel on stage and acted as professionals, so that the audiences can feel the performance. Here I got the moral of the story, even though we have problems; do not show our problems while performing plays.

Teiresias..

Teiresias is one of the important characters in Oedipus Rex. He is the person who is responsible in predicting Oedipus’ fate. He is an expert in prophecy but Oedipus did not believe him at first before he found out the truth. Oedipus under estimated Teiresias and mocked for his blindness. Although Teiresias is a blind man, he is only blind for his sight, but he has a very great intuition in predicting people’s fate. His talent was seen after all prophecies about Oedipus are happened. Oedipus cannot deny anymore for Teiresias’ wisdom because he was the one who is blind. So, don’t mock for people’s blindness, but be cautious of our own blindness.

Staging a play..

The things that I will consider if I am going to perform my short performance are:

-language used
-the audiences
-The players/actors
-stage direction
-intonations, stressing and pauses
-the costumes

Language used is the first thing I should consider because good language for good feedback from the audience. If we use harsh words in our performance, the audiences will feel uneasy and will not pay attention to our performance.

The second thing is audiences. Without audiences, how can we perform? We are not talking to the wall, isn’t it? So, we must attract the audiences’ attention, so that they will enjoy our performance.

The actors and stage directions are two important things that we should consider. The actors should know things that they would do. They must know their turn in acting and they also must know the stage directions.

In acting, the intonations, stressing and pauses are very important to the actors. Those elements are very important for producing a real performance so that the audiences will feel and understand better.

Last but not least, the costumes also important because by wearing certain costumes, the audiences will know the roles of them. The costumes also can tell the audiences what era they perform.

To put all in a nutshell, those elements are very important in producing a good play. So, please check upon these things before you perform!

Different perceptions of life..

Life. Different people have different perception of life. Life can be viewed from many angles. Theaters or dramas also imitate life. Different writers give their own view of life in their literary works. Shakespeare has his own style in writing a play. In ‘As You Like It’, Shakespeare put the players merely, and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages. While in Macbeth, Shakespeare used another style. Macbeth at the outset of the play is an admirable man, a good warrior and a man of good conscience. He believes that he could be a king, and his ambitions to get the throne are encouraged by his wife. And yet, his conscience is close by. He cannot see behind the surface truth and distinguish the tricks that "fate" is playing on him. Compared to Oedipus Rex, by Sophocles, Macbeth knows he should not proceed and yet his ego drives him just as Oedipus is told by all around himself not to proceed, however he does, as well. In Oedipus, Sophocles wants to tell the reader that fate is inevitable, means fate cannot be changed. So whatever will be, will be. Different with William Butler Yeats in his poem, ‘The Four Ages of Man’, he divides his poem into four stanzas which is ironic to four stages of man’s life. He described the man’s life in different situation. Everyone has their own perception of life, and so do I. Life must go on but we never know what will happen in the future.

Types of dramas and theaters..

When it turned to our second class, we were given note in slides form. There are lots of inputs whether we already know or not. The note is about overview of the history of theater. Reading the note make me know that there are many categories for plays. Some of the theaters can be Greek Theater, Roman Theater, and Medieval Theater. Medieval Theater, may be it sounds weird, I also never know the name before I got the note. Medieval Theater is more to morally plays and most of them are Elizabethan Dramas. The dramas themselves come in many types. So that now we know literature comes in various types, not only in dramas, but also in other genre either poetry or novels form.

The first drama class..

I felt so great when it was the first time I had a drama class. It is ‘Teaching the Language of Drama’. I was so excited that day because I thought we were going to perform a drama, but it did not happen. Our lecturer, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Malachi Edwin asked us to complete a task. He gave us worksheets consist of questions on point of view. We have to answer the questions but most of us already forgot the literary terms. Then, we were given a thick set of worksheets, a collection of extracts from short stories! It consists of eleven extracts and we have to identify what type of point of view are they. We were given only less than an hour to complete the task! How panic we were. The activities are to refresh our knowledge about literary terms. It was lucky because I still remember the terms after having a wonderful semester break. However, I think those activities are very useful for us as to recall what we had learnt before.