Why My Position Paper would be on Henrik Ibsen's "A Doll's House"?

When we were told to write a position paper by Dr. Edwin, a few of my favourite books came across my mind. Of course Jane Austen's work would be on the list, yet I would not discuss about her work in my position paper because I wanted to reserve those work for my research paper. So, I finally decided to write a position paper on Henrik Ibsen's "A Doll's House"!

When the first time I read about Henrik Ibsen's "A Doll's House", I found the play interesting. Athough the text was rather lengthy, the twisted plot and complicated characters' traits still made the story very engaging to me. This play made me ponder over a lot of matters!

In fact, Henrik Ibsen was known as the "father of modern drama" because he elevated theatre from entertainment to a forum for exposing social problems. Ibsen broke away from the romantic tradition of his time -- his writing pieces were full of realistic portrayals of individual characters and his focus on psychological concerns. Henrik Ibsen sought to portray the real world, especially the position of woman in society.

Ibsen believed that women were best suited to be mothers and wives, but at the same time, he had an eye for injustice. He knew that Helmer's demeaning treatment of Nora was a common problem in the society of that era.

Initially, Henrik Ibsen presented the play in a rather conventional way. There were a lovely and docile wife, Nora, and a hardworking and responsible husband, Torvald. The wife took care of the household and three little children while the husband worked hard and earned money outside. The most important thing was -- Nora and Torvald had a close rapport in their marriage and seemed to be deeply in love with each other. What a picture of a happy family!

Yet, what attracted me more while reading "A Doll's House" was the extraordinary and unexpected ending of the play. In the end of the play, Nora resolved to leave Torvald. She was aware that true wedlock was impossible between them because neither of them loved the other, or was even capable of doing so. Nora realized that, before she could be a wife, she must first discover herself through venturing out into the world. Nora left an unformed soul, determined to become a full person rather than the doll of the male figures in her life.

By: Chuah Kar Wooi (134185)

B. Ed. (TESL)

The Teaching of Tales in the Classroom

Tales have great values in the educational purposes. Tales are generally capable of generating interests among students. Therefore, it is a good method for the teacher to use Tales as a set induction, because it helps to activate students’ network of schemata or prior knowledge. When the teacher is able to engage students’ attention and interest since the beginning of the lesson, students tend to concentrate more during the rest of the class.

Besides that, tales are usually quite familiar to the students. Even though some of the students may not read the tales in English before, they might have read the tales in their mother tongues. Therefore, the students actually can understand the contexts of the story and the development of the plotlines even they do not have a very good command of English. Students can make prediction and guess out what the story is all about with their prior knowledge. In fact, we can say that tales are useful in helping students mastering the English language -- when students already have understandings towards the development of the story, they can concentrate better towards the use of the language. Perhaps, in the long terms, they can acquire more vocabularies indirectly.

Moreover, tales help to cultivate the reading habits of the students. Tales are easily digestible materials for the students; thus, it would not create high level of anxiety among the students even the teacher requires them to read up tales at home. When students have built up their confidence towards English reading materials, they are willing to read more and read in wider scope of genres.

In fact, tales are effective in enhancing students' learning experience in language classroom. There are many ways in which tales can be incorporated in a language classroom. First of all, tales can be incorporated in students' writing processes. The students can recreate and rewrite their own versions of the tales. In that way, students can fully utilise their creativity. For examples, they can create different beginning and different ending for a tale. A tale does not necessarily ends with the prince and princess live happily ever after.

Besides that, tales can be incorporated in role-play activities as well. Students can dramatise the tales and get a better understanding on the storylines. When students act out, they experience how a character behaves and feels, thus, making their interpretation of the text more personal and meaningful. In fact, pantomiming the tales would be an effective way for the students to demonstrate their creativity and maturity of thoughts. Actually, in a self-directed sketch, students also can design their monologues or dialogues based on the storylines of tales and fables.

In conclusion, tales have great values for educational purposes and they can be incorporated in many ways in our language classroom.

By: Chuah Kar Wooi (134185)

B. Ed. (TESL)

Humans' sufferings

"Seeing the pain in someone's eyes,

or hearing the sadness,

or worry in his or her voice,

how can we not care?

how can we not be kind?"

This is a short qoutation that I have taken out from Buddhism "Path to Peace". However, this is an utopian idea because loving-kindness is no longer commonly found in today's competitive world. Too many of us are indifferent towards the sufferings of others. We no longer care and be kind to those who are less fortunate.

Take a look on those who are from the third world countries, and how they have struggled so hard just to survive. The poor at those places are always in hunger and coldness, and the statistic even shows that every five minutes a child dies as a result of famine. A lot more are without shelters. In fact, the rich and powerful oppress the poor and powerless in a lot of countries. The poor have no says over a lot of matters. To be realistic, there seem no hope for us to close up the social and economical gap because nobody really cares and sympathises with the sufferings of others.

In fact, I personally feel that both poems W. H. Auden's "Musee des Beaux Arts"and Lord Alfred Tennyson's "Break, Break, Break" depict humankind's indifference towards the sufferings of others. In "Musee des Beaux Arts", even though Icarus is drowning, nobody really concerns with his life. The ploughman, shepherd and fishermen are oblivious to the tragedy of Icarus. We are just like the ploughman, shepherd and fishemen who are too engrossed in the day's routines -- we might "have heard the splash, the forsaken cry" but have somewhere else to go. Only those who are nearest to us like our families will moan over our deaths.

In "Break, Break, Break", life goes on as usual even a tragedy just happened. One's sufferings have no consequence to the others around him. Nobody will really bother whether you are dying or not. They mind only their own business, just like "the sailor lad sings in his boat on the bay" and "the stately ships go on to their haven under the hill" even though that is a hand disappearing!There are no helping hands!

By: Chuah Kar Wooi (134185)

B.Ed. (TESL)

Group 21

The Fall of Icarus

When the first time I went through internet websites and searched for the painting "The Fall of Icarus", I felt very confused. Why there were so many versions of the painting? Which one was the authentic one? I downloaded critiques on both the painting "The Fall of Icarus" and the tale "Daedalus and Icarus" and read about those critiques before I could really understand what the painting and the tale were all about.

Different artists drew the painting "The Fall of Icarus" in different ways. The differences in presentations in "The Fall of Icarus" were due in part to the times in which the pieces were made. In some of those paintings, the clothing was changed so that it represented those of contemporary times. In others, the pieces reflect the geography around the artist. The setting in which they painted the piece might have been the only setting that they knew. Other differences could have stemmed from the artist’s upbringing. The painting might also reflect what the artists knew about the ancient world and what they thought the ancient world had been like.

However, I still felt that it was really a great idea to expose students in set induction to the painting "The Fall of Icarus" before they started to look at and study about the tale "Daedalus and Icarus". Most of the students were visually-oriented, and they learnt better through visual aids. After viewing the painting, students would grasp an overall concept on how the setting of the tale looked like. In fact, I felt that the painting was in fact closely represented the setting of the tale. There were setting sun, ploughing fields and the sea. Through the painting, students could understand better what were the characters in the tales. The main characters -- fishermen, the shepherd and the ploughman existed in both the painting and the tale.

Besides that, I agreed with Dr. Edwin's idea that there was the need to simplify the language of the tale "Daedalus and Icarus" if students were to better understand the whole story. The original version of the tale was too crowded with descriptive words and excessive details, until I myself had to read it twice before I could trace out the development of the plot and understand the gist of the story.

After all, "Daedalus and Icarus" was interesting to read on.

By: Chuah Kar Wooi (134185)

B.Ed. (TESL)