Term 1 Week 8c: Explaination

I chose this gruel ending to the story because personally, I will point to the door with the tiger behind it, because if I were in the princess's shoes, I would feel that to let him die would be better than to let him marry to another woman. If I were to let him die, then at least he can wait in his afterlife and then later marry each other when the princess dies herself. To let him marry someone else would have been emotionally stressing because the princess will know that her love is lost forever. I was sure that long-waited love would be much better than lost love.

Also, seeing how the princess hates the woman inside one of the cages, I would understand the choice she will make.

That is it for this week. See you with more blog posts, next week.

Term 1 Week 8b: Weekend Homework

(Ending to "The Lady or The Tiger?", the tiger comes out)

Immediately the orange and black-striped monster pounced towards the lover of the princess, all ready for a quick and bloody kill. The youth, knowing that the princess had betrayed him, cried out in anguish and terror as he tried with all he can to avoid a gruel death but to no avail. The audience looked on in disgust as the ferocious beast shredded the youth into bits and pieces. Heads hung low as the youth managed to shout out to the princess, "Bye, my lover! We shall meet in Heaven!" before his head got brutally clobbered and torn off. Of course the princess could not bear to watch it, her lover having to meet such dire a fate. The semi-barbaric king however, watched in excitement as the red blood of the princess's lover stains part of the arena floor. His eyes widened as the youth, convicted guilty, was killed by the big cat as what he thought of as retribution to his crime, an obvious contrast to the masses. The iron bells sounded, sounding mournful as ever while the crowd, commemorating this fair youth, dispersed, and then all was quiet.
The princess, sinking back into her bed, with the gory scenes still fresh in mind, wondered wether it had been worth it. All the terror just to win over the other woman? The question floated in her mind as she slowly fell asleep.

To be continued with the explaination for the ending.

Term 1 Week 8a: A bit of Narrative Writing + Comprehension 2

This week Mr Lundberg carried on with a little bit of narrative writing before continuing with comprehension. The comprehension was about description and its methods.

1. Try to include all five senses - touch, taste, sight, smell, sound - into the descriptions.
2. Adjectives may have the same meaning but they usually have different a positive or negative description of the object (connotation). Use them wisely because when you use the wrong word marks can be deducted for composition tests.

Then he continued with comprehension. I actually failed my first compre assignment. A very bad way to start off with the lessons. Then Mr Lundberg went through the whole assignment. Now I know my mistakes: -

• Too vague
• Not answering to question
• COMPARITIVE QUESTION: MUST EXPLAIN AND GIVE EXAMPLES FROM PASSAGES

Also he gave us a new assignment and wanted us to complete that by Friday. I am determined that I will be able to do better this time, having noted my errors and flaws.

Here is a video which teaches you skill about how to understand the passages.



To be continued with weekend homework.

Term 1 Week 7: Socratic Seminar

This week the first Socratic Seminar took place on Friday. The topic was "What it means to be Singaporean". Leader Timothy Chong started off the discussion with a summary of the given articles but apparently he had not prepared well, as I, his observer, could clearly see. Then the discussion started of with a question : "What do we possess that is Uniquely Singaporean?"

The Socratic Seminar basically covered what it means to be Singaporean as well as the unique things Singapore has. The discussion had many breaks (I am sure teachers won't be happy with this) with the TIC (teacher-in-charge) making all the questions and discussions. One of the discussions (the main one actually) was about citizenship and patriotism. The definition, as we were discussing, citizenship was an official identification of your loyalty to a certain country while patriotism is more like where one's heart belongs to. Then we also discussed about what makes someone Singaporean. Factors like work, migration and more were discussed.

The seminar left me more perplexed towards the situation - many things, as discussed, can identify one as Singaporean! It left me with questions as I reflected on the Seminar. There has to be just one thing that will identify someone as Singaporean, then why all the debate? Why does Singapore want to stand out from the rest as uniquely diverse?

The good thing about the seminar was that a few of the participants were able to voice out their ideas clearly. But then the discussion was overall unsatisfactory, the panellists unable to speak up coherently, several of them coming unprepared.

The seminar had a few connections with a given article "What it means to be a Singaporean". The discussion's main topic, about citizenship and patrionism, has some of its ideas in the above mentioned article, the writer feeling a deep sense of homeliness. As he watched the parade he felt very lucky to be a Singaporean and the felt proud of our homeland. This has some relation to the patrionism mentioned in our Seminar.


See you next week with another blog post.

Meanwhile you can view this video about how Socratic Seminars should be properly held.

Term 1 Week 6: Comprehension and Methodology

This week, Mr Lundberg finally started on another topic - Comprehension. We were introduced to the types of questions in the English examination and how we go around answering them.

Since Monday and Tuesday was about MORE narrative writing I will not share about it.

Then on Wednesday Mr Lundberg carried out lessons on...
COMPREHENSION! FINALLY!

Comprehension is Secondary School, I just found out, would consist of more than 1 passage. There were 2 passages in the homework we were given. Most of them carried a low weightage except for vocabulary Q.s, inference Q.s and comparative Q.s, which is new to the syllabus this year.

1. RECALL/DIRECT/FACTUAL questions require you to refer to the specified passage. Read the question and passage carefully, and do not copy chunks of text. You should choose relevant details in the text.
2. "OWN WORDS" questions require you to answer in your own words. You have to get the idea in your answer but make sure you do not copy anything from the passage.
3. INFERENTIAL questions require you to understand the passage. They do not require extra knowledge outside the text.
4. LANGUAGE USE questions require you to have good vocabulary. To do well make sure you read more books to extend your vocabulary.
5. VOCABULARY question require you to have the same knowledge you apply in Language Use questions
6. Lastly, COMPARATIVE questions has a basic structure Statement, Elaborate, Example. The statement will be your comparison, the elaboration will be your explanation of the comparison and then you will give an example.

That is all for now. See you next week with another blog post: Socratic Seminar.

Term 1 Week 5: More Narrative Writing!!

This week, we did more narrative writing. First, we viewed a video about Lamb to the Slaughter. The purpose was to let us compare between the act and the story itself, building up our observation skills which would be used in comprehension.

The video is down here.



A website with the full story is here.

Then we were assigned to write a short story. OK, so we are supposed to write something about a giant octopus. It would not be practical to write about such supernatural beings so I was not used to it. We had 3 choices:

1. The giant octopus was your pet, you had to hide it in your room before your parents found out.
2. The giant octopus was your guinea pig for your experiment.
3. The giant octopus was violent and wanted to wreck the house and kill you.

I chose the second one because ideas "naturally" came to me for this subject.

Then when we brought our finished drafts the next day, we exchanged stories and commented and identified errors in the short stories.

Then the next day (last day) we did an activity - thinking up of a fictional character and acting it out.

See you next week with another blog post : Comprehension, finally!!