The lesson gets more and more serious…

After learning about all the tales, myths, legends and fables, the lesson continued with more serious stuffs like autobiography, diaries, letters, as well as speech. In autobiography, I was introduced to ‘The autobiography of Nelson Mandela – The Long Walk to Freedom’. Learning the autobiography also, I have learnt about why do people write autobiography, how trustworthy are autobiographies, are autobiographies educational or entertainment, as well as learnt whether autobiography could be used in language classroom. After that, I learnt about ‘The Andy Warhol Diaries’. Frankly speaking, I was really clueless about who he was until we discussed about his diaries in class. Besides, I also learnt about Kafka Diaries, which I found very interesting because he had a different view on education. When I first read his diaries and came to the line, “…education has done me great harm in some respect.’ it has really caught my attention and made me wanted to read more and more about his life. Then, the lesson moved on to Keat’s letters to Fanny Brawne. Last but not least, the latest lesson we had was on speech from Martin Luther King, Jr, entitled “I Have a Dream”. To me, this speech was a fabulous literary masterpiece. In fact, he has a strong emotion and spirit in his speech. There are still a few articles left that we do not discuss in class like the essays on ‘Shooting an Elephant’, ‘The Common Reader’, and ‘What I Believe’. However, I still did my own reading on them since I have bought the book. So, it will be a waste if I do not use it to its fullest.

Discovering of different genres in literature

After gone through this course for the whole semester, I have learnt different genres in literature such as tales, myths, legends, fables, autobiography, diaries, letters, as well as speech. All of these genres vary in their own ways. At the beginning of the semester, I have learnt about Ovid, ‘Daedalus and Icarus’. We have discussed in depth about this tale in class. Then, I also did my own reading on the stories of ‘The Son of the Turtle-spirit’ and ‘Le Mort d’ Arthur’. Honestly, I found out that the story of ‘The Son of the Turtle-spirit’ is intesting but unfortunately, ‘Le Mort d’ Arthur’ was not very appealing for me. Maybe it was because the story was rather long. Therefore, I have to force myself to finish reading it. Then , I was also been asked to read the Aesop’s fables, ‘The Fox and the Crow’, ‘The Jay and the Peacock’ as well as ‘Androcles’, which I found very interesting and taught a lot of moral values. Apart from that, we also discussed about Ovid metamorphosis, ‘Pyramus and Thisbe’ in class. Actually, I have learnt about this story much earlier during my foundation course, which was through the play ‘Midsummer night’s dream’. Thus, when we discussed about this story, I have already had the basic knowledge about the story. When I reflected back of what I have learnt through out the first part of the semester, I found out that everything that I have learnt are quite interesting and lighter compared to the second part, which is more serious. This is because they are easier to understand compared to autobiography, diaries, letters and so on, which deal with serious issues and true stories.