8 Ball: www.melta.org.my

MELTA

Malaysian English Language Teachers Association.

A nice place to be. Really.

Its not exactly a resource site, but it shows potentials to be a great one at doing that. It has a nifty forum, which I also take participation (as a requirement of the course) in its discussion. It is somewhat nice to see that there is a site where English Teachers, irregardless of their statures and background can meet online and discuss things with one another over things that people would have taken ages to address to. This is indeed information technology put to excellent use for the benefit of the teaching community.

Lecturers, teachers, instructors were here and there. And the amount of posts available are surely something worth to look at. By the time my count ended in April, I was heading for more than 40 posts. I know this was supposed to be written in February, I'm just updating the details.

But let's not get sidetracked.

This may be just an initiation, and provide irritation for some students. But I would like to remember that I was once a participant of this site, and I will like to see in the years ahead, how much can I benefit from this site, and how my students can benefit from our sharing with one another (from teachers to teachers).

Dr. Malachi has reminded us the importance of responding to one another's post. This isn't some joke. Foruming is a part of an ethical discourse. The idea is that we may not have the answer to everything, but we make know every little thing that may be of concern to the English Language Teaching community.

As a TESL undergraduate, so far so good I've learnt alot of good things from this site and its efforts. I think I would like to be a permanent member too, so that I can learn and contribute more.

7th Heaven: ongoing issues

So I've decided to work on one theme: Journey.

Life is a journey. Sometimes God, Providence (or whatever one would choose to call it, depending on the individual's beliefs) would play a cruel joke. Or perhaps its a beautiful fairy dream after all. Irregardless, how do we as teachers to be try to incoporate the theme of a journey to our students? What are the messages that we should be conveying? Are they of a moralist stand? Are they of a humanist stand? Or there is something else alltogether that we all ought to look out for?

I've begun selecting 4 novels. They're "The Little Prince", "The Alchemist" , "The Pilgrimage" and "The Zahir".

They all speak from 4 different individuals: A child, An adolescent, A Youth, An adult.

The question now poses itself: How do I play this game? For the moment, I have no suitable cards yet. Let's see how the situation plays itself out.

Wait. Why these few texts? Why not others? Surely there are better materials, like Marco Polo's travels, or Journey to the West. But I'm not too concerned. I'm concerned with an issue that has bugged me since the first day I did my position paper; how do I play my cards right?

6th: chinese new year out, problems in.

I met with my supervisor. She quickly threw in her rules.

I must admit, we're in for a tough ride. But in all neutrality, the toughness of it means that we'll be cracking our heads more intellectually. Therefore it means there's always opportunity to sharpen our wits.

By sharpening our wits, I'm not talking about outwitting my supervisor. No. Our supervisor wanted us to do something on a 'fresher' perspective. She wants to break us out of our comfort zone. And to her, breaking our comfort zone means we have to do literary pieces that we've not been taught from our entire selection of materials that we've studied thorough the years as an undergraduate.

But I am not at all affected. My comfort zone is "outside" the syllabus. To yank me out of it means a literal death for me.

5th Bombardment: D-Day on Position Paper

So it was a D-Day. Not this date. But I was after all, the earliest to present.

If you asked me, I've noticed that people only tend to listen when I'm ending an argument. Everyone in my class believes that the only lines worth listening to, (including Dr. Malachi himself) thinks that my last lines somehow sums up the entire arguments.

So it seems to me that I've still got a long way to 'cure' my oral presentation methods. Oh wait, does this line count too, since someone may think that it should be above before what I've stated?

Nevermind.

I'm not going to change this post, just yet.

To sum it up, I got a 3/5 for my oral presentation, and I lost it. Even worse was the fact that my computer crashed, and I sent it for repairs. Only God knows how much of cash I've spent just to send it all the way to and fro. It is really bad. I think. I can't fix my position paper, and I'm scared to ask Dr. Malachi. Erm, wait. It is more of I think I know what Dr. Malachi's response is.

But I think I've made a good stand on my position paper. I don't know. But for a piece of writing which I'll never be able to edit, I'm quite happy with it.

I've learnt that much later he wasn't impressed with the class. He thinks that there's immaturity in our arguments. Perhaps. We're after all, a sheltered group.

But let us not dwell too much in it. There is still time to redeem our intellectual honour, if there ever was one. Or attain it, if we do not have one.

See you on the next post.