Prying Into The Heart Of Drama

“Found a better song to sing, have you? No, you’ve found a different song, that’s all,” says Frank’s figurative allusion on the self-realization of Rita, who wants to escape from working class life to become a middle class people in Willy Russel’s play “Educating Rita”.

Rita desires a change from the inside, so she applies for an Open University. She wants to break the rules of working class through education on her way of searching for a better life.

Though she says, “I’ve got a room full of books. I know what clothes to wear, what wine to buy, what play to see...” her change has resulted in losing her qualities which makes her very unique and sympathetic. She does not find a better life but a different life. It depends on how her life will go on. She can choose which class to belong to, where to travel, whom to visit and whom to keep company. Now she has the freedom of choice.

I do feel the same way with Frank’s view on Rita’s change. Sometimes, we work very hard because we want to make changes in our life. We want to achieve a better life and probably we also do so through education like Rita.

This is what I am doing now. I enter this course of PKPG TESL because I want to upgrade myself, earn more money and find a better life for my family. I learnt a lot of things from literature and I work very diligently to get a better grade for it. However, the result is not as what I have expected. While I spend so much time and effort for doing the assignment, what I get is so little when compared to what I have sacrificed for it. I wonder why I spend so much time in doing silly things especially in simulated teaching. I have done two times for it and I got B for both.

I feel that it is so unfair because the world of literature is so subjective. It is very difficult to decide what is good and what is not good teaching. There are people who put so little effort for it but got A for their simulated teaching. For example, student A asks questions for set induction and she got A but when student B uses the same technique for set induction, she is condemned for not putting any effort and her lesson is very dull. When student C uses the picture of the late princess Diana and Camelia and she has no problem and got an A but when student D uses the same picture, she is commented for the reason of not using local celebrity picture. When I am not using western picture but using local Chinese man picture, I was suggested for trying to imply to students wrong moral values. I really don’t know how to please a lecturer like this.

Many of us are dissatisfied with the grades we got. We feel that the lecturer seems to favour certain students and give them good grades even though their teaching activities are not related and their worksheets contain a lot of mistakes. We feel demotivated and frustrated but we can’t do anything. I personally feel that what is the point I put so much effort in doing something that I definitely won’t get good result because I am not the ‘favoured’ student. I also feel that doing simulated teaching two times is a waste of time since the grades we get for both times are more or less the same or just by one mark difference. Why not we spend more time in dealing with the other plays for example “Streetcar Named Desire” and “30 Days in September” in more details? Doing simulated teaching two times not only make us stressful but also for the lecturer because he might not be able to give a just and fair grades due to his tiredness in listening to too much teaching. Why not we do teaching once which is of quality rather than quantity? And the lecturer also give grade that is of quality to everyone?

Now I have resolved in my heart that I don’t want to spend too much time in works that won’t return me my effort. I have better spent my time in doing other things that bring me satisfaction. Actually, I didn’t find a better song through literature but a different song that changes my view and attitude. Yes, I have the freedom of choice.

We started our simulated teaching from 12.00 to 4.30 pm yesterday. It was a long day and everybody was tired. Since it was late so another eight persons were not able to present their simulated teaching. I was one of them. I had to go home by carrying the radio that I had not the opportunity to use but I still had to bring it the next day for my simulated teaching.

I spent a lot of time on doing the drafts for my simulated teaching. Just to choose the extract almost made me headache. Actually, I wanted to do the extract on Cordelia’s speech of saying ‘nothing’ in showing her love to Lear, her father. When I found that my best friend is going to do the same extract. I changed my extract to Edmund’s speech. I don’t really like the extract but I don’t want to compete with my friend for doing the same extract.

Last Monday, I knew that my friend’s extract stopped before Cordelia’s speech of saying ‘nothing’. After I consulted Dr. Edwin for activity plan, I found some mistakes in my first plan. So I changed my mind last minute by changing my extract from Edmund’s speech to Cordelia’s speech. I worked that whole night to retype my lesson plan until 12.30am and woke up at 4.00am to continue.

I used the song “When you say nothing at all” by Ronan Keating as set induction because I felt that the lyric of this song is very related to Cordelia’s speech. Then I used letter-writing as one of the while-reading activity as I thought that this was interesting and something different from my coursemates. When I showed my lesson plan to my friends, they all said that my ideas were good and I was very satisfied with what I had done.

Finally, I was able to present my simulated teaching today. Dr. Edwin commented one of my while-reading activity was good but the other of letter-writing was not so appropriate. He said since Cordelia did not want to express her love in speech, writing a letter to express her love to her father was also considered as speaking.

I have a different view, there are people who find it hard to express themselves in speaking but express themselves better in writing. This involves the question of personality. Extroverted and introverted persons express themselves differently. Extroverts are more talkative, outgoing and speak freely whereas introverts are sometimes thought of as passive and quiet. According to Dewaele and Furnham(1988), extrovertion may be a factor in the development of general oral communicative competence, which requires face-to-face interaction, but not in listening, reading, and writing. I am not sure whether Cordelia is an introvert, but what I want to mean is speaking and writing are two different skills. Cordelia’s way of writing a letter to express her love is not equivalent to speaking.

When I got my lesson plan back, I was so disappointed and frustrated to look at the mark. I felt that my effort to design activities that are different from others is in vain. I would rather resolve to use the same activity as most of my coursemates employ, that is, to write a paragraph for while-reading. That will be safe for me. I see some of my friends’ set induction and pre-writing are not related but they still can get higher marks than me. I feel very unfair, fretted and frustrated. But what can I do? I can feel the same mental state with Lear when he says in his last sentence of his speech with his two daughters in Act II Scene iv, “Oh fool, I shall go mad!”

Today, Dr. Edwin gave us a questionairre to evaluate the writing of blogs. We ticked our responses according to Likert Scale and wrote our comments for the responses we gave.

I did make some comments on it. It is true that we learn many things from writing the blogs. We say something we dare not say in class. Our writing skills are improved and thinking skills are sharpened. We also become more familiar with the literary works we are studying.

However, there is one weakness I find in blogs writing. As it is a public journal, all of us are supposed to be able to access and read our friends’ journals. But I find it is time-consuming and troublesome to access to friends’ blogspot. We have to type the address of each individual’s blogspot address then only we can enter their blogs to read.

I would prefer what we did last semester when we did our responses in the e-forum. All of us send our responses to one website address and everybody can access and read one another’s works easily. We also have the chance to read works from those students from the main stream who are younger than us. It is a fine way we can share ideas and information.

Therefore, one suggestion I would like to give is to do like what our senior did last year. We all send our journals to one blogspot address so that everybody can read one another’s works easily.

Today, Dr. Edwin has returned us our midterm paper. I am glad because I have got 13/20 for the test. It shows some improvement when compared to my last midterm paper when I got only 7/20. I know my effort to work hard for literature is not in vain. This serves as an encouragement to motivate me to study even harder for literature.

I feel that studying literature is a self-exploring experience, the more we read, the more we discover ourselves. By probing deeply into the characters, I find that they are the reflection of our own life. I come to know myself better. Just like when we read of Eliza in Pygmalion, we see the changes she experiences when she wants to improve her own way of living. She is a flower girl who sells flowers on the street but she wants to be a lady in a flower-shop. She desires to move from a low socio-economic class to a high socio-economic class. She knows that she will not be able to realise her dream just by sitting and waiting at home. Therefore, she makes the effort to improve herself through education.

It is a hard life for Eliza to go through to learn the correct way of speaking the standard English. However, she never gives up. At the end, she achieves her goal. I also hope to achieve my goal but improvement does not come automatically by itself. It requires effort so I must exert myself vigorously. Therefore, I must continue to work hard for every course especially literature.

My first assignment is returned yesterday. I am disappointed because I have no grades as I have to redo it. Most of my friends have got grades of B, B- or B+. The highest grade is Wai Lieng who got A and followed by Zainal A-. Here I would like to congratulate them.

I know why I did wrong after consultation with Dr Edwin. I do my analysis on King Lear, a very difficult text to deal with. I think only two persons in my class do analysis on King Lear and the other person also has to redo it .

Many people like to do easy work. They like to do what is familiar than unfamiliar one. Actually, we have discussed Oedipus the King in detail when we were in MPTI and that is why many of my friends choose to do analysis on it. I know I am a person who likes to do something challenging. Instead of doing something I know, I do something I am not familiar.

English literature is difficult for me as I have never been exposed to it before I come for PKPG course. I am also not a TESL optionist but PC (Pengajian Cina) optionist, therefore it is difficult for me to do better in literature.

However, I believe in hardwork. If I work hard diligently, I will be able to reap what I sow. My last semester result is quite good, with five A and one B-. I got B- for the course “The Teaching of Short Stories” and it had brought down my CGPA to 3.791.

I don’t blame the lecturer for giving me low grades. There are others who got C and even D for the same course. I know I have to work even harder. I always tell myself grade is not important, what is more important is I have learnt something and gain knowledge and insight from the course.

Though I have to redo my assignment, I feel that I become more understanding on the characters of King Lear. I learnt a lot of things from drama. Apart from knowing the literary elements like characterisation, setting, theme and so forth, my inner person is built up. I know the importance of human relationship especially from King Lear and how we should deal with one another. I can feel that I am growing as an individual. I know I am going to become a better person. So thanks to drama.

Today is Thaipusam, a day of consecration to the Hindu deity, Lord Murugan, sometimes also called Lord Subramaniam. A feature of the festival is the carrying of a kavadi, a frame decorated with colored papers, tinsels, fresh flowers, and fruits as a form penance.

The Kavadi-bearer observes strict celibacy. Only pure, Sattwic food is taken; he abstains from all sorts of intoxicating drinks and drugs. He thinks of God all the time. Many of the Kavadi-bearers impose various forms of self-torture. Some pass a sharp little spear through their tongue, which is made to protrude out of the mouth. Others may pass a spear through the cheek. This sort of piercing is done in other parts of the body also. The bearer does not shave; he grows a beard. He eats only once a day. The spear pierced through his tongue or cheek reminds him of the Lord constantly. It also prevents him from speaking. It gives him great power of endurance.

On Thaipusam, some keen devotees undertake to walk barefoot from home to one of the shrines of Lord Subramanya, bearing the Kavadi all the way and collecting materials for the offering. They have to walk a hundred miles sometimes!

The Kavadi-bearers remind me of Oedipus. He blinds himself after knowing the truth. He could have killed himself but he does not. He wants to suffer because he wants to atone for his sins. He has sinned against his parents by committing patricide and incest. As he says, “I have sinned against them both / So vilely that I could not make my peace / by strangling my own life.”

Oedipus wants to live his life by continuing to feel the suffering, so he gouges out both his eyes. It is a terrible sight but this is a mere physical suffering compared to the torture of his mind.

I admire Oedipus because when he finds out his has committed the sins, he does not try to defend his actions. In fact he takes on full responsibility by deciding to punish himself. He inflicts upon himself a punishment in many ways worse than a death, to atone for his unforgiven sins. At the end of the play, the only thing he has left is his human dignity.

Oedipus is a hero just like the Kavadi-bearers. They suffer by the mortification of flesh so that their sins are cleansed and forgiven.

I have been watching a Korean TV series recently. It depicts a girl’s determination to bring the truth to light. Her parents had been killed unjusticely by some villains in the palace. In her pursuit to expose these villains’ wickedness, she experiences a lot of hardship and opposition. However, she is able to reveal the truth finally.

There is one scene that impresses me a lot. The girl and her senior cook go to the market to buy fish from a blind man. They want the fresh fish. The blind man just touches the skin of the fish and smells it and he is able to get them the most fresh fish. Though he is blind physically, this does not hinder him from making good judgment.

This reminds me of the Greek tragedy Oedipus the King. Throughout the play, Sophocles makes a lot of references to eyes, with the metaphor sight versus blindness.

Early in the play, Oedipus falsely accuses Teiresias and Creon of conspiracy, he angrily calls Teiresias ‘sightless’ old man and ‘child of endless night’. Then Teiresias also responds by using the same metaphor,”you mock my blindness, do you? But I say that you with both your eyes are blind.”

At the end, Oedipus knows the truth by learning his tragic fate. He is the one who kills his own father and lies on bed with his own mother. He has committed patricide and incest. Therefore, he gouge his eyes,which have been blind to the truth for so long. He says,”How could I bear to see when all my sight was horror everywhere?”

Though Teiresias is physically blind, he sees the truth from the beginning, while Oedipus, who has physical eyesight, is blind to his fate. By the end, Oedipus makes his eyes blind when he learns the truth and finally sees.

Sometimes, people are blind spiritually in many ways. They are blind in love, money, material possessions, religion and so forth. They are so blinded that they are not aware of the dangers that lie ahead. For example, a girl falls in love with a man. In courtship, she might have seen how the man behaves and treats others badly, yet she chooses to ignore. Then she marries him but after that she realises she has made a mistake because the man beats her violently. However, it is too late for her to know it.

Of course the girl won’t be like Oedipus who gouge out his eyes for knowing the truth. But this teaches us a lesson. We should see things through spiritual eyes if we want to make a right decision. Don’t be blinded by things that seem to be appealing but actually it is not. Therefore, my friends, do not be misled by your own physical eyes!

Still thinking of Lear’s relationship with Goneril and Regan, it reminds me of the fable “The Fox and The Crow”. It is a popular story among the young children. I am sure all of you are familiar with the story. It is about the cunning fox saw the crow sitting on a tree. It had a piece of meat in its mouth. The fox wanted to eat the meat and tried to get it from the crow. So it began to praise the crow for having a sweet voice and wanted to hear it sing a song. The crow was flattered by its words, believed it and so it sang. Once the crow opened the mouth to sing, the meat fell and the fox snatched it and ran away.

The moral of the story is do not trust flatterers. I think if Lear has read this story before, he would not be easily deceived by his daughters’ flattery words. He would not act like the crow who loves flattery words but pays a price by losing its meat. However, Lear loses more than what the crow loses. He loses the whole kingdom, his position and authority as a king and a father. He has to pay a great price for favouring flattery words.

As for me, I think the flatterers today we need to be aware are the salesmen and insurance agents. I once fell into the trap of an insurance agent. He flattered me so much that I was moved to sign an insurance with a premium of RM550 per month! Fortunately, thanks to the offering of this PKPG course, I stopped paying for the insurance as I couldn’t afford it. Though I had paid it for almost a year that I had lost RM6600, I feel my load is lighter now and free from debts. Yes, do not trust flatterers.

When Lear is angry, he calls his daughters all kinds of names. He likes to describe their attitudes in terms of animal behaviour. He calls Goneril ‘sea-monster’, ‘detested kite’ and Regan ‘wolvish visage’ and ‘like a vulture’.

All of these images, sea-monster, kite, vulture and wolf are of animals which eat other animals, satisfying their hunger at the expense of others. The word ‘kite’ is a new word for me. Unlike the kite we fly in the sky, it means a kind of bird of prey of the hawk family. This kind of bird is very ungrateful to its parent. As it grows up, it eats its own mother!

Animal appetite is the downfall of both Goneril and Regan. They both lust after Edmund. Their jealousy with each other leads to their death, as Goneril poisons Regan and kills herself with a knife.

This is just a play that has been written by William Shakespeare in the sixteen century. Yet we can find the similarity between human behaviour from his time and our time. Today, we hear a lot of terrorism, wars, human injustices etc. Sometimes people kill one another for no reason. Even among family ties, there is no love. I had read an article about a Tsunami victim who brought her grandson just to get the relief goods distributed only for children. After she gets the goods, she abandons her grandson.

Yes, human have behaved like brute beasts. They have no sense of morality and conscience just like Lear’s daughters. If we don’t control ourselves and the next generation, the earth will be a place for only beasts!

Can love be measured? I find that Lear has fallen in this “unrealistic” device by testing the love of his daughters. Like any parent, he wishes to be loved and appreciated in response to the kindnesses he has performed. However, the way he does it is ridiculous.

Lear thought that he could measure the standard of his daughters’ love by the flattery words from them. Goneril and Regan are content to flatter and promise obedience, knowing they will turn him out once he has relinquished his authority. On the other hand, Cordelia refuses to flatter him like her two daughters though she has true love for her father. As a result, she loses her share of his kingdom and her father.

Then Lear has problem with his two elder daughters for maintaining the number of his attendants. He brings a hundred knights with him to stay with Goneril. When Goneril wants to reduce the numbers to fifty, he goes for Regan. However, Regan is even worse, she does not allow fifty, but twenty-five. Lear is so angry that he utters to Goneril,
“I’ll go with thee:
thy fifty yet doth double five-and-twenty,
And thou art twice her love.”

At last, Lear wants to stay with Goneril because her love is twice as much as Regan. Isn’t it ridiculous? Lear seems to be interested in number and he thinks that the more number his daughter allows the more her love is. But we know that this is not true. Love comes from the heart, not by flattery words or the measure of compromising. We should focus on love that has quality rather than quantity.

The natural disaster happened on 26th December 2004 has caused an alarm among people all over the world. Many of those directly and indirectly affected by the disaster are asking, “Is it Acts of God?” or “Is it an inevitable fate?”

I would like to draw the attention to the Greek tragedy “Oedipus the King”. Oedipus has tried to avoid the fulfillment of the oracle that prophesies that he will kill his own father and marry his own mother. So he leaves Corinth and comes to Thebes and helps the people to solve the riddle by the Sphinx. Then he becomes the king and marries the widow, Iocasta. However, the truth reveals latert hat the wife whom he has slept with is his own mother!

Many might say that Oedipus is fated to fulfill the oracle. But I personally feel that if Oedipus is not persistent in pursuing the truth and if he desn’t kill Lauis for self-defense in the beginning, he might be able to run away from fate.

I feel that if each one’s moment of death is already fixed or fated, there would be no need for us to avoid dangerous situations or to care for one’s health, and safety precfautions would not alter mortality rates. Then why do we care for our health or take our children to the doctor? Why are there fewer fatal accidents when drivers obey traffic laws? Obviously, taking precautions is beneficial.

The same answer goes to Tsunami victims. According to science explanation, the earthquake is caused when a huge tectonic plate slips and crashes onto another tectonic plate. It is quite simply, planet earth making occasional adjustments to its tectonic plates. Therefore, it is nothing personal. It is not the wrath of God. It was not a test of humankind.

There is warning given even before the outbreak of Tsunami but many people ignore because they don’t believe it. This is what happened to fatal accidents when people ignore the rules and warnings. Therefore, it is important for us to take precautions. We also should do well to count our blessings and appreciate life a little more.

I usually take one week to finish reading a play text. However, I spend almost three weeks to read King Lear. This is dued to the difficult language style and a lot of contracted forms employed by the playwright Shakespeare.

I am deeply moved by the tragedy happened on King Lear. I can feel the suffering, love and hatred between King Lear and his three daughters. King Lear divides his kingdom among the three daughters by testing the degree of their love to him in their words. Goneril and Regan are content to flatter and promise obedience in lying about their love for their father. They use elaborate and exaggerate language to conceal their true feelings for their father. On the other hand, the youngest daughter,Cordelia, whom King Lear has loved the most, refuses to lie in this fashion. She uses simple, straightward prose and refuses to tell her love to her father publicly. As a result, she loses her share of the kingdom to the two wicked sisters. King Lear misjudges her and disinherits his loving daughter in favour of her wicked sisters.

At the end of the play, King Lear in his madness realises his fault against Cordelia but his reconciliation with her is too late. After the death of her two villain sisters, Cordelia is found dead after strangling and King Lear too dies brokenhearted. What a sad consequence because of the misjudgement of a father! Here is a tragedy in King Lear, one death after death. A king has fallen from the height of his powers to become a bothersome old man. Only after going madness he understands the vanity of his former existence. What a sad tragedy!

King Lear’s tragic experience has helped me to discover the relationship among humans. We should cherish the relationship we have in our family. We should not compare one’s love with another. People express love in many different way.

We started to read the play “Oedipus The King” this week. With the play text opened right in front of us, Dr. Edwin read out the stage direction before the prologue. The last sentence was ‘ Oedipus enters’. He asked us to imagine how the king walked into the palace and even asked four persons to demonstrate it. Our four friends tried their best to walk as a king with dignity and arrogant. However, Dr. Edwin said that he was in ‘the jungle of hopelessness’!

Well, we have neglected the fact that the name Oedipus means “swollen feet”. It refers to the mutilation of Oedipus’ feet done by his father, Laius, before he was sent to Mount Cithaeron to be put to death by exposure. So when Oedipus enters the palace, he should have walked limply or hobbled with the aid of a stick. That means all of us have wrong interpretations for the stage direction.

I think when we read a play, we should read with insight. Essentially, insight is the ability to see into the true nature of human character with deep understanding. Though I have read “Oedipus The King” for two times. I still can’t understand and make sense of what I am reading. As Dr. Fouziah in her lecture has said that comprehension is the basis of reading. When we read, we must read for meaning. Not only that, we must be an active reader.

I have read an illustration given by Christine Nuttall in her book “Teaching Reading Skills In A Foreign Language”. She says that ‘the text is full of meaning like a jug full of water, the reader’s mind soaks it up like a sponge. In this view, the reader’s role is passive, all the work has been done by the writer and the reader has only to open his mind and let the meaning pour in.’

I think I am a passive reader. Though I wake up at 4.30am every morning so as to read some materials before I go to campus. However, whatever text I read is just like a jug of water that pours into my mind. I absorb it totally without giving insight into it. Well, I think I should change my reading strategies, I should read into the deep meaning of the text in the play if I want to understand it clearly.

Dancing is an activity or exercise that relaxes our body. We learn the dance steps and forms especially for performance on stage. Today, many Chinese elderly men and women take up dancing class to fill up their leisure time. When I was a Chinese schoolteacher, I had to teach a few dances to the students for performance on certain festive nights every year. I find that it is interesting to learn and teach the dance.

There are two types of dances, the traditional and modern dance. Personally, I enjoy the traditional dance. The traditional dance needs the dancers to dress up their colourful traditional costumes and carry some hand props like fans, umbrellas, handkerchiefs and others. We explore Chinese culture and heritage through traditional dance. The Chinese traditional dances are Lion Dance, Dragon Dance, Feather Fan Dance, Traditional Chinese Ribbon Dance, Ribbon Dance, Silk Fan Dance, Sword Dance and so on.

Most people use sound to communicate in their everyday life, but a dancer on stage uses his limbs and body to do the same thing. Just like the Chinese language, Chinese dance has its own unique vocabulary, semantics, and syntactic structure that enable a dancer on stage to fully express his thoughts and feelings with ease and grace.

Chinese used choreographic movements of the hands and feet to express their veneration of the spirits of heaven and earth, to act out aspects of their everyday life, and to give expression to shared feelings of joy and delight. Dance was also a performing art that brought pleasure to both the performers and the audience.

Nowadays, we seldom see people performing traditional Chines dance. It can be found only in festive seasons like the Chinese New Year and Mooncake Festival. The young people today prefer modern dance like cha-cha, street dance and so on.

When reading the play “In The Name of Love” by Ramli Ibrahim, we can see that a traditional Malay dance, makyung, is losing its popularity and fame. As the protagonist, Mak Su in her monologue reveals, “The old makyung is not what the makyung is now. In the old days, it was alive. Segar. Now, you yourself can see what it has become – not dead or alive!” I totally agree with her views on traditional dance. Nowadays, many people prefer modern dance, traditional dance has received few attention from the public. So who is going to learn and inherit the skills of traditional dance from the older generations? If we don’t inculcate the love for traditional dance among the young ones, I am sure one day the traditional dance will face the same fate like makyung. If not, it will become not dead or alive!

In another play, “Dance lIke A Man” by Mahesh Dattani, the conversation between Amritlal and Jairaj has shown too the decrease of the traditional Indian dance has caused the professional female dancers who work in the temple turn to be immoral prostitutes. What a pity the society has forced these professions into such degrading and obscene conduct!

Dance, whether social, theatrical, or ritually based, is a form of cultural expression. Dances can teach us practical knowledge about a culture, such as its agricultural traditions or the historical migrations of the people. With every dance that dies, another source of data about the nature of human communities dies with it.

Therefore, regardless of our races, whether we are Chinese, Malays or Indians, we want to preserve our cultural and traditional dance. We want to promote awareness of cultural identities among our younger generation. It is time for all of us to cultivate our interests in the traditional dance and pass it on to our next generations. A dance dies along with its last practitioner. Yes, why not we start to learn our traditional dance today?

We did a mini performance on a play of Edward Bond’s 'Bingo' last Monday. The selected extract contained only two characters who spoke ten lines that were made up of five questions and five brief responses. It was interesting to see how our friends’ creative minds had turned the story into different settings with characters of different relationships. Some pretended to be lovers who were sitting under the tree, some were teacher and student in the classroom, the most interesting were two chickens using their claws to write on the ground.

This mini performance has helped us to understand the nature of text. It makes the play more interesting than reading it. Without performance, we have to visualise the stage and try to figure out what is going on there in the play. We are also given an opportunity to explore and interpret the play by our own creativity and imaginations. Now I know that a small extract from a play can be done in different settings, characters and mood. We can play it positively or negatively that depends on our creativity.

I think this is how we are going to teach our students when we teach in school. We may choose a small extract from the short stories, novels or dramas and ask the students to act out. I am sure they will be enjoying the activity just as we do.

Reading plays is for most people a difficult and unfamiliar task especially among Malaysian students. The Literature Component has just been implemented since the year 2000. It is still a new programme that our students need more time in their exposure. Teachers should be aware of the fact that not everyone responds positively to drama, therefore we need to make the classroom activity interesting so as to capture our students’ interests.

Why ‘prying’? Some people may want to ask me. From what I know in the Oxford Dictionary, the word ‘pry’ means “inquire too curiously or rudely about other people’s private affairs”. Yes, those people who look into my journals in this blog are considered as prying into my private affairs! However, I can’t deny the fact that there are no secrets in this blog. As Dr. M.Edwin says, this is e-journal, a public journal that everybody can access to it easily and read whatever they like. Therefore, I can’t stop others from reading my journals. However, since this is my first time in doing e-journal, I will love to hear some comments if the readers feel they want to leave a few lines in my blog.

The heart is an important organ of our body. From it, we manifest various activities in our desires, affections, emotions, passions, purposes, thoughts, perceptions, imaginations, wisdom, knowledge, skill, beliefs, reasonings, memory and consciousness. Wow! So many things! Therefore, the heart represents the total inner personality. By reading literature especially drama, we are able to immense in the author’s or characters’ inner feelings. Drama, which speaks to the heart as much as to the mind, provides materials with some emotional colours that can make fuller contact with our own life. When we are able to pry into the heart of certain characters, we feel close to them and share their emotional responses. Of course we can’t speak to them personally, yet by asking questions ourselves while reading, we come to our own conclusions. It is interesting to read drama. I hope by the end of this semester, I will be able to build up my inner person and carefully mold my desires, affections, emotions and goals in life.