I write to...ESCAPE!!

I write to escape from all the troubles around myself. When I write down all the troubles in my little notebook, I feel so much better especially during this important period of time.

Recently, it is the last few months of my high school life. I don't know why but it seems that all the troubles are coming to me - friendships, family relationship, academic, university... etc. I just want to have a great and memorable ending for everyone in this school, but things don't go well the way I want. My friends are arguing with each other. They see each other as transparent. I am stuck in the middle and have nowhere to go. They are used to be good and close friends. Mom and I always argue. She scolds me for not going online on Skype to talk to her or simply just transforming that into ESCAPING from HER. She doesn't understand how much work I have to do. Advanced Placements MOCKS, Prom Night, and Tests. Mom simply thinks too much and has even exaggerated sometimes. Academic work gets more heavier and heavier to prepare for the last June High school Exam. I have no choice ,but keep on working hard and studying. It is so stressful that I sometimes feel I can't even breath. Universities offer keep sending out and rejecting people. However, my offers are not coming! Those universities that I wanted to go don't send offers until the very last month that is - MAY. Therefore, I have to keep on waiting and waiting for the offer and worried for 1 more month that is really a long period of time.

I hope things will become better by the time past. I just wanted to have a memorable and fun graduation ceremony with my friends at the end of the school year.

Blogs → Blogs → Blogs

After posting my personal thoughts about English Curriculum and Education, I visited other classmates' blogs on further more exploring. Therefore, here are some really good blogs that are written by my classmates. They are really thoughtful and reflective:

Value of English (link) - Ridley English Blog
I have also felt stressful like what this author has experienced as well. I have been a loser or a failure in the past few high school years when I was still in Hong Kong. I have always been worrying whether I have to repeat a year or will be kicked out of the school due to poor academic. However, after studying abroad to Canada, I have grown up so much. No one is helping you with your own stuff. It is so much different compare to Home, where you have your parents, or housemaids to help you. If you fail the exam, you really failed it. No one will say "doesn't matter!". I really feel that grade 12 has been a very important year. I am always stressed about exams and tests. Any events happened this final year will definitely change my life. No matter, it is great moment or being academic grounded, they sure change my final year or even my later parts of life. I have totally adapted to this new environment and had a new personal views and believes. I felt that I have grown up so much. Education really happens not just in classroom but in daily lives or a certain period of time. This is a good example of it.

I here wish all the grade 12 students in the world a great final year.
We have less than 2 months to go. Every thing will fly through fast like wind.
Let's all enjoy it and leave great memories with your friends!

Learning English without Imagination? (link) - ENG 4U Drey :D
When I first had English in lower school, I hate it. I honestly hate English. We are doing vocabularies quiz,  grammar quiz,  comprehensions and compositions everyday. Well, yes. Practice makes perfect. My grammar and vocabularies have slowly built up into correct shape. However, I found no fun at all. It is like a robot or a training class. We are a bucket ,and we are going to be filled with vocabularies and grammar. After promoting into high school, reading literatures has been one the greatest thing in English class. In this blog, the author has emphasized on how learning english will be without novels or  imagination. I believe this happens to a lot of us. While reading books, scenes and people appear in our mind like real person. This is our imagination. By the detail description, everyone has their own look of the characters. These characters live in our mind while reading the novels along. This has been so much more fun than doing grammar quizes. The characters are lively in our mind and we also figure out meanings and personal views from novels. It also broaden our horizons to other aspects of knowledge.
Then, why do we take them away from the curriculum. Books have been affecting human for decades. After the internet has been introduced to human, it seems that less people have been reading books. Books are really meaningful or even Powerful. I hope people can all read more books and explore the fun in it.

English Novels moments

These are some memorable moments from novels that I have read before. 

Death of Salesman

• Willy Loman argues with his sons.
• Willy loman talks to his boss about how he helped him before.
• At the end Bernard talked to Willy about what happened to Biff

Macbeth

• When Macbeth killed the king
• When Macbeth saw the ghosts and become crazy 

The reader

•     The bicycle scene that was one of the image in Michael’s mind
•         The scene he visited the concentration camp
•         He saw Hanna again in the courtoom.

Olive’s Ocean

•  Martha was being kissed and figured out that it was a prank.
•   Martha figured out that Godbee is going to die very soon.

Rich Thinking! My Education

My Education ... so far

A few years ago, I was watching a every Tuesday documentary at night alone. The documentary was about how some of the poor children from China worked so hard in Hong Kong. Due to their bad economic status, they can only go to some bad and cheap schools. If the students get good grades, the school will not offer scholarships or any other presents, but something no one can ever imagined before - canned food. Every time they received food from their teacher, their face has a bright smile on. However, the lucky us may have no idea why they are so happy. These food can be bought easily from superstore or Walmart. However, these cans can save a family's life and motivate students to work harder. I was lying down on my sofa and having pop corns while watching this touching scene. I was so embarrassed that I always complain how early we have to wake up to go to school, how much homework the teacher has given to us or my parents don't buy the latest phone to me. From that day on, I never stop the "Never Give Up" spirit. Whenever I wanted to stop, I will remember their big smile . And then, I will get back to work again. Even though they do not have sufficient basic necessities to live, they still work hard. They never complain but just keep working on it. 

Then, why would I give up?

Rich Thinking! English?

English as the mandatory course throughout the four high school years, has been a very important role.
I believe it does not work as a normal language course. At the time we are in high school, I believe most of the high school students should be fine with oral and writing communication at that time.

Then, you may ask
Why is English still in the curriculum even for Grade 12 students?
Why don't they take it away or let students to replace it with other foreign languages?

To me, I think English is not just a language course to me. It teaches me a lot like a hidden teacher.
Of course, you learn how to apply correct English and avoid being laughed by your boss in the future (e.g. comma splice). However, i think the most important point for English is it affects us by introducing us into different aspects. We study a lot of famous novels in class. These novels normally hide a meaningful ideas the authors wanted to bring out. When we read it on our own with the help by the teachers, it has a totally different and powerful effects on us. The hidden meanings can even change our traits. They introduce us another view to see things (e.g. history). I think English works out like a multifunctional course. It can act like a history class, language class or even a time for us to relax and reflect for a bit. English is a meaningful course, and I hope people can realize it and enjoy the class.

Rich Thinking! I QUIT!!

                     

This video is about a teacher reading his resignation letter to Providence School Board. This has risen a lot of awareness of how a school system or teacher should teach and treat each student in the school.

I am really appreciated with how this teacher has done for the students. He is really a good teacher to my opinions. "School" has been a big part of the childhood memories for a lot of people. How the school treats the students will have a big influences on the future of these poor kids as it is their important development stage. First, stop providing breakfast to students. Breakfast, as the first meal of people is really important. It gives people a good start by providing enough nutritions. Moreover, children can have their time to play and relax for a bit before class starts. This also helps building up relationship between one another and rely and care for each other. Second, school is supposed to be helping parents to grow them into mature adults with mature minds and personal values each of them believe, but definitely NOT TEST-TAKERS! If children are trained to become a test-taker, they will not learn anything even until the graduation. Third, a motivated learning environment is good for students learning but not too strict. They are studying in a school but not a military camps! If they are too strict, they may have negative effects on them such as lower down their motivations to learn.
I applaude to this teacher for his action and I hope this video would bring more reflections to people.

What kind of education would you want your next generation to receive? 

What does Education mean to me?

My Definition of Education

It is to get educated through events and person beside you to grow your moral and value of your minds and body. Even though knowledge and school is always being linked with education, my definition education focused in the development of one's characteristics, attitude and personal values. It is a process of learning and growing into the stage of being mature. Education is a lifelong task for everyone. Even though the elderlies have to learn and be educated while the society keeps on changing. 

English Studies career and the Value of Exposure

As a lucky kid on this planet, I have been receiving English education from the age of 3, that is from kindergarten. English Studies have been a very important part in my education.

Here is a quick snapshot of novels, plays, prose, characters, settings, poetry I have been introduced in English Classes :

Ella Enchanted       

Death of Salesman

Macbeth

The reader

Olive’s Ocean

Charlotte’s Web

The Road

Reflections to this exposure:

Macbeth

I was being introduced to this Shakespeare’s old English text in Grade 11. 

After promoting to Grade 12, I have also learnt about the background history of this book. Shakespeare wrote this book to please the new King James because of his Scottish history. 

His famous book Macbeth talks about how the darkness mind of one that can be shown under the weakness external. It also shows the selfishness in one's mind. It also introduced me to the morals and values of human. I felt that this book has very rich information to be explored and discussed on. 

The old text is also a part to be learnt from. It is totally different form the modern English we normally learnt now. It has brought me to a higher level of novel, I have read and experienced on more mature themes that I could never touched before. 

Olive’s Ocean

I read this book when I was in lower school. The story was about a simple girl going off to enjoy her summer to pay a visit to her grandmother. However, the themes and meaning inside is very worthwhile.

I learnt another way of expressing my feelings through a simple story; the simple romantic story has turned out into something I never expect.

I have learnt the wordings, and also the way of description. It helps me a lot when I was still very young. The description is very detail in wordings and I can easily imagine the picture words into a full and round shot. The themes are also very consequential. They lead us into a reflection on our attitude to our parents. It also reminded us to cherish times with family because as time past, we can never chase them back. 

Value of exposures

Through out the books that I have been introduced by during my English course, I have been reminded for different personal and lifelong values that we should always keep.

Content of a book will always bring us to some questions and themes that we will always try to ask ourselves. This helps us to reflect on ourselves. The characters might have done something that we may not agree. Then we can try to ask ourselves, did we do the same thing? We can see things that were done on the characters and evaluate at the same time.

Characters of the book will also represent a kind of person. They may represent jealousy, greedy or other traits of the society. We will then see how they will do and cooperate with the world in the book, and thus make reflections in our real world.

Literature in the book will teach us how to polish the words to make it a piece of nice and pretty work that people can enjoy from the choose of wordings and descriptions.

English is a course that we learnt how to communicate with people and how we think. English, the language that most people speak in the world, has convenience us to communicate with people who never know each other before. English text also brings up a lot of themes that people may forget in their daily life. It is also an easy language to deliver whatever we want to express to people.       

Lets Guess! What books are they? :D

I am from a weird but famous inventor,

Everyone wanted the ticket in the sweet,

Short and orange African workers worked so hard,

The only honest and sincere kid remained and won the big prize!

I am from the world that can cast spells,

Ran into the wall and found the hidden platform

Just a normal broom then I can fly up sky,

There is a name no one dares to mention.

I am from the fantasy rabbit hole,

Eat the yummy cake to grow huge like a giant,

Caterpillar can give you precious advice,

Enjoy a little tea party with the hatter,

I am from a pumpkin golden carriage,

Come back home before magic disappears at midnight,

Lost one of the glass slippers,

No one fits the slipper but that girl only.

I am from the little red hood and basket,

Grandma has a big mouth and deep voice,

Suddenly a big wild wolf jumped out,

Lumberjack came to save and good-bye wolf.

I am from the magical tree house,

You do not need to pack before going

Travel around the world with the 2 siblings,

Complete the mission and get your reward.

I am from a naughty marionette that always tells lies,

The nose just keeps growing and growing,

His money got stolen but he was arrested,

Work as a donkey and turned into a good puppet at last.



Answers:

Charlie and the chocolate factory
Harry Potter
Alice in the Wonderland
Cinderella
Little red riding hood
Magic Tree house
Pinocchio