Critical Literacy - First class

The first week (13^Th January 2010)

On 13^Th January 2010 which is Wednesday is the first class of Critical Literacy subject. This subject is taught by Miss Shazwani binti Hanapi. She is the TESL graduation lecturer from UITM, Shah Alam. In the first class, she introduced herself and tried to recognise her students that she had taught. She can recognise her students very well. For me, she is a very nice and great lecturer. Everybody likes her with her warm and sporting character.

Before we proceed with the lesson, she asked all of her students to know each other closer by doing a very interesting ice breaking. There are two sides of seats in the class, so she asked the right side to choose a person from the left side to get his or her background information and give the types of personality for the person he or she had chose based on four shapes which are triangle, circle, square and wave. However, if somebody is eclectic, he or she can mix the shapes to make it more interesting. Each of the shapes resembles the personality of a person. So, the students have to tell the reason why they choose that particular shape for their friend. I think this activity is related to critical literacy because the students need to give the shape to their friend by looking at her or his characteristics and give the reasons why they choose the shape.

The meanings of the shapes are; the triangle means the Chinese people who always have enthusiasm in everything they do and very ambitious while the square represent the Indian people who is strict, obedient people. For the circle is resemble the Malay people who always in the comfort zone who never wants to develop and for the wave, the people who do not have stance in their life. In my opinion, it is really true that these shapes resemble the personality of the races which we can see clearly nowadays.

Then, Miss Wani talked a bit about critical literacy. She said this subject is about our own schemata which means based on our background knowledge. She gave the example of the picture of Mona Lisa. Mona Lisa gave a cynical smirk that in my point of view, she was force to give a smile. She hid her sad feeling in order to give the best posture of her portrait. She did not want other people know about her problem or something that bother her mind while making the portrait. Everybody has own perception and opinion about the portrait and it is called the schemata of each person.