Shakespeare in teaching

  I think first of all, i will start off by describing my own experience of reading the Shakespeare. It could be concluded in one simple sentence: My experience of literature reading is drastically ruined by reading Shakespeare. But my point is not to clean Shakespeare off our English class syllable, but rather to question some of the teaching methods most schools apply nowadays.  
  The first thing that hinders me from enjoying the reading is the complete random vocabularies that he throws into the text all over the places. People cannot enjoy the play no matter how fascinating a story it brings to us  when people can't even understand the lines. Secondly i think it is the history background of the story that brings obstacles in understanding the play. This is a rather normal problem that frequently encountered when reading literature other than Shakespeare. 
  So back to the question: whether Shakespeare should be taught in class? Well, if Shakespeare is inappropriate as teaching materials, why it became the most utilized literature in high school? Students in high school averagely read one play of his every year. So, i think the right question should be: how to engage the student in the midst of teaching Shakespeare.
  First of first is to solve the language problem that lays between "boring to read" and "so much fun to read". Teachers may have to have a warm-up session that covers the common-used vocabularies before starting the actual reading of the literature. Along with the background information that specifies all the trivial pieces leading up to the beginning of the play. Historical background is necessary to be cleared to students for further development of the literature, teachers may have to come up with more entertaining ways to translate these information to students. (For details you may email Mr.Darby who does it so well by applying videos, blogging, and such new teaching methods in classes.) Having solutions to those problems is having the key to engage students in the study of Shakespeare literature.

Shakespeare

Shakespeare
by: rexczh

Diversity

Speaking of the only "one story", i feel exact the same way when people ask me naive questions about where i come from. They ask me questions that even piss me off, like one about if all Chinese people ride bikes. I feel offended sometimes when people are acting so ignorant about China, i even felt that Americans only care about nothing else but their own culture.
After hearing this talk, i was enlightened by this speaker that it is not their fault for knowing nothing about my culture but it is how they were educated and informed from the very beginning. "Single story creates stereotypes, the problem with single story is that it is incomplete." She said. Like the story i shared with the class this morning, there are terrible things happening in China that are far across the moral baseline. Thinking back if i was one of the American students sitting in the classroom hearing an international student talk about horrible things like this, and all i kept hearing about was terrible things about this country and its culture, without a doubt that i would be biased,with my mind solely focused on catastrophes and agonies facet of it. Therefore, diversity does matter.
Diversity creates many stories disclose mysteries of one thing and break the stereotype of some judgmental views based on confined information. Diversity serves as some sort of glue that bond people of different ethics, social classes, sexes, and cultures together. Diversity makes us understand not only how we are different from each other, but more so how we are alike. It brings us to get closer to each other so we don't have to make judgments with distances, but rather gather information from every possible way.
As an international student, i perfectly understand what kind of impact diversity has on people. It means tolerating, fitting in, and also accepting, appreciating.
To me, diversity means challenge, and also benefit to some extent in terms of being different. How i am different from the Americans is just as how they are different from me. As i am doing everything trying to fit in, they are also seeking out a way to accept me and understand me. Only diversity creates to us this kind of experiences through which we have a better understanding of others as well as ourselves.

animals

First post! Happy Chinese New Year everyone, as it is the year of Dragon according to the Chinese calendar, i would like to talk a little bit about Dragon. To me Dragon is a very special animal not only because of its mysteriousness but also its majesty and high status. Dragon is the only mythological animal among all 12 animals in the Chinese calendar. Dragon is ingrained in Chinese culture and is strongly associated with authority and great honor as it is the highest-ranking animal in the animal hierarchy in all ages throughout the history of China. It is the symbol of imperial authority: The dragon was a symbol for the emperor in many Chinese dynasties. The imperial throne was called the Dragon Throne. The rulers’ bodies are called "longTi" which literally means the body of the dragon, but symbolizes the precious value of the king's body. During the late Qing Dynasty, the dragon was even adopted as the national flag. The dragon is featured in the carvings on the steps of imperial palaces and tombs, such as the Forbidden City in Beijing.

As to Dragon’s appearance, we are familiar with some of the imaginary creatures that possess different characteristics of multiple animals at the same time, such as the Chimera in mythology. There are variant lists of the nine animal resemblances. A  Sinologist lists that these characteristics of an authentic dragon: "The horns of a deer. The head of a camel. A demon's eyes. The neck of a snake. A tortoise's viscera. A hawk's claws. The palms of a tiger. A cow's ears. And it hears through its horns, its ears being deprived of all power of hearing." He notes that, "Others state it has a rabbit's eyes, a frog's belly, a carp's scales."

Let’s discuss a little bit about how people imagined Dragon to be like that, what are the reasons that the dragon possesses those certain characteristics. For the neck of a snake, I guess it is because that people thought Dragon is originally an aquatic animal. In the history, people were not capable of explaining why there were droughts and flood, so they envisioned that there was some kind of animal in the sea that controls the floods and rains. Snakes were the most common animal that people would see in the water; they then put this vision on Dragon’s body.

As it was mentioned that dragon are frequently associated with rulers. In the past, the rulers were expected to have the privilege to live longer than normal people. It is been a common sense that a tortoise can live as long as hundreds of years at least. People assimilated dragon’s length of life to that of tortoises’, and that is basically why the dragon has viscera of a tortoise.Hawk’s claws resembles dragon’s vicious act and dexterous; palms of tiger symbolizes dragon’s fierceness and its fast speed.