When making this political cartoon, I tried to keep in mind the differences between men and women as reflected in the handmaid’s tale. The idea of the lava being labelled as “Handmaid” was to try and add a sense of humour to the piece.
IO Reflection
Having completed the English Internal Oral there are many things to look back on. The IO required us to pick two texts. I think it was a good idea to choose home fire as we had spent quite a lot of time in it in class and it appears to be an interesting text with very controversial and modern issues. As it reimagines the Sophocles play “Antigone” there are key underlying messages that will exist throughout the rest of mankind. The conflict of the law vs family. At what point does family exempt us from the law? The non-lit text I chose was Redemption Song, Bob Marley is someone that I have always been fascinated in. He is deeply inspiring to me and I am always listening to his music. I chose redemption song as I believe it to be one of his greatest songs.
When establishing a connection between the two texts, I came up with the idea of identity and how both Parvaiz and Bob Marley struggles to come to terms with themselves especially when in a dominant society. Although this connection may seem farfetched, I think I did a good job at establishing the common themes between the two. If I were to do the IO again I could have perhaps chosen a different non-lit text that had closer ties to Homefire yet the consequence to that is that I may have not been as passionate about it.
In terms of the actual IO, I felt like I prepared very well for it. I didn’t want to “memorise a script” as I thought this would lose my natural flow. Instead, I practised my IO from my outline and was able to elaborate from each of the bullet points. Overall I am really happy with how the whole process went and the experience as a whole is something I will remember for the rest of my life.
Language in a Handmaid’s Tale
Throughout the book, Margaret Atwood utilises various kinds of language techniques to emphasise on this topic of control and the society that is Gilead. The language plays a vital part in the book as even though being literate is banned for Handmaids, Offred is continually experimenting and playing with language. This could suggest how Offred is trying to escape from this reality whilst also taking a bit of control of her language and herself.
Margret Atwood’s first use of language technique is neologisms. A neologism is when new words are introduced to already existing words. Atwood uses neologisms as new words invented in Gilead. Words such as “Guardian Angels” which are used to describe men therefore portraying the control they have. This juxtaposes the terms used to describe the Handmaids as “Aunts”. “Aunts” suggests someone that does not have control nor is family – an outsider.
Biblical language is used throughout the book especially with Aunt Lydia and communication between omen of the society. Biblical language is mostly used to describe the situation in Gilead. The biblical language or biblical-sounding language shows how Gilead tries to influence people’s minds by giving examples from the bible referencing to the theme of control.
Language musings are words that the narrator contemplates the meaning of during the novel. Margaret Atwood portrays Offred to constantly be thinking about the meaning of certain words, showing the importance of literacy for her.
Project Week Planning
Project week was looking to be a really exciting time for my group and me, we were really looking forward to the invaluable experiences that we would have. I felt that despite us not being able to actually go on Project Week, the planning aspect of it was really important. We went through the same process that any other grade 11 student would have done.
Initially, we encountered problems with not being able to find approved creativity or service components to match our activity. But we were working towards fixing that.
I think in terms of working together as a group it was mainly 2 or 3 out of the 5 that were doing the majority of the work. I was included in that and did most of the planning with our my friend.
I think I have definitely learnt what it means to plan a CAS experience. Overall with the planning, communication and collaboration, I learnt a lot. I don’t think our efforts will be completely wasted as our group may plan to execute the week over one of the holidays which could be quite fun!
#LearningOutcome3
Reflecting on Season 3 of Service
My service is arguably one of my most gratifying CAS experiences. Every week I am able to have a positive impact on someone’s life. The best thing about my service is the relationships that we develop with our partners. Having worked with Ng Hung Khim every week I feel like I know him quite well and it is nice to see our relationship grow. Like my Activity and Creativity components of season 3, Service was also put to a stop due to COVID 19, although this was the case, we did have some fair warning. Because of this, we were able to record a plethora of video tutorials a put them in a drive folder. The partners could access them and view them, I think it may even be more helpful because with a video you could rewatch it if you didn’t understand something in particular.
We would opt for google hangouts or zoom but for the likes of our partners, we decided that it would be more efficient to make video tutorials and they could view them at their own will.
I think this service has taught me that something we take for granted may not be so easy for someone else to grasp, this issue can be adapted to a global scale quite easily in the sense that you should appreciate what you have and help those who don’t have it. Int his case its the skill of using technology. Clearly a very important skill in the 21st century.
In addition to this, I think having done this for nearly a whole academic year,, my actions have certainly had some impact on the members of the care home and that my and my service’s actions have not gone unnoticed.
#LearningOutcome6 #LearningOutcome7
Looking back on Season 3 DJ Club
For season 3 & 4 I signed up for DJ club, not really knowing what to expect, I was pleasantly surprised. We started out with really basic “beatmatching” and “dropping it in on the 1”. As there was only one DJ turntable in the room we had to take a turn practising our skills. Although some may have viewed this as an obstacle, I found it to somewhat enhance my experience, I found that I was able to learn from others and try to better my own performance in doing so. In addition to this, with everyone watching it felt like a mini audience!! As different students were in different places in their progress it was important to be respectful of others. DJ club also showed me the importance of collaboration, sometimes other people may not get it the first time so in working together we were able to solve the problem and better ourselves. Overall season 3 was really quite enjoyable and was quite a shame to see it come to an end so soon.
Here is a video of me practising mixing and scratching making that classic “DJ sound”
#LearningOutcome5
Reflecting on Season 3 Swimming
Season 3 swimming was far different from anything I expected it to be, due to COVID 19, Singapore entered a circuit breaker period. Initially, aside from school being closed, we were still able to train in public swimming pools so my friends and I would meet up and smash out a few sessions. But then things got more serious, Singapore started closing down public pools. I thought this would be fine as I would be able to train in my condo pool yet they closed those down as well. So as of now, for the past 6 weeks, I have been training every day, top and tailing my days with land workouts, cycling and running. It’s difficult but I don’t think I’m burning nearly as many calories as I was before the circuit breaker but at least I keeping the gears turning.
I was a bit disappointed this year because I had qualified for British nationals and was extremely keen to participate. In addition to this many swim meets were cancelled, this is a very important time as this time of year is usually when we post our best times and I wanted to send something impressive off to the universities that I’m looking at.
In season three they also hosted a remote sports awards video, I was awarded MVP and athletes choice award, it felt extremely pleased when I heard this and it’s nice to know that all of my hard work is paying off in some way, shape or form.
#LearningOutcome4
Biased Headlines
“Thanks to coronavirus, online school could be a big part of our future”
“Many schools and children facing psychological difficulties with online learning experts say:”
Both of these headlines I thought regarding a very current issue and one of its impacts on my life. When coming up with these two headlines I wanted to consider different types of bias. In the first headline, I used bias by spin, taking a different perspective on an issue and choosing to present it in such a way. However, with the second headline, apart from also using a bit of bias by spin, I also opted to use bias by selection with the addition of “experts say”. This type of bias is when writers choose specific research or evidence to back up their point of view and don’t necessarily express both sides of the argument.