Last Blog~~ Summary of Critical Literacy

Assalamualaikum,

Alhamdulillah after 1 semeter learning this subject , I've become fond to do critical literacy and will miss doing the 10 elements that have involve. A bunch of thanks have to be credited to Mdm Suzie for her time and effort in teaching us thins subject. I believe she had tried her best to make this subject easy all well receive by me and my colleague in class. I'm also relieve as we have manage to wrap-up this topic for this semester. Now we can used this kind of experience in our work field someday. I do will miss having Critical Literacy class as it has became one of our major class for this semester. Once again, we all want to thank Mdm Suzie for all of her hard-work in teaching us this semester. We hope that you've enjoyed teaching us and we are very sorry if there is any mistake that we have done.

According to Wikipedia, Critical thinking is purposeful and reflective judgment about what to believe or what to do in response to observations, experience, verbal or written expressions, or arguments. Critical thinking might involve determining the meaning and significance of what is observed or expressed, or, concerning a given inference or argument, determining whether there is adequate justification to accept the conclusion as true.

The ability to think involves 3 things:
1. An attitude of being disposed to consider in a thoughtful way the problems and subjects that come within the range of one's experiences,
2. Knowledge of the methods of logical inquiry and reasoning,
3. Some skill in applying those methods.

From my point of view, Critical Literacy or CL (as we call it here) is a very interesting subject. It involves a person to think critically using their critical thinking. The person needs to be fair and open-minded while thinking carefully about what to do or what to believe. For a critical thinker myself, I do feel at first that this subject was a bit over than what I have expected. It involves more; I mean a deep critical thinking. We need to search and comment others work using the 10 elements that is stated which is topic, content, source, audience, rhetorical function, purpose, perspective, positioning, impact and visual literacy.

Overall, the whole article that we have presented and the assignment that we have done, lead to one conclusion. That everyone has their own critical thinking, perspective and point of view. It can be seen through the 3rd assignment that we have done where we need to comment on our friends’ article. Just by looking at that, we can see that our thinking is sometimes similar and different from our friends understanding. Why does this occur? A critical thinker has an attitude--an attitude of desiring to avoid nonsense, to find the truth and to discover the best action. It's an attitude that rejects "intuiting" the truth in favor of demanding reasons.
By that, I can conclude that Critical literacy is the most interesting subject to learn as it involves a person own point of view. It is not stated that a person perspective has to be wrong or right. It depends on how the individual understand and interpret what they understand from what they have read or learn into their own critical thinking.
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Drugs and Guns

The article drugs and guns discusses about the problem that the South Africa society are facing with, weapon and AIDS disease.

There, weapon and drugs has become the main necessity of the countries politic, economic and social system. With war happening, the supply of weapon has become the factor of the South Africans’ problem. Many of the citizens there including the important people are worried that this problem will soon lead to corruption. They even protest against the government and show their frustration. Because of this, the president of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, is stress out and worried on how the country’s development going to be. Perhaps that is the least of their problem rather than AIDS.

Surprisingly, the majority of South African prime killer is AIDS disease. While the government tried to prevent from the disease to spread more widely, they have come with a solution to give drugs pills to pregnant woman so that the disease would not transmit to their unborn babies. By this, they hope that slowly, the problem will be resolve little by little.

From my point of view, at first I do have difficulties understanding this article. I need to read this article a couple of times just so that I can get the point of the articles’ about. It was a bit confusing just to understand the text, although the article clearly stated the problem and what the countries solution towards resolving the issue, but, it was still difficult to understand some of the text. But at last I manage to come up with the 10 element and manage to submit it in time.

Dieting

Assalamualaikum…

This is the most interesting reading that I have read… It is very informational and fun to read…

Dieting as in the book discusses about how people tend to be obsess with their weight rather than their health. According to the article, people who gain weight or fat tend to fill ugly, unhealthy and ashamed. They tend to think that if they slim down, they will live longer because lighter people live longer than heavy people.

Our culture is obsessed with thinness. People tend to spend thousand and thousand of their money on weight loss program or weight loss stuff. Plus, with the influence of media, no wonder people become more and more obsess with getting thin. From the article itself, it stated that picture of ‘skinny’ model actually have made a contribution to women’s obsession towards dieting. Some also tend to take the fast lane to get rid of fat by taking pills and later face with side effect that can cause them their life. Starving is also one of the ways that is a trend to the society nowadays. They rather eat vitamin or just carrot than real food just so that they can be accept by the society. Gray hair has always been a problem for some people. It is a sign of aging and that sometime annoys them. By this, they tend to colour their hair to cover up mother’s nature. But the truth is, the more you colour your hair, the greater risk you will die by heart attack or any heart disease. In the reading, it also stated some tips for those who want to start a healthy diet.

From my understanding, there are two ways of dieting: healthy and unhealthy diet. Although majority of people nowadays are practicing an unhealthy diet after knowing the consequences, still they keep on practice it. Why does this happen? It is all because of the media and the society whether we like it or not. As skinny is the new trend now, people are obsess with it. Once I’ve read through a magazine and the cover page was Keira Nightly. There was a phrase that that stated, “Keira made the lamp post look fat” and I was like, woooo!!! Even a lamp post is fat… This shows how people are really into this unhealthy diet. I’m not saying that all the people are into this but almost all teenagers nowadays are like that.

Can I say that we Malaysian have low self esteem when it comes to their weight? Actually we should think positively here. Not saying that dieting is bad. Certain people diet because of their health. Some people need to watch what their eating so that it will not affect their health in order to stay in a good condition. Easy said here that it depends on the individual themselves to practice what types of diet they want. Just make sure that they don’t hurt themselves that can lead to negative consequences.

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Blog 6 ( ^ - ^ )

'Burning out at nine'

Burning out at nine was presented by Ain Zanuddin, Amira, Salha, Anis and Ain Azmi. Instead of doing a role play, they when and do a TV show where there's a host, 2 mother (strict and open minded mother), caller and a Psychologist. It was a simple talk show where they discuss about a study that kids are over schedule, over worked and running out of time for fun. It was fun to see both salha and ain Azmi play the role of a mother as they are (for real) not a mother yet. The message that the "actress" tried to convey was clear as they are arguing whether a mother should be strict with their children or not. Ain did give a good respond as the psychologist. Although i have to comment on the other presenter, their voice was not clear and it was difficult to stay focus as they did not attract the audience that is watching the show. But overall, i think that as a child myself, parents should be neutral meaning to say that they should not be to strict and not to lenient. Parents should know how balance both as children that tend to grow up in a strict family will often be a very passive, quite and rebellious whereas a child live in a not strict family tend to be spoil.

'Out of puff'

This role play aka talk show was done by Aminur, Nana Adam, Shah, Agus and Wan. This role play is about smoking problem amongst Woman. Nana act as the daughter of shah who loves to smoke. Agus act as the owner of the cigarette company and Wan act as the Psychology person. It was a very funny role play to watch. The whole time it was full of laughter. The funny part was when Shah smoke in the talk show. It was really funny and the ahole class was laughing not to mention even Mdm. Aminur was the host and he did manage to ask question to the audience including me, myself. But i didnt answered the question because of confusion.(^v^)... From my opinion, smoking amongst woman nowadays has became very common. As Mdm said the other day, back in the days, people used to stare at woman who smokes. But now, smoke amongst woman has became a trend in our society. This act are maybe cause by the environment the individual are in. Plus, woman smoke because they want to lose weight. Although this statement perhaps has its stand, the fact is they are willing to risk their own life just to lose some weight. This is infect unacceptable. I think that is the most unreasonable answered to give. As a woman, we should not near to this kind of habit. Yes, it will not effect your health now, but sooner or later it will.

'Apocalyps'

This role play was presented by zakiah kamelah(Zack), ilyia diyana(Yaya), Raja Nurdini (Dini), Nur Fahida (Ida) and Ain Samsudin. The role play was interesting as it discusses about how a woman who works at a company quit her job just because of negative comment from viewers. Clearly, she could not take comment or be criticize by people. Yaya who act as the person really shows dissatisfaction with the whole issue. As for Ida and Ain, they were arguing a lot (Just in the role play), Ain was telling about how she had post a video of her cute pet in the web. People started to give positive comment, but later there was a person who said negative things towards the pic. This shows how people have different perspective sometimes towards what they see. Another person would say nice things but they will be a person who give negative comment whether the video owner like it or not. Dini was being neutral and zack was acting according to the script. It was funny to watch her pronounce of the detail from the article that had been given into a real scene and it was fun to watch all of them.

'Gangsterism'

This is a serious yet common problem in the society. Marleah, Nana Shah, Alin, Atiqah and Sofia have done a role play and then a talk show base on the situation from the article. Nana act as the one who was being bullied by the four other group. Then they do a talk show and discuss about the bully issue that is happening in our own country. It was a fun role play and talk show to watch. each member give their acting skill a try and nail the play. The message that they are trying to spread to the audience was clear and i have to give them credit as well as Zack's group for doing the role play in such a short notice (MQA Arrival). It was quite challenging for them and nervous at the same time but they manage to give it all they have.

'Without any warning'

This role play was presented by our group that consist of Saybah, Hanis, Ash, Fairuz and Me (kaka). I had fun being the JBA person who is irresponsible towards the water issue in Kuantan. Hanis act as a reporter who interview the consumer and how they feel about the issue. Saybah, laundry business owner, was at rage when the water supply was cut of. Her business was getting worst and the customer was complaining about their clothes. Fairuz, act as the customer of saybah, was indeed mad with the JBA as they didnt give any early warning towards the issue. Although she wasn't a regular customer, but as a house wife, she agreed that the JBA are not doing their job. Meanwhile, ash act as the Datuk who is being question about the issue. It was fun but i was wondering did we manage to convey the issue and do the audience understand what message are we trying to give. Overall, it was fun and exciting.

'Invasion of the baby snatcher'

This article is about child abducting that happen in America. Over the years, children have been missing and people start wondering whether the society are aware with this problem. Parents especially are not keen about their child location that can lead to child disappearance. One their child start missing, then they would blame themselves of not keeping an eye at their child. This article is also a story about a two child who went missing and later found dead by the police. after the incident, the government has come with a new solution to prevent such horrific tragedy happen again.

Reading 5

Assalamualaikum to readers. This week has been a very hectic yet fun week for all Decom semester 4 Jan- June 2009. With cultural event and assignment to be submitted at that time, I think all manage to finish and submit their assignment, and went for the cultural event. Alhamdulillah. It was really a fun week for me and the rest of my colleague.

From the reading 5.3 title " Types of exposition: 'persuade that' and 'persuading to', it explain how the text can be justify info something that is used to provide reason to support thesis. In the glossary, the presenters explain how the word such as exposition, thesis, analytical exposition, hortatory exposition, objective subjective and metaphor are used is in this chapter. The word ‘persuading that’ and ‘persuading to’ have different meaning. Although sounds almost the same, the two words give different meaning in each time it’s been used. ‘Persuading that’ refers to giving reflection on readers in an article. It is not direct persuading. While, ‘persuading to’ is to push reader about the thesis, argument and objective. Not much that can be explained in the article as they have elaborated the content in the glossary. Overall, this article focus is to persuade reader in two different ways that is to persuade that and to persuade to.

For the reading 5.4 ‘Metaphor’ explain about how the usage of metaphor in our daily life. For this topic, we really have some difficulties in explaining it to our entire colleague. Although metaphor is being used and well known in poem such as Shakespeare, it is really hard to explain the real meaning of this entire topic as each person have different perspective towards this. As explain by my colleague, the used of metaphor nowadays are extinct. Not all of society practice using metaphor as it evolves using high lexis and imagination. But, the used of metaphor comes naturally in a daily conversation. While, in my part of presentation, I have to explain about metaphor in discourse and container metaphor. As I explain in the presentation, Metaphor in discourse is to illustrate an object in a rather different way (Interpretation of language). Meaning here that rather than explaining a complex conversation, metaphor is used to convey the meaning. On the other hand, container metaphor is an ontological metaphor in which some represent as having inside and outside, and capable of holding something else. Ontological metaphor is which an abstractive such as an activity, emotion or idea is represented as something concrete such as an object or a person.

Reading 4

From my understanding for Reading 4.3 , "What is evidence", it is about how evidence are divided into two category, circumstantial and testimonial evidence. Circumstantial evidence can be explain as an evidence that we see for our self. Meaning to say that, the evidence itself indicate that the things was related to the crime. While Testimonial evidence refers to an eyewitness, the person who testify that they have seen the accuse commit the crime themselves. In the whole reading, it explain on a situation of a kidnapping incident whereby a son of Charles Lindbergh was kidnapped,hold for ransom and eventually died in the process to rescue the victim. Here, both the evidence was used to conduct the investigation. It can be said that, evidence is an important thing in doing an investigation. It helps a lot to find the criminal and we have proof for the criminal's crime. Overall for this reading, at first i have some difficulties in understanding the main purpose that my classmate wanted to present for their presentation for this topic. It's okay as they were unprepared for the presentation.

Reading 4.4, 'Statistic'.I could say that this was the most anxious reading of the topic as it involves number. I can understand the difficulties of my classmates in preparing the presentation for this reading. i guess it's lame to say that this topic was not that interesting as we are DECOM'ers and number is not in our field. But overall, it's okay! In this reading, it explains how statistic are divided into two meaning, plural - information about any phenomenon/activity that expressed in numerical form (ex:vital statistic), and singular - denotes the art and science of collecting, presenting, analysing and interpreting numeral data.There are 4 ways of misleading data. Unqualified average(mean,median and mode), Fallacious sampling(Sample that is wrong based on the wrong information), Percentages unaccompanied by actual numbers(No specific figure) and Misleading presentation(Graph,Charts and diagrams to mislead impression) .Hearing this, it does sound boring and old fashion. Our interest quickly lost but we tried to stay on the understanding as long as we could. Although it was quite difficult to understand, we did manage to do some exercise to improve the understanding.

Reading 4.5, 'Crooked and Fallacious Thinking' and 'More of crooked and fallacious thinking'. Amongst all the reading in chapter 4, this was for me, the easiest to understand that the other two reading. This reading is more into one's own perception. To come to and think of it, it can be said that it involves psychology factor. This can be call as critical thinking. It explain that there are 5 common forms of crooked and fallacious trends; Transfer Device, Circular Argument, False Analogy, Either-or assumption and Equivocation. I can summarize that everyone have their own crooked and fallacious thinking. It has became a lifestyle in our society. Thus, people have their own perspective and judgment towards any issue that appears.

Critical Literacy : Reading Unit 3

For reading 3.1, it is an article about a disable girl that wanted to go to school but was later on rejected because of the disabilities. When I was to give the 10 elements for this article, I did have some difficulties. It is not because of the article, but time. Although we were given about one hour, I think that in critical literacy, when we want to comment on one’s article, we need to have time to think about how to structure the 10 elements. Despite all, I still manage to submit the article. I can say that the reading part for 3.1 was quite easy from our previous reading. Here, the article is stated clearly and it is easy to understand.

For reading 3.3 my classmates presented on “Critical literacy: a linguistic perspective”. This topic tells about the development of the linguistic tools readers need to enable them to recognize certain global or key elements of the text. Basically, from my own understanding this topic is discussing about using different of more standardize words to describe things. To be more clear, high lexis words. Other than that, I did have some question regarding what was actually trying to be present by my classmates. Although the whole reading topic was difficult to understand at first, they manage to explain it very clearly using examples of word and asking question so that all of the classmates understand what they was tying to present. I did ask a question about how effectively the words will influence the people who are reading it. Later, our Madam explains that it depends on the whole text itself. By that, readers will feel convince and more interested if the text that they are reading are using standardize and powerful word. They will think that the article is written by a professional or a person with experience.

For reading 3.4 discusses about “Speech and speakers: the formation of individuals in discourse and genre”. This is the most interesting reading as it tells about ideal readers and stereotype. In this whole reading it tells about how writer persuade their readers to be ideal readers. From my understanding, an ideal reader is the person who believes in what the writer writes. To be clearer, example: a person reading the horoscope as his/her daily routine. Usually, this ideal reader believes that their life revolves on the writer article. They believe it because their life is exactly the same as what the writer has written. Once they think that it is true, they would like to continue to read the article. Personally, I can say that I’m an ideal reader. I do sometimes believe what had the writer wrote. Sometimes I could say that it is a consequence. Even some researchers in Malaysia like Dato’ Fadzillah Khamsah has done some research about this issue. But it depends on the individual itself whether to believe it or not.

Critical Literacy - Reading Unit 2

In the reading “battling the bullies” the writer tells us about how children nowadays are facing with every parent’s nightmare, Bully. According to this article, based on a psychiatrist said that it is common for parents not to realize their child is being bullied even after having some symptoms’. Clearly, in the whole article, the writer is condemning the bullies. Because of bullies, they are many children became mentally abuse and this will affect their growing stage if it is not detected earlier. The writer proofs his study by adding the opinion and suggestion of psychologist so that people can see how serious this matter is. Thus, writer advice parents to be alert and aware of their children behavior.

For reading 2.2, this chapter mainly present about “Language, Perspective, ideology”. When my classmates presented about this topic, there were more confusion than understanding. However, they are not the one to be blame as it is one’s false not to read the reading before the presentation. Mainly, in this chapter, it tells us about the use of how text will contain linguistic feature that act as indicators of the perspective and ideologies of people. Here, it is stated that linguistic reflexes of differences of perspective across speaker of the same language. It is to differentiate how people think because different people have different perspective. The language is sometimes direct and high lexis. If we listen or read a text, we would know what the writer purpose in writing the article is and differentiate between two articles that convey the message.

For reading 2.3, it tells us about text and textualities. Compared to the reading before, this text is easier to understand and has been presented clearly by my classmates. Here, it discuss about text that has the combination of sign. The words that really attract my interest is “signifier” and “signified". Both sound almost the same and nearly the same meaning but it is totally different. Signifier is words and expression. It is used to represent an object. For example, “Nancy is a girl”. So the girl represents the subject. But for signified, it represents the real girl. So for me, this word is very interesting. For the presentation of my classmate about the whole article, I can say that I understand what they are trying to convey. The uses of visual to explain really help me understand that there are tools for cultural studies. Example ; the use of Dunhill advertisement to promote a product. The uses of a connotation word that can be turn into a denotation word in an advertisement really amaze me. How can people uses a negative aspect and turn it into an aspect where people can accept.

Overall for unit 2 reading , I can understand what is being presented.

Critical Literacy ( Reading 1.1 )

Critical Literacy is a course that involves a person to examine a text given, search the purpose and writer's motive, understand the text, questioning the ways in which the text has been constructed, analysing the languages that is used, emphasis multiple readings of texts, take a stance of the issue and comment the issue using the 10 elements.

In critical literacy, I need to relate the subject with the article that has been given. In the reading 1.1 ' Convicted Killer Back at Work ', the first thing that I can comment about the topic is that the writer knows how to attract reader's to read his view about the issue. He uses visual of a woman in her nurse uniform and catchy headlines as the beginning of his article so that readers can easily give a brief comment or their own opinion on the topic before reading the whole article. Clearly i can say that, the article focuses on a person or to be more precise, an ex-prisoner that had convicted a murder and is now working back as a nurse.

The content of the article is quite easy for me as it only focus on the whole article that is being written. It is like a brief summary where we need to find the keywords, arrange it and easily form or re-write the text using our own understanding of the whole article. We focus on what had happen, who were the participant, where did it happen, when did it happen and what led up to the event.

The source are the easiest that among all the 10 elements. Usually, we will stated where can we usually find the text given, which section (medical, education, etc) ,date, place, the writer names (if given) and etc. In this reading, the source is from a daily newspaper. It is usually found in the front page that happen in Saudi Arabia.

As for the audience, here we should state who the article is meant for. The writer did not stated specifically to whom is he trying to convey the message to. I can say that the writer is writing the article to all the non specialist audience.

For the rhetorical function, we need to identify what the writer is trying to do. Is he informing the readers or advising or others? After we had identified the rhetorical function, the next step is to identify the purpose of the writer writing this article. That means we need to relate the purpose with the rhetorical function, audience and topic. In this article, the writer is trying to persuade readers by informing readers that Deborah Parry (an ex-killer) is allowed to work as a nurse in England.

Perspective is the opinion based on the writer article. It tells about how the writer feels about the issue. I had some trouble doing this part as I nearly did not understand what it wants. In the 'convicted killer back at work' the writer clearly disagree with the decision to reinstate a nurse with a criminal record. He condemn the idea of a nurse that had been convicted as a killer to work back as a nurse. Positioning follows logically from perspective.

Positioning shows the characteristic of the participant involve in the text. Here, the writer portray Parry's characteristic as 'convicted of an awful murder'. There i need to explain more on the characteristic and give the evidence to support my answer.

Impact is where we stated how effective the writer's article to persuade readers to read and believe his/her article and visual literacy is how well does the writer convey the meaning and his position towards the issue. I would say that both of the elements is easier to answer rather than perspective. I can say that i struggle a lot on that element. I do understand that we just need to characterise the participant that involves in the article. But, it seems that i could not narrate it using my understanding.

Although the lecturer said that this is a very easy subject, i have to disagree on that. Yes, it is easy to criticize one's work. But by using the 10 elements, i really need to understand the whole article in order to give an excellent criticism.