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.