Poetry Appreciation

I felt that the lessons in term 3 were very useful. It helps me to appreciate the art of poetry and help me understand what was the poet thinking when he wrote the poem. Before term 3, I never thought of analysing a poem as it was quite boring and does no good to people who are not interested and I felt it was not a must to know how to analyse a poem. However, after Mr Lundberg have explained how it was to analyse a poem, I began to find it very interesting and fun. The reason is that some of the poems are very interesting in content and the poet's language is very good, enabling me to get higher marks in summary writing and literature test, thus increasing my overall english marks. It is very fascinating to see how the poet managed to squeeze a whole scene into just a few stanzas. If it was me, I would have taken 2 whole pages talking about a certain scene with bad language. I also learnt that there is quite a few different type of poems and analysing a poem can be extremely complicated. There is a total of 10 steps to analyse a poem that is maybe not even more than 100 words. This shows that the poets are extremely skilled at describing things using as little words as possible.

Haikus by Basho

Ancient pond
Frog leaps
Splash!

Waterjar cracks -
I lie awake
This icy night.

Lightening -
Heron's cry
Stabs the darkness

Sick on a journey -
Over parched fields
Dreams wander on.


Analysis of Basho's Haikus:

I think that unlike other haikus, the haikus written by Basho actually made sense. His haikus describe the nature and he did it with a lot of descriptive phrases like "Stabs the darkness". However, some of Basho's works are not following the 5-7-5 format of haikus. I might want to think that this is because Basho wants to make his haikus more unique than others. Also, in Basho's haikus, the second line of each haiku usually describes a living thing and the last line of each haiku describes the actions of the living things. I think that this format of writing allow the readers to understand the haiku better. Even though I think that haiku can be written well by everybody, I think that the quality between professionals like Basho and amateurs like us is still very different. Professionals can think of better descriptive phrases while most amateurs like us are limited to the few words we usually use. This will make our haikus much worse. So I think that if you want to improve on Haiku skills, we can read the haikus from professionals.

Poem: Sounds

I heard the sheep bleating beyond the hill.
I heard the sparrow chirping on the trees.
I heard the dogs barking at a stranger.
I heard the horses neighing on the field.
I heard the bulls mooing behind the fence.
I heard the bees buzzing in front of the flowers.
I heard the frogs croaking on a lotus.
I heard the mice squeaking in its hole.
I heard the roosters crowing in the morning.
I heard the turkeys booming to each other.
I heard the pigeons singing gracefully.
I heard the ducks quacking in the pond.
I heard the pigs grunting in the mud.
I heard the cats meowing in its warm basket.
I heard the sound of animals, in a farm.

Learning reflections

I think that Mr Lundberg is a very effective teacher compared to other inexperienced teachers who doesn't know what they are teaching at all. Mr Lundberg's teaching style might not work with others, but I felt that my english have improved drastically since coming to Secondary One. I think that Mr Lundberg knows what he is teaching, especially with summary writing. For summary writing, I clearly understood what he wanted to say and the format of the summary writing in a very short period of time. Even though I am still weak at finding out the points needed, I felt that my language have improved. His talk on literature was also very effective. He gave us many examples of how we should write and let us try on our own. I feel that my english literature test marks are much higher than my expectations, and much of the credit goes to Mr Lundberg. Another effective way of teaching is actually the "Pass the Ball" method which allows everyone to have a chance to participate in class discussions and answer questions. I was not able to speak confidently in term 1 and 2 because I felt that if I spoke, the answer might be incorrect. This method help me to gain the confidence to speak up and allow me to understand that answering wrong is okay. In conclusion, I think that Mr Lundberg have been a very good LA teacher and I have learnt a lot from him.