Micro fiction

My first try on Micro Fiction using the 'Bubble Diagram Method'. Here goes nothing:

The Fireman

The inferno continued on its path of destruction.
Pandemonium. Chaos.
Nightmare.
Someone died. Someone cried.
Courage took over my senses and I dashed in.
Inside the building, a child I see.
Helpless he is.
I carried him out of the reach of death.
I fell. He escaped.
A medal of courage went into the vault.

~55 words~
Image source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/Central_range_bravery.jpg

Parent's comments on electronic bookshelf

Here is a link to my electronic bookshelf on weread.com:
http://weread.com/profile/Kuan/3C31787E-C03C-410D-8182-A9BA6FACEF2D?con_sandbox=booksiread&container_type=booksiread&&sort=

This is what my father commented on it:

Wei Heng likes to read books, especially books related to maths, puzzles, IQ test, Logic and science. These books are good to expand his logic mind and knowledge. However to develop a more critical and sensible thinking, Wei Heng should also read more fiction and literature. These books will also help to improve his command of language.

Father's memorable read

This is what my father said:

One of the book that leaves a deep impression in me is the Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew : The Singapore Story and From Third World to First. It is the memoirs of Singapore's First Prime Minister who almost single-handedly build a progressive and modern nation from a small island deprive of natural resources. With a grand vision for Singapore and astute political judgement, Lee Kuan Yew managed to overcome all odds and made his vision a reality. This book reminds me that to achieve great things in life, we must first have a vision, works diligently towards it and eventuality will take care of itself.

Confessions of a terrible prankster

When I was still in my old school days, I was well-known to be a sneaky little prankster. Every moment was always held an opportunity for me to entertain myself around the school - seeing people making a fool of themselves. Yes, it's true. beneath the young innocent-looking me, hides a devious little rogue planning each prank of the day.

Each time a prank succeeds, the victim would be a laughing stock among the rest of the crowds, although the rest of them know that they would be the next few. Thus, leading to a whole recess of fear and uncertainty. As it may seem, that all my pranks are harmful both physically and emotionally, most are actually quite harmless and sparks off a good laugh. I cold still remember some of my best gags: The fake food wrappings used to fool a horizontally-challenged friend (you know what that means), the dangerous-looking-but-totally-harmless-exploding-erasers that I designed to scare some other people and my personal favourite...all the fake techniques I used to trick a friend into believing I hacked a computer. But that is another story, another confession.

So, anyone wants a free eraser?

Differentiated Assignment - Intrapersonal

Oral Diary/Soliloquy from Philip’s point of view. Spoken into his handphone at 3A.M. He can’t sleep and can’t stop thinking of everything that has happened to him. His only chance at redemption is to explain and apologize. He sends his finished diary to Miss Narwin.

Dear diary,

It is now 3 a.m. in the morning but I still cannot sleep. The scenes of the whole incident keep flashing in front of my eyes, haunting me endlessly. Right now I'm still on my bed, restlessly fidgeting about, trying to get some sleep. Right now, I realize that my only chance at redemption is to explain the situation and apologize to you, Miss Narwin. So I am going to confess to you right now.

The truth is, I hummed along 'the star spangled banner' during class not because I was being patriotic, but because I wanted to annoy you as I hated you. I hated you because you failed my English and that resulted in me not being able to enter the school track team. I also hated you as you are so old-fashioned and that I felt that you are not understanding enough. It was bad enough for you to have been my English teacher and when you turned out to be my new homeroom teacher, I was determined to get out of your homeroom class or even your English class. And so, I decided to annoy you to have my homeroom class switched. That was my only intention. I never had the intention to blow the whole matter up or even to get you fired. I was just being selfish.

I have realized my mistakes now. I am the only person to blame for all that has happened to me in the end. I hope that you will forgive me, Miss Narwin.

Reflections on blogging for term 1

How time flies...I could still remember the moment in the beginning of the year when I sat in front of my computer, wondering what to write on my first blog post. My mind was blank. I didn't know what to write. Even a simple blog prompt like 'My First Day as a Secondary 1 Student' was difficult for me to develop. But after several more times of blogging (four times is enough!), I finally got the hang of it. Right now, it takes me merely ten seconds to think of what to write in my blog. Well, maybe not...

But anyway, blogging has been a new and wonderful experience for me as through a blog, I am able to express my thoughts and feelings. Also, blogging helped me improve my writing as well as my typing skills. Not only does the blogger benefits from blogging, but the person who read the blog also benefits from it. From reading other people's blog, we can learn from how they write and from there, improve our writing skills. So for me, I enjoy blogging a lot but the only thing that I dislike about blogging is that the computer sometimes reformat the font or the size of the words, making it very hard for me to type naturally or focus on what I am writing.

Although this way of teaching English, through blogging, seems to be an excellent way, I feel that there are still rooms for improvements. I suggest we should be given more than one blog prompt every time and we are only required to write only one of them. This way, we will be able to choose write which blog prompt we are more familiar with and some of us might be able to write better. If we finished that, we might even write another blog post using the blog prompt.

And finally, to end this blog post...the tie-in of my reading habits and electronic bookshelf to my blog improved both my reading and literacy skills. Hopefully, more interesting ways of learning English will be introduced to us as time passes.

Narrative and Graphics - My connections

Different writers may have a different way of conveying ideas and meanings in stories to the readers. For example, a writer may tell a story to the reader through words, like in a novel, or maybe illustrate the whole story through pictures with little or without any words at all, like in a graphic novel. How the story is understood in the end, depends on how the reader interprets the story or maybe even how the story is told. As mentioned before, a novel or graphic novel.

Yes, both pictures and words tell a story but which would be a better way? Words or pictures? When asked to answer this question, most people would probably reply 'words'. Why? Most authors use words to tell their stories, but are words always better than pictures?

Words are easiest way for a writer to convey a story. The English language alone contains more than 900000 words, how hard can it be for a writer to find the right words to explain his story? A novel forces the reader to visualize the story with only the help of the descriptions through the words.
A graphic novel, on the other hand, helps the reader picture the story in his mind through illustrations and reveals more details than a novel although some other information, like the names of the characters in the story, might be more difficult for the writer to convey to the readers. Pictures assist the reader in remembering the story as they are colorful and also gives the reader a feeling that he is part of the story. Also, a long paragraph in a novel describing somebody in the story can be replaced by a graphical impression of the person instead.

However, sometimes it depends on the type of story that is referred to if one is to decide whether the story should be conveyed through words or pictures. For example, a writer might not want to add in pictures if the story is a ghost story as it disrupts the atmosphere of the story but the writer might want to add in some illustrations if the story is a detective story as the writer would be able to reveal some clues in the pictures for the readers to solve the mystery.

To sum it up, I feel that both words and pictures are important aspects of a story as they have their own major factor that can enhance a story.

My top three learning preferences are: Logical, intrapersonal and visual/spatial