Dora The Explorer

During my childhood days, I love to watch Dora The Explorer. Indeed, it was my favourite cartoon and Dora was my favourite character and is still is till today. In this cartoon show, she is a very determined and successful person. To me, she is the one who gives young girls to thrive in life. At the end of every episode of Dora The Explorer, Dora will be successful in achieving and getting to her destination. She also has many other desirable qualities and character traits:

1. Dora the Explorer is helpful: Dora the Explorer works with her backpack, map and trusty pal Boots in order to help others who are in trouble. Her adventures typically revolve around aiding others who have gotten into some sort of trouble - she and the rest of her team quickly come to a plan of an action to assist whoever is in a jam.
2. Dora the Explorer is courteous: Instead of fighting with Swiper the Fox when he tries to take something that he shouldn't, Dora the Explorer simply tells him "no" and he respects her so much that he listens. These good manners are often not seen by children today as many shows feature violent or aggressive characters.
3. Dora the Explorer is a risk taker: Dora the Explorer isn't afraid to venture into territory in order to help her friends. However, she also takes smart risks, working with the rest of her team in her adventures instead of trying to solve tough problems on her own.
4. Dora the Explorer is loyal: Dora the Explorer has strong relationships with her family and her many friends. She takes great pride in these relationships and is always looking out for her family members.


I think I do have some similar character traits as Dora. However, what I am concerned about is the differences. Dora is a risk taker. She’s not afraid to take risks even though she knew that her actions may bring her to failures. She’s brave and determined with her decisions. She takes the risks to cross the different boundaries and she is also brave to face Swiper The Fox every time she meets it. Being a risk taker, Dora would be able to face all challenges and achieve her goals. Therefore, she is one of my cartoon idols. I would like to be like her, not being afraid to try and face challenges and new things in life.

Romeo and Juliet development

Romeo and Juliet is a big performance that take up up to 70% of our end of year literature examinations. Therefore, we had to put in our best efforts and commitment to this big project. Especially since many of us wants to take up lit as an O Level Subject :) hehe *wink* Things are getting harder each day, as the day of the performance is in a few weeks' time. Daily schedules are very packed and it is hard to meet everyone up on the same day. Therefore, my group and I usually meet up on weekends which is also a problem to many people as they have tuition, lessons and religious classes. Still, we felt that our group is in good progress so far as we started our project even before the June Holidays.

We met up a lot during the June Holidays to practice our plays, dance, memorise scripts, decide on the costumes, buying of the costumes and props and doing the props. We spent most of our 1st and 2nd week of holidays to do these. It went smooth but as usual, there will always be problems. Haiz...Many unreasonable things happened and all 'we" can do is to be patient. Although things are sometimes getting from bad to worse, we had no choice. All we want is to do well for this project. In this term, we had also met up several times during the weekends to brush up on what we lack of. It's really tiring and stressful for us. However, we know that being stress can be a positive thing too as it drives us forward and improves us.

We have decided on modern costumes in the play. Many of our costumes are from our wardrobes at home, our parents, aunt and uncles. We had to do this as we have a limited budget of $150. Everyone had tried their best to look out for costumes for one another and we had also tried out the costumes at my house. Next, our props. So far, we have completed designing and deciding on our props. Still, we faced a problem as the backdrop is not as broad or as big as the size required to be seen on the camera that will be placed during the play. Therefore, we are now working on what else to put as the backdrop in order to cover up the empty space. It's really tensing up, as they big day of the performance is in around 3-4 weeks time. Our props are nicely drawn and designed according to the different scenes there are in the play. I am very satisfied with the work and effort we had put in to produce the nice props. We had also practices the play here and there whenever we have time. We also reminded the characters repeatedly to memorise their lines by latest, next week.


After all the hardwork spent and being put in, I can't wait for the performance ! :D

Unseen Poetry

Unseen poetry are not the normal texts that we find in daily lives. Therefore, it is a challenge for everything to understand the meaning out of each word of the text. For the past few lessons, my classmates and I learnt many basic literary devices. This would help us to understand and analyze whatever the poet is trying to express, say, or inform in his text or poem. Some of the basic literary devices I've learned are :

1)Imagery and Figurative Language - e.g, simile, metaphor, visual, auditory
2) Sound devices - e.g , Rhyme, Rhythm, Alliteration
3) Diction and Sentence Structures - e.g, Annotation, Oxymoron

From here, I would conclude and comment that learning and understanding unseen poetry isn't as easy as it seems. Some of the things I need to brush up are my vocabulary and my understanding to the different meanings that a word can mean. Still, unseen poetry is also interesting to me in the way how the poet/author express him/herself. Therefore, I look forward to the following lessons ! ;D