My Position Paper

From the very start after knowing the fact that I need to do a position paper for EDU3234, I kept thinking about what text that I would choose for it. In my 6 years of learning in this course (including my 2 years of foundation course) I have learned more than 20 texts that I can use for my position paper. However, choosing the right text for it is a very tricky job. One main priority that I use to choose the text is that it needs to be a text that I understand and like. After thinking for about a week, I decided to choose “Of Mice and men” by John Steinbeck, a novel that I learned in my foundation course. “Of Mice and Men” is a dark tale of men’s journey through pitiful, brutal and inhumane world and in this story, John Steinbeck focused on two main characters which are George and Lennie. It is a very interesting and emotional story that I think I could relate to. As John Steinbeck always interested in loneliness and human, I also wanted to do a thesis statement on loneliness which is also a theme of the story. Due to that reason, I come out with a thesis statement that I think would be a good motion for me to discuss in the position paper. It is, “All human being are longing for companionship in order for them to have purpose in life”. I wanted to discuss the theme of loneliness in the story and also the need of companion in life. I wanted to show that companion is a major need in human life and how does companionship contribute to purpose in life. After I come out with the thesis statement, I quickly showed it to my tutor for approval and luckily my thesis statement is accepted. However, he asked to me to work on the thesis statement so that my point would be much stronger and I have more supporting details for that thesis statement.

Intertextuality

In the Dr. Edwin’s class for the third week, he discusses the intertextuality in literature and how teacher can use intertextuality to make students understand literature better. Intertextuality is a very useful and interesting way that teacher can use in literature classroom. This is because intertextuality is a various forms of literature such as texts, pictures, songs and etc. With various forms of literature, students are able to understand the theme or the message of a literature text better due to the fact that they would have other forms of literature besides text make interpretation. Moreover, some of the students would actually have difficulties in interpreting a reading text can have better understanding of the message that the writer wanted to convey by using a picture that describe about the text. This is because most of the students are visual learners and they can make good interpretation of a picture rather than a text. That is why having various forms of literature would help teacher in conveying the message better and make the lesson much more interesting. I personally like the idea of using intertextuality in literature classroom and I would definitely use this method in my near future.

Doing the thesis statement

Our first assignment for the course is considering the position paper. We are asked find a good and suitable thesis statement for the position paper. Obviously, we are not asked to come out with the thesis statement without even understand the meaning of thesis statement and why does it is important in the project. According to the tutor, thesis statement is a statement that will become an umbrella of our stand in the position paper. I think that it means that the thesis statement is a statement that explains my position in the writing project and I can elaborate my points and arguments using the thesis statement. Though I’ve learned how to create a thesis statement before, I never imagine that a thesis statement for position paper would be difficult. But I’m stand corrected. To create a thesis statement that can show my whole points and arguments considering the topic is difficult and it does take a lot of time and consideration in order to create a good thesis statement. That is why the practice that we did in the tutorial session helps me to understand thesis statement and how to create a good thesis statement that can be argued in the writing project.

My expectation on the course

First and foremost, the first thing that comes into my mind about the course is that it’s going a long and challenging journey. I know that my first impression in this course is a bit harsh and disappointing but I had a bad experience in doing writing projects. My previous writing project was a nightmare because I don’t know what to do and I can’t understand the lecturer’s expectation on the project. Plus, I was in my first year and everything is new to me. Still I’m not declaring a white flag on this course. I wanted to do the best that I can in this course due to the fact that I love to challenge myself and gives up is not in my dictionary. When Dr. Edwin explains the course outline for EDU3234, I started to think about the topics that I would like to discuss in both of my position and research paper. Due to the fact that both papers are about literature texts, I wanted to write on the texts that I prefer and familiar with and I’m glad that my previous lessons on various literary texts will help me a lot in this course. Last but not least, I will definitely learn a lot from this course and obviously I wanted to do better than I was before in writing project.