Lydia chai yee xuan individual report

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LYDIA CHAIYEE XUAN 2014 SEMESTER 8 UPSI
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1.0 Introduction
English literature is a compulsory component in Malaysia’s curriculum for English subject from
Form One to Form Five. According to Nor Hashimah & Che Ton (2012), the purpose of studying
literature is to “enable learners to engage in wider reading of good literary works for enjoyment
and self development” (p. 76). A variety of literary text ranging from poem, short story and
novel will be taught and evaluated in the Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) public examination.
The selected literary text in students’ curriculum may be too easy or difficult for different
levels of students. Therefore, the teacher may use other literary text as pre or post exercise in the
teaching of Literature. Gagen (2008) supported that students are advised to read level appropriate
material. The appropriateness and suitability of the literary text should be determined by the
teacher.
2.0 Discussion of the Assigned Literary Text
The chosen literary text is a poem entitled Mirror, Mirror written by Lisa King.
Refer Appendix (a).
The poet composes this poem in such a way that it consists of the voices from two
entities. The first voice is the narrative ‘I’ in the first five stanzas of which believed to be a
female. As a result, it makes this poem a first person point of view written poem. It gives a
strong and obvious urge of “I want something” desire as readers recite the poem. The second
voice is the mirror’s voice starting from the last three stanzas. The mirror plays the role as an
advisor who advises the female.
2.1 Theme: Pledging women to stop self-abuse
This poem portrays a strong feminism theme of pledging women to stop self-abuse. The
term “self-abuse” is known as self-harm or self-mutilation whereby it signifies an act wherein
someone deliberately hurts or injures themselves (Tracy, 2013). It is being further described as a
practice which is not limited to only teens but also adults. In relation to this poem, the poet
probably wants to direct this poem to female readers of age ranging from 12 to 35 – the female
teenagers and young adults.

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To understand the poem better, it is important to understand the reasons why people
self-injure. This is well explained by Dombeck (2008) that, “people self-injure in order to:
release tension associated with strong emotions or overwhelming thoughts, feel something
physical when they are otherwise dissociated and numb, and punish themselves” (para. 7).
In stanza one, the narrator “I” desires to change her physical appearance according to the
standard beauty criteria. She chooses to follow the bandwagon of saying that only thin, pretty
and tall women are classified as attractive. In stanza two, she starts to question if changing her
hairstyle is able to make a significant highlight so that “someone” will start to notice her
existence. The “someone” is likely to refer to a special male whom the girl is affectionately
attracted to. At this point, she is actually releasing her tension of feeling inferior and low
confident in gaining something. Her condition gets worse as she continues to question if she
makes herself hungry deliberately is able to make her look stunning. She is expecting huge
transformation change of herself. To her, changing a hairstyle only is not sufficient to make her
look beautiful. She continues questioning again if cutting her wrist is able to make her feel
existing. This is a serious question asked by the girl which clearly indicates that she no long
knows how to judge what is right and wrong anymore. To gain the “beauty” title, she is willing
to die. She is clearly experiencing a high level of tension of which she does not know what to do
other than to “punish” herself for being not excellent enough in her appearance. It could be her
extreme low level of self esteem which makes her feel so unsatisfied with her own physical
appearance.
In the poem, the female is abusing herself physically, mentally and psychologically in
order to find relieve in expressing her desire to own the standard beauty and a crush’s attention.
Another way of understanding the concept of committing suicide in stanza four is taking death as
a way to punish herself from failing to achieve the standard. In other words, self abuse can
actually lead one to commit suicide as a result of self punish.
In addition, she could be a lonely person who wants to seek for attention. With good
appearance, people will notice her. Unfortunately she perceives herself as imperfect and is
depressed over her appearance. To make people notice is to create a chaos in the crowd –
creating her own death. Then, she can be famous and people will finally know who she is. This is
a result of an act of seeking attention from helpless depression. As agreed by Lickerman (2010),
people who commit suicide usually do not want to die but they just wanted to alert those around

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them that something is seriously wrong. As seen in the poem, the female chooses to cut her wrist
as the method to end her life. If she really wants to die so badly, then she could have chosen to
jump down from a tall building which is a definitely no-return suicide. Cutting the wrist is a
slower form of dying method. In her sub-consciousness, she probably knows that there is still a
thin possibility of people saving her from dying. She actually pathetically puts in a little hope in
anticipating for people’s notice to save her.
On the other hand, Kashdan (2014) argued that in general, people do not commit suicide
because they are in pain but it is due to their disbelief that there is a reason to live and the world
will be better off without them. This is an interesting point of view which counters Lickerman’s
saying. This can also be used to explain one of the possibilities of the female wanting to commit
suicide. Her unexplainable urge to own better good physical traits are making her feeling non-
existing. To her, she may feel that she is too ugly to fit into the community whereby it could be
due to her friends’ cycle. They probably own better physical appearance as compared relatively
to her. As a result, it causes her to have such low self esteem of herself.
There is also a possibility that this can be diagnosed into a kind of illness called Body
Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD). According to Anxiety and Depression Association of America
(2014), patients with BDD think about their real or perceived flaws for hours each day. As this
poem is written by a Western poet, it can be perceived that the poem is targeting Western
females. Therefore, the notion that physical attractiveness is a valued and even revered quality in
Western society – it is a form of obsession for many people (Covin, 2012).
Being a female at the age of a teenager or perhaps a young adult, having a crush on a
male is extremely normal. However, it hurts when knowing the admired person is not showing
similar interest. Some females are too irrational when it comes to relationship aspect. Their
desire to make the other person to fall in love with themselves could be so great until it affects
their rationality in decision making of how to be who they really are. True love always requires
one to be their true self. As agreed by K (2014), real love allows one to be who you really are. In
this poem, the female is likely to assert a lot of unnecessary pressure onto her own appearance in
order to gain the admirer’s love. She probably presumes that having good appearance is the first
step in making a male to fall in love. Therefore, this explains why she is so obsessed with the
need of looking thin, pretty and tall in order to feel “existing”.

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3.0 Discussion of Adaption
This poem is selected as a teaching material for a class of intermediate level proficiency convent
school Form 4 students. These students stay in the urban area and are generally open-minded.
There are a few reasons why this poem is selected. It can be taught under the theme
values as this poem contains an obvious moral value which can be highlighted among convent
female students – love yourself before you can love others or others can love you. These convent
students should be familiar with the context of the poem as the narrator “I” is a female. Since
they are all females, it is highly possible that they might face a situation similar to the narrator.
Besides, this poem can be done as a follow-up exercise for the curriculum selected poem, He
Had Such Quiet Eyes by Bibsy Soenharjo. This poem also advises females to be wise in
choosing their partner. Both poems can be linked as the content are more a less of the same niche.
However, necessary adaptations are done in order to suite students’ level and purpose of
the lesson. This is very true as supported by Olinghouse (2008) that, every student will get
benefits when suitable accommodation is done. Thus, the original poem is adapted accordingly
based on the students’ demographic details and knowledge. Refer Appendix (b).
There are several reasons why adaptations are done. Firstly, the original stanza four is
deleted. This is because it contains the idea of committing suicide which is an extremely negative
input to students. Though it can be taught positively as a warning or moral value of prevention, it
is possible too for students to perceive it as a solution for their depression. After all, the teacher
may not know what every student is thinking inside. Rather than trying to prevent, it is better to
omit it all. Inversely, teacher should be asserting positive solutions to students.
Secondly, some words from the original poem are substituted with more challenging
diction. This is due to the reason that the original words used in the poem are too simple for this
group of students. It will be less challenging and interesting to them if it is too simple. This is
agreed by Kingaore (2002) who claimed that the lack of challenging materials is one of the
factors that discourages the desire to continue reading for advanced readers. Specific words are
chosen to be substituted as these words are the key words in the poem as well as the focus of the
learning of vocabulary in the lesson. These words are the adjectives such as substituting “thin”
with “slender” and “pretty” with “appealing”. Another reason for doing so is to have students to

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learn something extra from the skirt of their knowledge, like as stated in the theory of acquiring
second language by Stephen Krashen, the input hypothesis of ‘i+1’.The poem is overall easy to
understand but having the diction slightly more difficult, it allows students to learn a little more
extra apart from what they already knew.
Thirdly, stanzas six to eight are deleted from the original poem. This is because these
stanzas are too straight forward in telling what is happening to the female “I”. It is better to give
a half-hanging conclusion to the readers so that teacher can ask open ended questions to
challenge students’ higher order thinking of making conclusion and provide rationales. This
makes the literary text more challenging and fun to be explored as countless possibilities are
possible as long as logic reasons are provided. This can also be a passage to encourage students
to analyze poem critically using reader response theory.
The last adaptation done to the poem is the addition of one stanza after deleting four
stanzas from the original poem. The newly added stanza is stanza five in the adapted poem. From
the way the stanzas are arranged, students are “guided” in their understanding as the poem first
three stanzas are like monologue and the last three stanzas are like a conversation with the mirror
but with no reply. This adaptation allows readers to see clearer the situation that is being
described in the original poem, a conversation between a girl and the mirror; but unanswered
until the end. However, the conversation of the mirror from the original poem is not included
because it will make the whole poem too direct to understand and less challenging for this group
of students. They should be given slightly tougher reading material but not too advanced until it
affects their ability to understand.

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4.0 Discussion of Classroom Materials
The lesson is a single period lesson. The focus of the lesson is on the learning of vocabulary. The
main skill involved is the speaking skill. Below is the flow of lesson:
STAGE ACTIVITY
INDUCTION  Teacher asks students to guess a riddle of which the answer is ‘mirror’.
LESSON DEVELOPMENT
STAGE 1:
EXPLANATION
 Teacher recites the poem with expressions and feelings.
 Teacher shows some pictures [refer Appendix (c)] which depict the
adjectives and their antonyms in the poem.
 Teacher asks students to sort out words from the poem which describe
the picture shown and explain their preference between each antonym
pictures.
 Teacher asks students to guess the overall meaning of the poem.
STAGE 2:
PRACTICE
 Teacher asks students to look at a mirror and draw an ideal image of
themselves using their right hands (writing hand) [refer Appendix (d)].
 Teacher asks students to look at a mirror and draw another ideal image
of themselves using their left hands (non-writing hand)
[refer Appendix (e)].
 Teacher asks students to list down as many adjectives as possible for
both images.
STAGE 3:
PRODUCTION
 Teacher asks students to paste the two images on both sides of an
artificial mirror frame [refer Appendix (f)].
 By mirroring themselves, teacher asks students to talk for 1 minute
regarding which image they prefer to have and provide reasons using the
adjectives – the one drawn with the right hand or left hand.
 Teacher explains the rationale of the activity – you are the person who
decides how you want to see yourself.
CLOSURE  Teacher asks students questions pertaining the values learnt from the
poem.

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As seen from above, the teaching materials involved in the lesson are the following:
o Adapted poem handout [Refer Appendix (b)]
o Pictures describing adjectives in the adapted poem [refer Appendix (c)]
o Mirror image drawing template (using right hand) [Refer Appendix (d)]
o Mirror image drawing template (using left hand) [Refer Appendix (e)]
o Artificial mirror with empty frame [Refer Appendix (f)]
These materials are sufficient to facilitate the teaching which aims to encourage students
to speak based on what they think, see and feel. This is a good activity with the use of basic
teaching materials to boost students’ self esteem and drawing creativity skill. As they draw, they
do not only have to imagine their own appearances, they have to think how to illustrate
themselves in the best way. Everybody certainly wants a nice drawing of themselves but students
have to know that the drawing must be real and not too imaginatively fantasy from their ideal
self. Therefore, this activity actually requires students to use all the three domains – cognitive,
psychomotor and affective.
At the end of the lesson, students ought to know that the image on the mirror whether is
appealing or not depends on the viewer’s point of view and decision. Both are drawn using their
own hands. Whether it is drawn with a left hand or right hand, the objective is to draw an ideal
portrait of themselves. In other words, both portraits should be ideal. This connotes the idea of
the lesson that, nobody is ugly as beauty lies in the eyes of beholder.
5.0 Conclusion
The teaching of literature to secondary school students should be made fun and interesting to
attract their passion and interest in literature. Therefore, teachers are encouraged to use various
creative and innovative techniques to teach the language art. In conjunction to that, Davies (n.d.)
stated that students are encouraged to ponder for themselves, and apply their creative
imaginations when learning literature.

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References
Anxiety and Depression Association of America. (2014). Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD).
Retrieved from http://www.adaa.org/understanding-anxiety/related-illnesses/other-
related-conditions/body-dysmorphic-disorder-bdd
Covin, R. (2012). Science says you’re more attractive than you think. Retrieved from
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/roger-covin/physical-attractiveness_b_1705663.html
Davies, R. (n.d.). New ways of teaching literature. Centre for Languages Linguistics & Area
Studies, Advance online publication. Retrieved from
https://www.llas.ac.uk/resources/gpg/2593
Dombeck, M. (2008). Six reasons why people self-injure. Retrieved from
http://www.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id=16218
Gagen, M. (2008). A discussion on reading materials: Finding appropriate level books to help
students improve reading skills. How to select books to match your child/student’s
reading level?. Retrieved from http://www.righttrackreading.com/selectbooks.html
K, D. (2014). No matter how much love hurts, these 5 things are always true. Retrieved from
http://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-12672/no-matter-how-much-love-hurts-these-5-
things-are-always-true.html
Kashdan, T. B. (2014). Why do people kill themselves? New warning signs. Retrieved from
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/curious/201405/why-do-people-kill-themselves-
new-warning-signs
Kingore, B. (2002). Reading instruction for the Primary Gifted Learner. Understanding Our
Gifted, 15(1), 12-15. Retrieved from
http://www.bertiekingore.com/readinginstruction.htm
Lickerman, A. (2010). 6 reasons why people commit suicide. Retrieved from
http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2010/06/6-reasons-people-commit-suicide.html

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Nor Hashimah, I., & Che Ton, M. (2012). Literary texts for Malaysian secondary schools: Needs
versus policy. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 2(7), 76-86.
Retrieved from http://www.ijhssnet.com/journals/Vol_2_No_7_April_2012/9.pdf
Olinghouse, N. (2008). Design lessons for diverse learners. Retrieved from
http://education.msu.edu/te/secondary/pdf/Designing-Lessons-for-Diverse-Learners.pdf
Tracy, N. (2013). What is self-injury, self-harm, self mutilation?. Retrieved from
http://www.healthyplace.com/abuse/self-injury/what-is-self-injury-self-harm-self-
mutilation/

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Appendix (a) – Original poem written by Lisa King
Mirror, Mirror, on my wall,
I just want to be thin, pretty and tall.
Mirror, Mirror, if I change my hair,
maybe someone will start to care?
Mirror, Mirror, if I starve myself,
at least I’ll be beautiful, forget my health.
Mirror, Mirror, if I cut my wrist
will I feel like I exist?
Mirror, Mirror, don’t you see?
What you show, is ruining me.
For far too long it had watched her cry,
so the mirror decided to reply:
"What you think you see? It isn't true.
This misery is found inside of you.
Don't lock yourself in a broken soul,
or I promise you one day, you'll lose all control."

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Appendix (b) – Adapted poem
Mirror, Mirror, on my wall,
I just want to be slender, appealing and tall.
Mirror, Mirror, if I change my hair,
maybe someone will start to care?
Mirror, Mirror, if I starve myself,
at least I’ll be beautiful, forget my health.
Mirror, Mirror, don’t you see?
What you show is ruining me.
Mirror, Mirror, I am who I see,
what you show in front of me.
Mirror, Mirror, please stop it!
I’m hiding at a corner with no heartbeat.

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Appendix (c) – Pictures describing adjectives and their antonyms in the adapted poem
Unappealing
Appealing

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Slender
Fat

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Tall
Short

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Appendix (d) – Mirror image drawing template (using right hand)
Instruction: Draw an ideal portrait of yourself
using your right hand.
Appendix (e) – Mirror image drawing template (using left hand)

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Instruction: Draw an ideal portrait of yourself
using your left hand.
Appendix (f) – Artificial mirror with empty frame

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