Individual Review on one of Catherine Lim's Stories.

Write a review on one of Catherine Lim's stories.

Review on Catherine Lim’s Little Ironies:

The Teacher

This story highlights the superficiality of an English teacher who pedantically focuses solely on his students’ language abilities – revolving around the grammar, structure of their essays without comprehending the content.
His oversight and insistence blinds him to a student’s indirect distress signals of trouble in her family, and coldly dismisses her ambitions and honest plans for the future. It sends a simple message of how teachers can and should assume the roles of educators and mentors for their students and kids.
The teacher should not be so ignorant as to ignore what the student was trying to tell her. Instead, she must have read between the lines of the English essay rather than really trying to understand it. She could have at least tried to understand the girl’s situation but she did not. Instead, she tried looking for faults with the girl’s essay.
She knew that girl was talking about her father because she said this, “She was supposed to write a story with the title ‘The Stranger’ and all she did was write me a great deal of trash about her father … this composition is not only grossly ungrammatical but out of point …” She knew, yet she did nothing to relieve the girl of the burden she was carrying on her little teenage shoulders.
If I were the teacher, I would have tried to help her with her family problems too. Not just how she does in school. I would not just give her extra lessons, but also how she copes studying at home when she has to be working. But the teacher did nothing and she could not be helped.

Poem based on Little Ironies.

Catherine Lim's Little Ironies.

No matter how she treat herself with care and respect.
No matter how everyone looks at her.
No matter how much money she spends on herself.

No matter how hard she works to look good.
No matter how beautiful she is to her husband.
No matter how jealous all her colleagues are of her.
No matter how rich she is,

She is still a monster in her mother-in-law's eyes.

-Monster

Individual Work.

Literature Project;
Poetry Slamming Workshop
Individual Work:

I wake up every morning with boredom on my face.
I hate this life of mine. People live with luxury.
Oh, why can't i be the same?
Everytime i see people happy, i ask God,\
"Why are you so selfish?"
I would then cry myself to sleep everynight.

I go to work with ugly orange vests.
While other people come in with nice, luxury ones.\
I stare at them in envy, hoping any one of them would smile.
Yet, they just look up, noses hung in the air.

Oh, how would they feel if they were to be in my shoes?
And, how would I feel if I were in their rich, expensive ones?
Life would be miserable for them.
But right now, life is miserable for me.

-Haziqah

Group Work.

Literature Project;
Poetry Slamming Workshop.
Group work.

I am a toilet cleaner
I wake up at 5am in the morning
Every day is a dread
As I eat my bread

Headed to work with a usual frown
People thought I look like a clown
But that all changed when I met my colleagues
Laughing so hard it caused fatigues

From babies to toddlers
Youths and old people of all ages
Dirthy, filthy, smelly
Cubicles full of pee

Oh, how would they feel if they were to be in my shoes?
And, how would I feel if I were in their rich, expensive ones?
Life would be miserable for them
But right now, life is miserable for me

By the time work ended, it was already late at night
Walked home through the narrow streets, listening to nothing but crickets
Reached home and plopped onto my bed
I looked at the wall clock, it was already 11 pm.

It finally strucked midnight and finally
I can go home and shut my eyes properly
My eyes shut upon touching the pillow
How I wish there was no tomorrow

- Zarinah, Fatin, Liyana, Haziqah

Introduction.

Introduction:
Hello. My name is Haziqah. :D