At last...

After being rejected for three times, at last my thesis statement has been approved by Dr. Edwin. What a relief... Now, I could continue with the writing process and started to think about the supporting points that I'm going to include in the proposal paper.

The process of coming out with the approved thesis statement was really a challenge to me. In the first blog I've mentioned that this task was easy, but now I knew that I was wrong. This whole process was definitely not an easy one. However, after I came out with this thesis statement, the next stage of coming out with the supporting points became much easier. Actually I already had my supporting points, and looking forward to show them to Cik Siti for her opinion about them.

Writing a thesis statement; what a challenge…

It might sound easy but it was indeed very difficult and stressful. My first thesis statement for the proposal paper was rejected, and I need to do it again. According to Miss Siti, my thesis statement was of a low level standard and needed to be improved. My first thesis statement was about the cause and effect of Miss Havisham’s vengeance and that was not suitable for this proposal paper. Once again I cracked my brain to come out with a better thesis statement.

As to improve the first thesis statement, I still used the issue of vengeance but this time I specified it on the case of Miss Havisham bringing up Estella. My thesis statement was “Miss Havisahm’s purpose of bringing up Estella is more of vengeance than love in ‘Great Expectation’ by Charles Dickens”. After showing it to Miss Siti, she suggested that I focused on the issue of vengeance and not to mention love in the title. So, I came up with the sentence “Revenge is Miss Havisham’s reason for bringing up Estella in ‘Great Expectations’ by Charles Dickens”. At last, Miss Siti approved this and I could continue with the next stage to search for evidences in supporting my argument.

In this process of coming out with appropriate thesis statement, I learned that writing is indeed a tiring process. I remembered what Dr. Jaya had said in his class that writing is a recursive process, and now it made sense to me. Well, it was just a beginning, and there would be more challenges waiting. I now need to prepare myself for them.

Les Miserables...

Reading and Project Work for Teaching Literature in ESL Contexts. Even the name of this subject is fearsome what more of studying it! Well, like it or not, this is the subject that I have to take this semester. As the name suggests, it is all about reading and eventually writing research papers. Definitely, lots of reading and research need to be done. Fortunately, there is no exam for this subject and it is good news for me.

The word “Research Paper” indeed brings a great impact on me. In some way it freaks me out as I don’t really like writing, but for the sake of completing this programme, I guess I just have to bear with it.

As a starting point, upon receiving the outline for the first assignment, I feel that it is quite easy as a proposal paper is about stating my stand on a single issue in any of the literary text that interests me. I feel that way because it is all about giving my opinion and then supporting it with appropriate evidences from the text. I believe that I can do it.

However, as I haven’t started doing it yet, I am just unsure whether that it is as easy as I thought. I already have in mind which literary text I am going to use for this assignment that is “Great Expectation” by Charles Dickens. Still, I might change my mind and work on other texts as there might be some other issues in them that are of my interests.

I hope that by doing this proposal paper, it will help me to write the research paper that is more difficult and carries more marks than this one.