What I Have Learned From Critical Literacy?

           Day after day time passed away, without realizing I have studied Critical Literacy for almost completed in this semester. What did I get and learned from it? Is there any benefits that I get and can be equipped in the real life? Yes it is absolutely my answer for every question that I have been listed above. Critical Literacy wasn’t difficult as what my past senior have told me. Despite there is a lot of research and complicated analysis needed to be done, I am still able to reckon with every tasks, assignment and so on. From my view, this subject was a little bit challenging compared to other subjects. Why I said so because this subject is just asking us to use our brain critically to have a better understanding to fulfill the task requirement. Unlike the others which need to have 

            I am so glad and thankful for being given the chance to study Critical Literacy throughout this semester. This is because, it have improved my critical thinking skills in order to make a decision. As for me myself back then was a lazy person and I was simply making an abrupt action and decision without taking much time. As the consequences, I always doing mistake and couldn’t achieve what I desired to be. After I have studied this subject, I found that human need a certain period to think and process information in order to come out with the best idea or solution.

            Furthermore, I believed that we need to apply critical thinking in our daily life especially when it comes problem to choose the best choice or solution. If we don’t have the skills to think critically, we will have the problem to identify pros and cons of something. We need to think wisely because when we make decision wrongly, it might affect ourselves and also people in the surrounding. For example, we have plan our schedule nicely to complete our assignment, but our friends ask us to join him watch football match. Here we need to differ between the importance and non-importance. So that we can come out with a strong reason to refuse our friend’s request as the main priority for that moment is to finish our assignment.

            On behalf of myself, I strongly wanted this Critical Literacy to be continued learned by the upcoming batch. This is because this subject bring a lot of benefits to them. But I dislike the first assignment which has required me to do a lot of research for three articles at the same time. Could the articles being reduced in the future? This is because I admit I didn’t focus much on two other articles instead of extraterrestrial. For the recommendation, I prefer to have two only articles for the first assignment so that the upcoming batch will have more focus and come out with a great understanding.

The Body, Mind and Spirit Have Linked Towards Each Other

           The body have the greatest possession , the mind is the greatest treasure and the spirit is the greatest companion. What connection do the body, mind, and spirit? From my view the body is the physique that is a great bestow that allow human to feel everything by touch, hear, see , pain and so on. Body can allow human to possess the strength, capability, and benefits in order to be defender or protector towards each other in societies. Without a great body, especially for the leader, he cannot manage and struggle for the justice. In addition, leader must put a great effort to show his leadership. So, people will pay their respect and support towards the great body of a leader.

            Mind is full of mystery and unpredictable. The idea that comes from mind mostly valuable. Therefore different people have different thought and perception. The treasure here means that most people do have their own idea based on their intelligence quotient and high order thinking skills. People don’t understand what the person  mean, unless they were given explanation and clarify by that particular person. So, in order to avoid misunderstanding it is better for us to ask for clarification from the expert.

            Spirit is the inner part of the body. Human need to be strong from internal to face the reality. The greatest companion here means that confidence and courage comes from an enthusiastic of the person itself to face the reality. Fears will always be his enemy. So in order to face the fear, he need to have a strong spirit. Strong spirit can be achieved from a lot of practice. Practice make perfect. Successful people have a motivation spirit that make them to never give up easily.

            To wrap up, the connection between body, mind and spirit is about a human himself that used wisely the bestow that was given to them. We can’t deny that whenever people shows the understanding about something, they tend to have a better clarification about something in their own words or come out with examples.    

Money can buy happiness, is that so?

            The world nowadays is non-stop using money in everything. Without money, everything will be messed and limited. Money is vital in order to ease human’s life. For instance, food, shelter, clothes, education and so on. “If money  were the only criterion by which a child’s welfare can be gauged, then a baby bought for as much as RM40,000 in the black market would seem set for life. For money-rich but child-poor couples, it is a small prices to pay to introduce small life into their home. The cot is gilded, the blanket monogrammed, the college fund filled to the brim. All that’s wanting is a bun in the oven. And where there is a baby-for-sale racket, money can indeed buy happiness. And after all, why not?” (NST, March 3, 2013). Based on the above statement, I have come out with two counter agreements which are money cannot just simply take the right of belonging and money will create a huge family’s issue.

            Initially, money couldn’t simply take someone’s belonging although it is backed by buying power. Means that it doesn’t matter how rich you are, but when you have stole someone’s belonging it is a great mistake that you have ever made and you will regret about it. The reality is there’s a lot of human trafficking in the black market. How could you buy someone’s belonging for your own sake? Do you ever think if you are that parents situation who have just lost the particular child, how do you feel? Today’s world is so cruel, riches people dominating the societies in everything. There is a lot of inhumane and selfish people everywhere in this world. Taking other’s belonging is not a big deal as money can make it happens.  

            Secondly, there is a lot of consequences especially in family’s issue occurs due to the buying life from black market. One of it is the wealth issue. The adopted child doesn’t have any right to take over the wealth although how good you raised them up. As the result, the wealth might be competed among the other family members.  On the other hand, when the child had achieved at certain age, he or she might wanted to know who is their biological parents. The adopted parents could not stop them to reveal the truth. Money cannot delete the actual fate. The adopted parents will lose their respect if they are hiding the truth from where the children was coming from.

           To wrap up, money can’t simply bring happiness without having risked and also consequences. For temporary happiness yes it is, but sooner or later the truth will be revealed. People need to consider that if they have been put in the situation of missing their children, how will they feel? Nothing can’t replace that child. Remember that, once you have took someone’s belonging, later you will feel exactly like what you have did. 

What is wrong with stereotyping?

            Basically, human have different perception towards the others.  It is depend on the variety of races, religions, ages, and also believe. Therefore, human might judge other people based on the list above. This is what we called stereotyping.  Usually, people have  a strong sensitivity to stereotype when they see different people based on their appearance or behavior that was portrayed by them. Plus, stereotyping is exaggerated generalization associated with a categorizing system, they go beyond the facts and comes out with a claim that is out of basis. I believe in our daily life we couldn’t stop ourselves from stereotyping others. This is because it has been a habit for us whenever we see, hear, or think are based on our general knowledge.

            On the other hand, we predict  a group of people that fit the categories that we used to know. For example, gender position and the way they have been treated in the societies. Men and women have their own privilege, they also do have different behavior. Both gender are complicated actually, but people are more likely stereotyping others based on what they believe without any limit. Facts for them can be proven based on their past experience and assume people are similar within each other.

            We cannot avoid stereotyping but we can reduce it. There are two ways to help in reducing stereotyping which is do not be too nice to the person and second point is learn to recognize and also avoid generalization. What can we understand by not being too nice  to other people? Purposely, do not acted super friendly with someone who we have just met. Therefore, we might avoid ourselves from making common thought of that person with our common friends. In addition, treated him differently so that we can learn new thing and experience. Thus, we can avoid from treating everyone equally that might lead to stereotype.

            Next, we need to learn on how to recognize and avoid generalization. This is because, we tend to judge people generally based on what we believe and through our past experience in facing people’s behavior. So, we must recognize first the privilege of someone before we simply jump into our own perception towards  that person. Frequently, people assume the others generally which is against the basis of life. People have their own privilege and we need to identified it to make them differ from others. In addition, what are the purpose of having new friends, if they have the same criteria like the others friend?. Everyone was created to play as their important role in this life.

           To conclude, here I want to consider that stereotyping is not good to be applied in our daily life. This is because, we don’t need to assume people are similar like others. They need to be given chances to see their privilege and we can learn new interesting experience from them.

My First Impression On Critical Literacy

               First and foremost, I was wandered about the subject entitled Critical Literacy when the first time I heard about it. Isn’t will going to be tough or difficult subject for me or in contrast? I have heard a lot of comments and grievances from the past senior about how challenged they deal with this subject. For me, the word “critical” itself had make me scared and very creepy. They said that a lot of research needed to be done in order to find premise or counter argument regarding to the article that have been given. Plus, they need to be identified a lot of sources, about the authors, author’s credibility, author’s belief or stands and many more. I believe this must be a complicated subject which required students to do critical research on lots of thing as being stated in the rubric.

                 Other than that, this subject might help me to think critically instead of simply agree with the author's stand. We couldn't just believe in everything that people said, or else we might have doing mistake to believe it. So, we as a language learner must undergo a research in order to proof whether the authors perception could be accepted or not. Hence, we might develop a critical thinking in order to distinguish between facts and opinion. I bet this subject is a quite challenging as my intelligence quotient(IQ) will be tested accordingly through the way I handle the tasks and assignments that will be given.

           However, I believed that every hard work there must be a great reason on why Critical Literacy is not similar with other subject.  Since I was just started to learn about this subject, I expect that this subject will be nice to me in order to get a better understanding. I hope that my lecturer will help and guide me to ease every single things in this subject. Plus, she has a great experienced with my past seniors which might improve her skills to teach me myself and the whole classmates. All in all, I hope this subject will give me a new experience and helps me a lot in order to develop a better understanding, likewise improved my high order thinking skills in future.