Today we had went through the Merchant of Venice, Act 4 Scene 1, where Portia was persuading Shylock to take the ducats and ignore the bond. Personally, I felt that the teacher’s teaching was not detailed enough. This is because I think that the teacher, though he had gone through most of the annotations, I think a better way would be to go through every single line, instead of skipping some of the parts. This is to further ensure our understanding of our passage and not only certain part of the passage.
After today’s lesson, I had understand more about the meaning of certain phrases in that scene, for example, the phrase,” mercy seasons justice” means that mercy will lighten the severity of justice. I was very impressed with Shakespeare capability of expressing some of his concepts through all this words that are not even meant to be the definition of it in the first place. For example, when the word “season” stands on its own, it means the 4 seasons in the year, but Shakespeare had made use of these words to express another definition, such as “temper/lighten the severity of” in the book.
I had definitely learnt a lot more vocabulary and also language use after reading this book. Though I still had some of the parts of the book I do not fully understand, I think my language use and ability to understand double meanings had improve greatly.
I think the reason why the teacher did not go through all the annotations is because there is limited time during class. The fact that some annotations are not explained gives us a chance to do some research and figure it out on our own using the context. Thus it is not necessarily a bad thing.
ReplyDeleteIt is great that you have understood more about the meaning of certain phrases in that scene. Did you know that the word "season" can be used to in another way other than 4 seasons in a year? Season also can mean adding flavour to something, like you can say "season a soup with salt and pepper". I feel that the way Shakespeare uses these words might really confuse us sometimes.
I hope that you will continue extending your vocabulary after reading the Merchant of Venice.
I feel that the teacher did go quite deep into detail and if it were to be to go through every single line, we would not have time for other activities or cover other important parts of that particular scene.
ReplyDeleteI suggest that you add in more reflective thoughts like how you are going to use the skills learnt to apply to future activities instead of saying which phrases you have learnt as telling those are not very reflective.
I feel that a very good reflection you wrote here is the "I was very impressed with Shakespeare capability of expressing some of his concepts through all this words that are not even meant to be the definition of it in the first place. For example, when the word “season” stands on its own, it means the 4 seasons in the year, but Shakespeare had made use of these words to express another definition, such as “temper/lighten the severity of” in the book." because it really shows that you appreciate the language usage of Shakespeare.