In Brothers’ Grimm’s fairy tales, the motif of blindness occurs quite frequently, each time with a different symbolic meaning. In “Hansel and Gretel”, blindness is represented as a body deformity, an ...abject feature of the red-eyed, half-blind cannibalistic witch who lives in the candy house in the middle of the forest, while in “Cinderella”, blindness becomes more: a brutal punishment for wrongdoings, such as when: the wickedly unkind stepsisters’ eyes are pecked out by pigeons as they are on the way to the wedding of the Cinderella and her handsome prince. Yet, in “Rapunzel”, blindness is not meant to be an abject feature nor a direct punishment. Rather, it opens the door to the Romantic vision and spirit. Through studying the earlier versions of the Rapunzel story and the Grimm’s later version, this paper explores how blindness represents the limitations of logic and reason and, through embracing the beautiful power of the female sensibility, welcomes the rebirth of insight, faith and Romantic sentiments.
This paper aims to highlight the prevalent challenges faced by Hong Kong Chinese students in utilizing connectives and ensuring coherence in their English academic writing. Research indicates that ...constructing fluent, effective, and cohesive English written texts that maintain logical flow poses a significant challenge for Chinese learners studying English as a foreign language (EFL). This difficulty is likely attributed to the substantial cultural differences between the English and Chinese languages, regardless of the learners’ grasp of English grammar and vocabulary usage. In order to raise awareness among EFL teachers regarding the struggles Chinese students encounter in mastering connectives and cohesion in English writing, this qualitative study analyses five sample English term papers written by Hong Kong university students majoring in English in 2023. The findings reveal that the Hong Kong EFL participants tend to present their arguments in an indirect and circular manner within their English essay assignments. Additionally, due to cultural norms and politeness, the true intent of their writing is often withheld, and the thesis statement is implicitly inferred towards the end of the essay rather than being explicitly stated at the beginning in the introduction. Furthermore, a focus group interview with the student participants conducted after the written analysis demonstrated that their English academic essays reflect the influence of Chinese social interaction norms on rhetorical patterns. The relevance of this study lies in its potential to inform EFL instruction, enabling educators to better support Hong Kong Chinese students in navigating the complexities of English academic writing and to adapt pedagogical approaches that bridge cultural and linguistic gaps.
Translation studies in English and Chinese has long been of great interest to academics. Yet, Chinese scholars who have translation training and linguistic expertise are often found to “give ...excessive attention to listing facts and probing linguistic matters, to the neglect of the cultural and contextual considerations that have given rise to translation in China in the first place” (Lin, 2002, p. 170). Much emphasis has been placed on translation strategies, while translation “in connection with power and patronage” (Lefereve, 1992, p. 10) is overlooked, leaving “existing ideology” or “existing poetics” (Lefereve, 1992, p. 10), such as gender unexplored. In light of this, this paper attempts to take the literary and cultural approach and focus on examining the gender ideologies in Pu Songling’s Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio (1740) and Herbert Giles’ English rendition (1880). By comparing the source and target texts, the paper reveals that in many of Pu Songling’s stories, spirit-freelove and sexual pleasure are celebrated. A witty parody of the imitative structures of gender can be found in Pu Songling’s “Painted Skin” too. Unfortunately, to a large extent, such transgressive gender views are repressed in Giles’ English rendition.
Cross-dressing, as a cultural practice, suggests gender ambiguity and allows freedom of self expression. Yet, it may also serve to reaffirm ideological stereotypes and the binary distinctions between ...male and female, masculine and feminine, homosexual and heterosexual. To explore the nature and function of cross-dressing in Chinese and Western cultures, this paper analyzes the portrayals of cross-dressing heroines in two Chinese stories:《 木木木》 The Ballad of Mulan (500–600 A.D.), and 《 梁梁梁梁梁梁台》The Butterfly Lovers (850–880 A.D.). Distorted representations in the English translated texts are also explored.
Teaching presentation skills is by no means an easy task. To teach such skills effectively, a teacher must help the students to learn how to (1) design and organize the presentation ...contenteffectively; (2) strengthen their verbal and nonverbal communication skills;and (3) master the use of visual aids. Often, the traditional face-to-face classroom setting falls short when the lecturer has to teach more than 100 students how to observe small details of body language and vocal skills. In this case, a blended learning mode — a hybrid of face-to-face and online learning — may be a better option than a pure face-to-face learning mode (Fang, Chow & Soo, 2012).
The purpose of this paperis to demonstrate how blended learning can be implemented to teach university students' presentation skills. In the spring term of 2013,
ENGL A122F: Presentation Skills
, a five-credit course for full-time undergraduate students, was first delivered via a blended learning approach at the Open University of Hong Kong. Attempting to combine the best features of the online and face-to-face modes of teaching, the blended delivery course incorporated video and interactive web-based components into the course outline.
In this paper, I share my experience of how presentation skills can be taught through video lectures and assessed through the online learning environment (OLE), alongside traditional teacher-led lectures and tutorials. Also, I discuss how the blended learning approach, compared with the traditional face-to-face teaching mode, can not only facilitate propositional knowing, but also help learners to achieveexperiential knowing, and presentational knowing (Heron & Reason, 2006). Last but not least, the paper reflects on students'feedback, as well as the challengeswhen implementing the blended learning mode.
Chinese readers have shown excessive interest in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House (1879) since progressive Chinese intellectuals such as Lu Xun (1881–1936) and Hu Shi (1891–1962) translated and introduced the ...play to China in the early twentieth century. However, until today, not many have noticed or mentioned issues that could arise from translation. While Chinese scholars vigorously study Ibsen and modern Chinese drama, few care to read the original play (in Dano-Norwegian) or the English translation, let alone comparing them with the Chinese version(s), which most Chinese readers actually read. In view of this, we look into three translations of A Doll’s House – namely Peter Watts’s English version, Pan Jiaxun’s Chinese version, and Cao Kaiyuan’s Taiwanese version. By using the critical discourse analysis (CDA) approach, we discover that the discourse and power struggle of Nora and Torvald in Watts’s and Pan’s versions differ in various interesting ways. In this article, we will use the conversation between Nora and Torvald in the last scene of Act III to demonstrate how omissions, additions and alterations brought about by translations can change the discourse and create different ideological effects on gender relations and identities (192 words).
As a gendered rewriter and a gender boundary transgressor, Philip Pullman uses the Holy Bible as a “pre-text” (Stephen and McCallum 1998: 2) when writing His Dark Materials (1995 – 2000). He boldly ...challenges the masculine discourse in the Bible, crossing the oppressive and insufficient gender boundary propagated in the Book of Genesis. With the objective to examine how Pullman breaks down gender boundaries, in this paper I will first re-read the creation story of Genesis of the Holy Bible and discuss Eve’s sexist portrayal. Then, I will compare the traditional, biased representation of Eve with the portrayal of the new and perfected Eve, namely the female protagonist – Lyra Belacqua in Pullman’s His Dark Materials. Through examining the re-inscription of Eve (as well as Adam) in Pullman’s re-version, the paper will reveal ways in which stereotypical gender implications are played out in the Holy Bible.
This paper examines the representation of female antagonists in three popular children’s books – C. S. Lewis’s Narnia books, Roald Dahl’s The Witches, and Philip Pullman’s The Amber Spyglass – by ...referencing Kristeva’s theory of abjection and Creed’s discussion of the monstrous-feminine. In both the Narnia series and The Witches, female antagonists are simplified, stereotyped and negatively portrayed as evil figures that threaten the stability of a well-ordered community. They are represented as the abject that blurs the borderlines between life and death, human and non-human, masculine and feminine. At the end of both narratives, the monstrous-feminine is ejected, eliminated, and the ‘purification’ brings relief and a vengeful pleasure. In Pullman’s book, the harpies are represented as monsters that can be reasoned with. They are honoured as generous and “Gracious Wings”. Yet, while the attempt of positive reinvention of the monstrous-feminine is noticeable, they play only a secondary role acknowledged by the symbolic order – the monstrous-feminine stereotype is nevertheless perpetuated.
Adaptations of English literature have thrived in the last decade to cope with the ever-expanding market of teaching English. The reading public seems to endorse it as a pedagogic device to increase ...children’s interest in reading and improve their language. Whether it has increased language proficiency remains a matter of debate. Our main concern, however, is the cultivation interest in literature through abridgement and to impact young learners’ imagination. At first glance, abridgement seems to open the door to the world of the classics so that children may have first-hand experience of literature, yet to achieve its ultimate purpose one needs imagination vis-à-vis the reading text. Does the abridgement which favours less demanding verbal dexterity operate at the expense of children’s imagination? Pertaining to the question, we conducted a comparative study of J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan (1911), the unabridged version, and G. Clemen’s abridged version (2000), their contexts and lexicons, in particular the deletion of some famous lines and passages, the replacement of some significant expressions and, eventually, how all these impact children’s imagination. While it can be argued that the abridged text makes reading easier for learners, its characters have largely been flattened and the recurring theme of not growing up has been disparaged. The interplay of sexuality becomes banal. A visible example is the omission of the poignant start “All children, except one, grow up”. Our assertion is that abridgement should be executed and refined not only for the advantage of lightening the linguistic burden but, more importantly, of nurturing the imagination in the young minds. To unleash their imagination, light but purposeful and exuberant reading with a fine adjustment of authenticity and aesthetics is deemed necessary and beneficial. Ultimately, children will improve their language and develop a life-long interest in English literature.
Tertiary English Language teachers often tend to focus on teaching vocational English skills, improving students' grammatical structure, vocabulary and other standard forms of linguistic expression. ...Unabridged and authentic literary texts are seldom introduced to the language classroom, either because most teachers see literature as difficult or inappropriate for teaching English (Savvidou, 2004), or that foreign students at the tertiary level are not interested in pure academic and literary discussion of English literature, which they feel no direct relation to their everyday experience (Williams, 1983). Yet, the mastery of English language skills means much more than just linguistic accuracy. EFL learners should be given opportunities to develop cultural sensitivity and reading strategies towards various text types, including literary texts. In light of this, the aim of this paper is to suggest ways in which English teachers could integrate literature into a language class. In this paper, I will use "The Snow Child", a two-page fractured fairytale from Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber (1979), as an example to demonstrate how short stories can be taught in an EFL class. I will outline my teaching treatment for the short story, which has been tried out in EFL classes with positive results. The paper will illustrate how Angela Carter's fractured fairy tale can be taught and explored through a reader-centred approach. Follow up writing activities for consolidation will be provided as well.
PDF
