Transformative Learning
First of all, concerning the course's subject direction, through this lesson, I re-incorporated society's inherent cognition of women, reflected in Disney's movies. I have never paid attention to this issue until I studied 39A. I understand that women are on the weaker side in traditional perceptions. Disney movies are also willing to show the audience the image of gentle and family-friendly women, rather than brave and sovereign images. Even with the development of society, the influence of conventional concepts still exists. For example, advertisements about women's bodies are often sexually suggestive, while advertisements for men are bright and positive. This can also be linked to the attention of masculinity. There will always be a male hero who is brave and responsible for protecting women and is loved by female characters in a movie. In contrast, there is also toxic masculinity where male roles often disrespect females and believe that women should serve men. Through this class's assignments, I have a deeper understanding of social constructions about gender roles through Disney movies.
Another aspect is that I learned to make a website through Wix. From the initial writing of a simple blog to later independent production of a web page, such as our group's Microsite and Writing Showcase Page, etc. I have never learned how to make a website in another class. Although this is not a rare character, I believe this skill will be instrumental in future work. In making Microsite, I also had a group discussion with the team members and clearly divided the labor, which thoroughly exercised my team cooperation ability.
Problems & A Plan for the Future
I think I still have writing issues. Writing the first sentence of an article or a paragraph is often a huge challenge because clarifying the subject is a little hard for me. Similarly, it is hard for me to judge the article's central idea when reading the article. Even at the end of a whole semester, writing the introduction part's first sentence takes me a long time writing the final essay. For solving this problem, it is necessary to write and read more articles. When reading each article, try to think about its thesis statement. Also, to learn a language, especially a second language, imitation is essential, imitating excellent authors' sentence patterns and words.
Besides, grammatical errors in the writing process are also a big problem, making my articles unreadable, especially subject-verb and tense issues. Every time I finish writing an article, I have to spend a lot of time rereading the article to ensure that my grammar has as few errors as possible. The way to solve this problem is to start thinking about whether the tense or subject-verb are always accurate after or during writing a sentence for reducing the simple mistakes made in the writing process gradually.
Hello Ruihan! As you pointed out, WR39A enables us to think about gender roles from different perspectives and refresh our cognition of social construction. Through Wix, we set up our own website in this class, which not only exercises our creativity, but also enables us to master a useful skill. During the production of podcast and microsite project, I am honored to be in a group with you. In the process of communication and cooperation, I deeply understand the importance of group cooperation. I cherish my experience with you very much.
1. Hi Ruihan, I see how your abilities have improve during this course. The topic, Disney film and Gender role, helps to shape your perception about female and male gender role, which females are always showed gentle and family-friendly while males are always showed by their masculinity. Besides, I noticed that this course help you develop an ability to create a website, and group project help develop your communication skills. In fact, for me, these abilities have also been improved. I am a person with no sense of design, so designing web pages is actually a weak point for me. However, in this class, after reading the websites of many classmates, I carefully observed their typesetting and illustrations, which really…
Can't believe I found you on the first try! We have not worked with each other so we have few interactions, but we did leave comments on each other's posts I remember. Your website is so cute, I guess that's the reason why I selected the correct link in the portfolio index. Do you mean hook when you say the first sentence in the intro paragraph? I agree with you that it's not easy to produce the sentence, I think it requires your creativity, and reading will help you a lot in my perspective! Thank you for making your website so adorable, it's nice to meet you!
Hi Ruihan, I have similar problem as you for organizing my words when writing and it takes me lots of time to think about it. Also, as you indicate, this course deeper my perspective on gender roles and social opinions about gender values. Additionally, creating website in this class is definitely a great experience beneficial to our future carrer and I gained a lot. Last, hope you do well in future studying.
Hello Gloria! It is really nice to meet you. Although we only have a short meeting during lecture time, I was impressed by the design of your website. Grammar is also one of my weaknesses. To solve this problem, I plan to do more self-learning in the future. I hope you can do better in your future writing!