Evaluate 2 Materials That Used in Schools From Different Aspects

Evaluate 2 Materials That Used in Schools From Different Aspects

Research and analysis towards learning materials that have been used in schools are very important. For example, a poem, The Living Photograph by Jackie Kay is used by Kurikulum Bersepadu Sekolah Menengah (KBSM) for Form Four students. This poem is illustrating about the persona’s feeling when she looks at a photograph, which portraited a picture about her grandmother and her. After described about her feelings when she looks at the picture, persona recalls how her grandmother grows weaker and older until she went to an unimaginable place, heaven. At the final stanza of the poem, persona’s grandmother will have remained forever alive for her and her smile looks so alive when she was holding her granddaughter’s hand when her granddaughter was 3 years old.

Analysis for the type of course for students’ level, the poem is quite suitable for Form 4 students because it focuses more on the surface meaning of the poem so it is not very hard for them. So, students’ response towards English learning will be motivated because they can learn and adapt the understanding of the material easily. In my opinion, for Form Four students to learn this poem, they not only need to require more vocabularies from their background knowledge to understand the material but they also need to imagine the setting that the writer has set. Furthermore, the length of this poem, which divided to three stanzas, is not so lengthy for Form Four students and they will not get bored easily facing the long reading material.

The Living Photograph poem is suitable for intermediate Form Four students in the aspects of linguistic proficiency and literary background. For advance Form Four students, maybe this material is slightly easy for them. The language used for this poem is not so difficult and easy to understand. I think this poem is a very good material to attract students’ interest and build their emotional understanding. This is because the cultural background of this poem is about family relationship and the students already familiar with it. Furthermore, this poem is teaching about the values of the importance of family and appreciation towards memories that have been gained. Through this poem, students can realize about the importance for being grateful and appreciate family members while they are still by their side.

In my point of view, the factor of syllabus suitability for the poem is balanced with maturity growth for Form Four students. Since they start to learn more about the importance of relationship between human, the government choose the learning materials by taking moral values into account. Next, for the text exploitability, Form Four students can put themselves in the shoe of the writer in this poem and try to discover more moral values. It is very important to teach the students how to discover writer’s feeling towards family relationship in this poem and appreciate every learning materials. This poem is not only available for Form Four students but this material also can be used for Form one to Form three students. The main intention of this poem is to teach the students more about the importance of human relationship.

On the other hand, The Fruitcake Special is another literature material for Form Four students. The material, written by Frank Brennan is one of the short stories for Form Four students. It is a story about the effect of a fruitcake perfume on men. Anna, a chemist who works in Mr. Amos’ company, creates a perfume accidentally. Mr. Amos feels in love with Anna when he senses Anna put on the perfume. Thus, he asks her for dinner. But at night, Anna is surprised and upset when she found out Mr. Amos was not so interested in her just like this morning. She puts on the Fruitcake perfume, Mr. Amos and a waiter become attracted to her. Both of them declare their love to Anna and chaos situation appears when a fight between two men happened. Anna leaves the restaurant and the perfume company and ends up with Armstrong, the pizza boy.

This short story is more to illusion type of story and there are many moral values that can be discovered. From my point of view, I think this short story can attract students’ positive response in learning English because this short story is quite fun and not so heavy for them since this story related to love story. This piece of material is quite suitable for Form Four students because the content of the story is not so complicated and this short story is not very lengthy. From this material, the students can learn more about the dramatic structure of the story which included exposition section, rising action, climax, falling action, and dénouement section. 

I think the setting in this short story is more to social issues and this material is selected for Form Four students because of the moral values and social culture background of students. Form Four students already have basic literary background as they learned about literature when they were in Form One, Form Two and Form Three. Thus, this kind of short story can be said as an upgraded material when the writer combined both illusion and reality situation in this story. The Form Four students are mature enough to know how to be realistic in life and do not judge anyone by his/her appearance. This kind of story, which is suitable for Form Four students’ age and intellectual level, is needed to be taught to catch students’ interest in learning English because the language used in this short story is within their language ability. The conflict in this story, for the example, when Anna is in chaos when Mr. Amos and the waiter fight and declare their love to Anna at the restaurant, also can develop their emotional understanding and imagination about the scenes.

The literary materials are selected with the relatedness to students’ syllabus. Mainly, students’ syllabuses are focused on reality and social factors and one of the moral values in this short story is teaching about the important of being realistic in life. In this short story, the students can derive the moral values of being a realistic person and know the importance of not fall for physical appearance in their daily life. These moral values can help them more in lifelong learning. This short story can be available for any ages but I think it is preferable for secondary school students because their general literary background is developed gradually as they learned simple literature material before. Thus, they can read and understand the material better.

As a conclusion, all the materials that have been selected for the students is being evaluated to suit the students’ proficiency level and their maturity to understand the selected material. However, streaming classes such as advance, intermediate and low proficiency students and intellectual differences in learning second or foreign language determine students’ understanding in grasping the understanding of the knowledge. All the materials selected and use consistently in all schools are well evaluated in many aspects included moral values. Thus, the teachers also need to evaluate the materials that they are going to choose so that the students can maximize their learning within their ability.