Nama Kelompok 8

Artiana (1508101010036}

A : Hi Carissa, so you graduated from our department with firs class honours, you then
continued to do a Master’s in our department. You received the Ester Yewpick
Millenium Scholarship and you will go to Oxford very soon to do your Master’s
there. Now having done two degrees with us, i’d very much like to take this
opportunity to ask you a few questions about what you think obout our program
really, how you evaluate our program. Now you know of course yo know that our
program is composed of 3 diferrent streams, the communications stream, the applied
English linguistics stream, and the literary studies stream. How do you think studying
in all these 3 streams during your time studying for your Bachelor’s here, how did
studying in all these 3 streams help you in your research interest, which is to read
contemporary literature?

Carissa : Well first of all, for communications, I think it really honed a very strong foundation
for any work that we do as an English major going forward, including writing essays.
So we learnt about how to formulate a good thesis statement, and how to arganise our
essays, as well as how to do citations, and these are all very essential skills for doing
academic writing. And so, that was very important, and the other component to
communications is oral presentation skills, and we had, throughout our Bachelor
degree we had o do a lot of presntations as well. So it’s very important in your first
year to develop those skills and to build up a good habit of writing in proper style and
speaking in front of an audience. So I think communications for me formed a good
foundation for me to continue my studies in year 2, year 3. And for applied
linguistics, my preference is for literary studies, so linguistics has not so much to do
with my research interest, but I did benefit a lot from those compulsory courses that I
took, and I did become more aware of how sentences are formed, and the structure of
a sentence, the structure of a word, and gow small things can affect the meaning in
very significant ways. And so when reading literature today having that kind of
awareness is helpful when you try to analyse a certain sentence, a certain word, the
choice of word, the choice of syntax and everything contributes to a more, a richer
understanding of the text. As for the 3rd part, the 3rd stream litrary studies, it’s really
favourite part of being an Eng;ish Major, to read all these literatures. At first I was
more drawn to Postcolonial literature, because in my secondary school years when i
was studying English literature, a lot of literartures that I read were canonical texts,
 written by British writer or American writers. But then, when I took the introductory
course (An introduction to World literature in English), I got to read a lot more
different texts by writers from other countries, including South Africa, including
India, and these texts were very refreshing for me because they anabled a different
perspective, and you get to experience different cultures and being in the shoes of
different people from radically different culures. So. I really enjoyed reading for
example, novels by Coetzee, and I was attracted to the kind of style of writing by
postcolonial writers who are very willing to challenge the norms, because they’re
writing against a dominant western tradition, which they think you know, that’s
eclipsing their culture, their way of life, or you know, their way of expression. So I
think there is a very defiant feeling about postcolonial literature which I really like.
I’ve since fallen in love with this indian female writer called Arundhati Roy, and her
work has really influenced me and her writing is as I said, is very free, and also shee
challenges the hierarchy of power in postcolonial India, and she talks about women
living in a patriarchal society. She talks about the exploitation of natural resources for
the sake of development on India and its use such as more which are very relevant
today, so I really benefited from the literary studies in CUHK, because it opened
doors for me to experience different cultures and identities.

A : Okay so, you know lots of people who are outside us to our field, or even
prospective students, they might not really know what we do in our department, they
may not really understand the purpose reading Emglish, so they might associate
reading English with improving one’s language skills, which it is about as well, but
that’s just part of what being an English ajor means. So, with the benefit of hindsight,
what would you say are the uses of reading English the way that we do in this
department?

Carissa : It shapes really, the frameworks that you use to opproach the world, to tink about
things in your daily life, and i think it’s really about the attitude. I think