positive thinker? i am not.

half empty?half full? which one are you?

today during alin 201 workshop,
we have to pretend to give feedback to a student based on the essay that we have marked.
the essay was soo bad, sgt meruntun jiwa.
hati mmg kne tabah abis.
there's spelling errors everywhere, terrible sentence structure and of course, countless grammatical errors.
needless to say, after marking the essay, the page is full with red inks.
D said "kalau ak dpt student cmni, mmg ak dh tampar2"
haha
thats what I thought too.
memang mnguji kesabaran abis.
huhu

but then the tutor keep remind us that when we're giving feedback, we must also remember to focus on the positive side.
what's good?
what they can improve on
what's the strengths bla3..

and then we have to take turns to roleplay and pretend that we are the teacher giving feedback, the student and also as the observer.
putting yourselves in different shoes really gets you to think.
when i am the student, i find myself ready for criticism but at the same time hoping that there's still hope and room for improvement. when the teacher praised me for my ideas amidst my many mistakes, i feel so happy. and motivated.
when i observed, i found that the tone that teacher used, the teacher's enthusiasm and choice of words affect the student.
and...
when i took the role as a teacher,
i find it really hard to be positive
i find it really hard to give feedback without focusing too much on the mistakes.
i've tried to be more encouraging and try to praise the student on her good points but it is extremely hard to do that
and i ended up sounding so fake.
~sigh~
bg feedback pn susah ok.

but really, the activity get me thinking.
why am i finding it so hard to be more encouraging and positive?
why, on the other hand, the kiwi girl managed to give effective positive feedback?

this is not the first time i realized the differences.

last year, during my first ever tutorial,i was startled to find the tutor to be so enthusiastic and encouraging.
she never failed to say "good point", "excellent", "fantastic" etc eventhough thats not the correct answer or biase2 je.

can i say that its because of our cultural differences?
we're not really a bunch of positive people.
like in school, if we did not give the exact answer that the teacher wanted, the teacher would simply said "no" and won't praise you a bit for the effort that you've made. (it's disheartening aye?)
or
like us, in real life,
it's easy to talk about others negative qualities than the positive ones
for example,facebook
you tend to comment on the picture only when there's something wrong with the picture rather than complementing how good the others look in the picture. ( maybe not everyone do that. but me and friends tend to do that. but yeah i know, we didnt do it out of spite, thats just how our friendship works. pretty weird i must say. ahaha)

anyway,
the point is,
many of us tend to neglect the positive side.
there's always two side of things.
the good and the bad.
somehow, we are more focused on the bad side and totally ignore that there is a positive side of everyhthing.
no matter how small it is,
if you acknowledged the positive side,
you'll be more happy.
more motivated.
there's hope everywhere.
you just have to be more openminded to seek for it ( mcm x de kne mngene la pule. but who cares)

in short, be more positive people.
there's no harm in there.

c'mon guys! look on the bright side!! ;P

Quote of the day:
Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.
-Winston Churchill-

Today I am grateful for...
having Averil Coxhead as a tutor. she's bubbly and energetic and her class is fun!we even had morning tea during tutorial today. lucky aye? and for that, Alhamdulillah, thank you Allah.