Outside photo

Convocation Duty

A couple of years ago, I was assigned to be present for Convocation Duty as a staff member. I did not at all record down the event. This year though I was prepared. Although they prepared breakfast, Ain, Irfan and I consumed some early breakfast before I departed for the main hall. There was not a lot of photos of me in the hall during the ceremony itself, but here are a number of photos from before we marched into the hall. It is not determined if I would be doing this again next year, but I would not say no to another invite.

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Class ends

First Diploma Class

Even before the new semester began, I had been assigned to take over one ongoing Diploma class. Thus began my first foray into teaching English language for the Diploma students. This was also the first time I would teach a language class in one of the mid-sized halls at the Lecture Hall Complex. I think the students sit too far away from me for me to fully engage with them. I also prepared a Kahoot! quiz for the students. Not a lot of weeks left in their academic schedule, I will have to concentrate on coaching them for their assessment tasks for the semester.

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The UZW 157 class this semester ends

Theatre Arts Class On Stage

Narrator: Previously, on Hishgraphics blog… After seven weeks, on and off my co-curricular class has come to an end. We ended the class by running a stage play presentation just like the last time I ran this class. At first, the students limbered up, rehearsed their lines and planned their staging while still trying to wake up at 8am. Everyone warmed up fast. Two groups had to rehearse their staging more than the third group as they had requested permission to set up their props, backdrops and rehearse the previous night. The secondary stage has a bad spot where many a student slipped and fell. But the student above was on the platform because the script called for it. Wait till you see the results of the third group’s make-up work further down this article. Gear and Shaft presents Rumpelstiltskin The troupe that named itself Gear and Shaft started the […]

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Frog Yawn Village Party

DnD: Five Sessions in Five Classes

Another first for me this entire week is the fact that I ran RPG sessions for every one of my English classes, using Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition. The students used Level 2 pre-generated characters downloaded from the DnD official site. I wish I was able to plan for more weeks, using the game to improve their speaking and writing skills, but c’est la vie. Here are capsule actual play write ups for each session that I ran. The names and details of the characters in each session can be read in the accompanying photos. The theme of the week was Arts and Culture. NOTE: The students who wrote these play reports speak nor write English as a first language. They did the best they could in light of other more pressing courses and assignments. Grammatical and spelling errors have been left in the text for research purposes, so do […]

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The CIL committee and participants of the programme

A Meeting With A Poet Laureate

Another thing I would have never thought I would ever do if I were still back in KL was to meet A Samad Said, the national laureate, who was in town because of Perlis Book Festival 2019. The Centre for International Languages Bahasa Melayu team organised a talk with the renowned writer and poet. Because I had no classes at the time, I headed to the library auditorium to attend the talk. I am glad to know that Mr. A Samad Said has the same positive thoughts about today’s youth as I do. Here are some photos of the event:

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Third group performance

Students in the Amphitheatre

After two semesters absent, English Theatre Arts has been offered as a UniMAP co-curricular course once again. Like before, I am the course teacher. But unlike before, instead of less than 15 students I now have to handle 40 students. I returned to my course notes to adapt it for many. Thankfully, the students are very proactive and hands on with the course. Three groups of theatre troupes were formed. Each group will be organise a proper theatre performance at the end of the course, like the last time I taught this course. This includes writing their own play. For the first week, I took the trainees to task. And they performed magnificently in their own groups. Each troupe were able to quickly produce plays with various levels of amusement, comedy and pathos. (Someone was stabbed!) There was a problem with the air-conditioning system our hall, so we all relocated […]

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The usual suspects

DnD: Winter at Stonehaven

We have visitors this week. The language educators from Nakhon Pathom Rajabhat University, Thailand are on a three-day working visit of Universiti Malaysia Perlis. There are a number of activities that the Centre for International Languages scheduled from them. One of the activities is a tabletop role-playing game session. I was given a table to set up books, dice, maps and paper miniatures for a mini-exhibition. Before me, my colleague Yuzy (who plays the teenage spy Jijah in our The Laundry (Malaysia) RPG campaign) ran an ice-breaking session and demonstrated how online learning tools like Quizziz and Kahoot were run in class. After Yuzy’s activities were done, I began my segment with a short slide presentation. The presentation summarised what a tabletop role-playing game is, what games exist in the market and how it could benefit language learning, especially in an ESL environment. Not to mention how it could improve […]

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Group photo

DnD: Pretty Werewolves

Once upon a time at a time forgotten by lore, there was a city known as Big Dark Mountain. It was once a great mountain which had been hewn into a plateau. Humans, elves, dwarves and dragonborn came to build a city upon the plateau. Even a number of drow eventually settled there. Over the centuries, it grew into a prosperous city state. It was the centre of culture and commerce for the land. Meanwhile, evil powers began to dominate the countryside, corrupting a community here and despoiling a village there. Adventurers, warriors and explorers emerged from Big Dark Mountain, banding into groups of protectors. These groups venture forth across the land to seek out evil and darkness. One such party was the group known as the Pretty Werewolves… Dramatis Personae Ragnarok – Human Barbarian (Hafiy) Hago – Dragonborn Sorcerer (Danial) X.P.D.C. – Drow Rogue (Faizuddin) Rowling – Elf Wizard […]

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The ladies

DnD: Fallen Nation

Once upon a time, a cadre of wayward mercenaries – warriors lost without a kingdom – roamed around in search for adventures and a purpose. They hired themselves out to protect the common folk from a growing evil that has begun to stalk the land. Dramatis Personae Sage – Drow Rogue (Aminin) Mordred – Human Druid (Ganesan) Kaisa – Half-elf Bard (Fadzmil) Kal-El – Elf Fighter (Hafiz) Clark – Half-orc Paladin (Zaini) Raven, Guardian of the Jungle – Human Barbarian (Nazam) Mid – Dragonborn Sorcerer (Hamidah/Hajar) Lin – Human Fighter (Sharlin) Dul – Human Paladin (Afiqah/Syahidah) Chapter 1 Starry Falcon The story began in a tavern. The tavern was located in the village of Starry Falcon in the nation of Camelot. It was a Camelot populated not merely by humans, but also elves, dwarves, drow and dragonborn. However it was a dying nation as its high king named Arthur disappeared […]

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Asians Represent!

Interview at Asians Represent!

Late last month, I did an interview with Agatha Cheng and Daniel Kwan. It was for their podcast, Asians Represent!  over at One Shot Podcast. The episode was released a couple of weeks ago. In the show, I talk about the benefits of using tabletop RPGs to teach students English here in Malaysia. Also, how RPGs can be indirectly used to inspire learning of history and culture. I also talk a bit about my artwork and Patreon. I finally listened to the whole episode during work commute a few days ago. If you thought I sounded sick on the show, it is because I was. I was suffering a bad sinus infection during the recording, but at the time I did not think anything of it. Listeners have been kind, telling me I was good in it. But, wow, I could definitely hear myself being woozy and not very coherent […]

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FTK5

Students Comparing and Contrasting

For this entire week I had to teach the students compare and contrast essay. Additionally, the theme for the week was “Social Issues”. How should I get them to understand the structure of the essay and the framing for each body paragraph? Firstly, I got each class to list out the social issues that they knew about. (I highlighted the fact that a social issue in one culture might not be in another, and vice versa.) After some coaxing and jolting of memories, ideas flowed freely. After that, I lectured them on the structure of the compare and contrast essay. I also told them what the essay writer’s intention should be when writing such an essay. Then, each class chose two out of various social issues they listed. From each issue, they had to list out a number of aspects that both issues had in common. For example, the aspects […]

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The adventuring party

DnD: An Assessment of an Island Economy

Dungeons and Dragons in Class I ran Dungeons and Dragons for the first time… in a classroom. On Wednesday, I found that there was time to run a role-playing game session for the class while giving them a focused objective language wise. So I bought my D&D books. This class had never played any RPGs before, so I hoped that they could follow the instructions and the plot of the game as we developed it together. I brought pregenerated characters. They selected what they wanted to play. I briefed them on Attributes, Skills, Hit Points and how the dice rolls are used. Soon, we were ready to play. Dramatis Personae Naivara – High Elf Wizard Amalin – Half-elf Bard Pedepoit – Drow Rogue Bougainvillea – Dragonborn Sorceror Gong Nekara – Wood Elf Ranger Kemaih Cendoi – Human Druid The six are officials of the Sultanate of Purnama Utara to assess […]

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The participants and I

Combat Missions Game

During semester break week, I was assigned to the team that would be teaching a class for a contingent from the Royal Malaysian Army. For my “role play” segment of three hours, I decided to design a card game that doubles as a rudimentary roleplaying game (RPG). Two nights before, I spent up till 0200 hours designing the mechanics and physically producing the prototype cards by hand. There were 7 decks consisting of the Mission Objective deck, Insertion Method deck, Terrain deck, Weather deck, Obstacle deck, Setback deck and Enemy Contact deck. The Mission Objective deck has a target number of between 9 to 11. Each of the other decks has a modifier number anywhere between -3 to +3 depending on the situation on the card.  To accomplish the mission on the Objective Deck the player has to roll a twenty-sided dice (d20) equalling or below the target number given. […]

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Manufacturing1 Answers

First Week of Social Social in Class

The first week of the first session of the 2018/2019 academic session has begun. Do the students possess the not-very-instinctive ability to position words in an adjective phrases — specifically the positions of the noun and the adjective? I would like to happily report that this semester, the students have this ability… mostly… as these Kahoot quiz results show among six separate classes: At least no one answered “social social” or “media media”.

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Please do not leave the hall with the question booklet

Last Exam of the Semester

It is the last final exam I have to invigilate in; the last activity with students I have this semester. I will miss this batch of students. Although none of the exams tonight were English language course papers, there were a number of my English students for the semester taking them. Somehow, exam invigilation feels like a blast with these guys around although I myself am feeling under the weather what with the coughing and all.

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