PERFORMANCE TASK: CREATIVE MULTIMEDIA ADAPTATION OF A TEXT
Goal
The goal is to spark interest in and promote Philippine literature as well as
create awareness of 21st century Philippine literary works, genres/ forms,
and authors
Role
The students are high school students taking a class in 21st Century
Philippine Literature.
Audience
The primary audience is composed of SPCP high school and upper grade
school students. The secondary audience is made up of teachers, staff, and
parents, and, potentially, high school students from other schools.
Situation
In a survey done in 2007 by Prof. Isabel Pefianco Martin among 1,077
freshman university students (M/F, 16-19 years of age), the respondents
were asked to list the literature they read in high school, distinguishing
between which were required readings and which were texts they read on
their own. The survey revealed the following results:
A. Required Reading (Top 10)
Macbeth
Romeo and Juliet
Hamlet
The Catcher in the Rye
Animal Farm
Julius Caesar
The Little Prince
The Giver
Merchant of Venice
Odyssey
B. Own Choice (Top 10)
Harry Potter series
Da Vinci Code
Angels and Demons
The Alchemist
The Five People You Meet in Heaven
Tuesdays with Morrie
Lord of the Rings
The Notebook
Veronika Decides to Die
By the River Piedra, I Sat Down and Wept
No work by a Filipino author appeared in either list (nor did any appear in
the extended Top 20 list of required reading and those the respondents
chose on their own).
To account for this, Pefianco-Martin quoted Prof. Braj Kachru who spoke of a
myth that is “like a linguistic albatross around the necks of the users of the
(English) language.” Kachru says that “The result is that innovative and
creative initiatives are paralyzed and these result in self-doubt when there is
a conflict with the paradigms of authority.”
Pefianco-Martin concluded:
That both Filipino teachers and students of literature privilege texts of
American and European origins may be symptomatic of this self-doubt
that Kachru describes above. Such doubt about one’s own literature, as
well as the elevated status of American and European texts in Philippine
literature education today is disconcerting. Not only is it reminiscent of
the century-old American colonial education; it is also a preview of the
future shape of Filipino consciousness and identity.
Product
The students form groups of five members, and they create a campaign
promoting Philippine Literature. At the core of the campaign is a creative
multimedia (using Splice or iMovie) adaptation of a text by a Filipino author
written in the late 20th or 21st Century.
For the adaptation, the students take one line from an existing literary work
by a Filipino author and compose a tanaga using it. If the excerpt and the
tanaga is in English, there should be a Filipino translation (and vice versa).
The tanaga is short Filipino poem with four lines that each have seven
syllables. The traditional tanaga has a monorhyming pattern (AAAA), but the
modern tanaga uses other rhyme schemes such as AABB, ABAB, ABBA,
AAAB, BAAA, or ABCD.
Standards
1. Creative multimedia adaptation (21st Century Lit)
2. Promotional campaign (Filipino)