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EDUC X 462.3
Dr. Howland
January 19, 2018
Week 01: Let’s Think - Language Learner Experience
I watched a full episode of the Chinese drama titled “Rakshasa Street.” This
episode involved evil zombie ninjas, a young man who worked as food deliver by day
and fought the zombie ninjas at night, a young woman with time management problems
and several supporting characters that are part of the young woman’s daily life. The
opening scene consisted of some drunk men urinating on the street and being
approached by the zombie ninjas. The young man came out of the restaurant to protect
the drunk men from the zombie ninjas. The next scene consisted of a young woman
arriving late to work because she threw several of her buzzing alarm clocks into an
aquarium instead of immediately waking up. On her way to work she keeps checking
her phone and ends up crashing into the food delivery man who was very upset with
her lack of attention. When the young woman finally arrives at work she is reprimanded
by her male boss. After doing some work at her computer her lunch arrives, and it
turned out to be the same food delivery man who she had run into. He starts screaming
at her and she eventually hits him and pushes him out of frustration only to find out that
her co-workers were filming the entire altercation. She leaves work on a bus and while
on the bus is greeted by an attentive little girl who gives her chocolate since the young
woman looked so sad. While traveling through a tunnel the young woman is scared by
a zombie ninja that only she sees. The other passengers start to talk about her and her
weird reaction when the bus driver loses control while driving because a zombie ninja
appears on the windshield. Most of the passengers die from the impact of the bus
falling down a canyon and into the ocean. Somehow the bus ends up on land and the
young woman notices that the only other person alive is the little girl who gave her
chocolate. As she tries to help the little girl out of her mother’s dead arms about 10
zombie ninjas appeared. The zombie ninjas drag the bodies of two dead passengers
out of the bus and suck the souls out of them. Watching this causes the little girl to
scream and the zombie ninjas start looking for the little girl and the young woman.
Upon finding the little girl and the young woman, one zombie ninja immediately kills the
little girl. As the young woman stands scared that she is the next victim, the food
delivery man appears and kills all the zombie ninjas. The young woman wakes up at a
hospital struggling to tell an officer about what happened. She eventually leaves the
hospital and continues to be haunted by a spirit that tries to drown her. She returns to
work and her boss is kind to her and it seems that for the time being she is safe.
I struggled to find a show that I was actually going to sit through and watch. I first
tried to watch a Filipino soap opera but stopped watching it after two minutes because I
found the over-acting annoying. I then tried to watch a TED talk in Portuguese but
quickly realized that I was not going to understand a speech made in a different
language since the only visual is a person talking and I needed more context to build
absurdity of the events was entertaining. Though I did not understand what was being
said I was able to build understanding from facial expressions, voice tone, and prior
ninjas, and accidents that lead to questionable life-death experiences. This prior
knowledge allowed me to make inferences about the plot that may or may not have
been accurate. My inferences about the plot were also influenced by the background
music. I made an assumption that the Chinese film score would communicate the same
Considering that I do not speak any Chinese at all, I was impressed by my ability
household. I never felt frustrated that I did not understand what the actors were saying
because I did not feel dependent on language to understand the plot. Perhaps growing
up bilingual and being in situations where I did not know the English translation or
gestures and facial expressions and therefore I do not consider spoken words
necessary to communicate.