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NAME Salin Sae Ung

STUDENT ID 6061013
UNIT NO 4 DATE SUBMITTED June 5, 2018

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 Unit 4 Research Report

Mythical Creature
Mermaids and Sirens

Salin Sae Ung

1001
Teacher Mr Matt Allsopp
School Mahidol University International Demonstration School

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Contents

Introduction 4

Methodology 4

Literature Review 4

Reflection and Discussion 4

Conclusion 5

References 6

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 Mythical Creatures: Mermaid and Siren

Glittering, shimmering, shiny, and colorful are the word that might be able to make
you think of mythical creatures called mermaids or sirens, but do you know that they are
two distinct creatures that most people misunderstood to be the same. They are the myth
of the seas, they appeared in folklores and tales in many coastal regions, though, many
people don’t believe in their existence. Nevertheless, they have a lot of influences on the
cultures, which I’m going to examine in this essay. You will be reading the stories and
analysis about these mythical creatures, which will be my methodology, my literature
review, and my findings and discussions, researched and written by my group, as soon as
you finish this sentence, wish you enjoy!

Firstly, let me introduce my process. On the day that we had to decide what topic
we wanted to do, we had 3 choices, which were, innovative idea, revolution theory and an
abstract concept, which we chose, and in particular, “Mythical Creatures”. This was
because we thought that the belief of mythical creatures seems to be now faded from most
cultures of the world. However, if we carefully observe our everyday life, we will see that
they are everywhere and are blended in our culture, just in a different way from the past.
My sub-topic was ‘Mermaids and Sirens’, which are two charming mythical creatures of
the sea. I began my process by doing the research from the internet about mermaids and
sirens to affirm my understanding about them, then starting to find something I didn’t
know to expand my knowledge to teach my group about this sub topic. From my further
research, I found many interesting facts that I didn’t know before, for examples; “Brazil
also has its own version of mermaid called Iara who has dark skin and green eyes, which
reflected the beauty in Brazilian culture” (Finklea, 2016). There is another writer named
Eamer (2015) said that there is a mermaid corpse that was claimed to be “real” in a shrine
in Fujinomiya, Japan. I have already finished designing my lesson plan and teaching it to
my groupmates, and now my group is preparing to teach it to another group. We are
designing the most interesting version of each of our sub topics to teach. In conclusion,
we are confident that they will enjoy our presentation.

While I was doing the research, I had to analyze and critically review some
literature. They gave me a lot of information and affirmed my understanding, and I noticed
that there are contrasting stories. According to Shawna (2018):
Key difference: A Mermaid and a Siren are mythical beautiful
female creatures, which differ in their appearances. A
‘mermaid’ is a half-woman, half-fish mythical creature;
while a ‘siren’ is a half-woman, half-bird type of creature.
Both used to attract the sea sailors and navigators with their
alluring and fascinating nature.

This was the key for my study. The stories of mermaids seemed endless, for example in
‘The Little Mermaid’ by Hans Christian Anderson. While sirens are less well-known and
often be misunderstood to be just another name of mermaids. However, the first story
about siren from classical literature called ‘Odyssey’ by a famous Greek writer named
Homer. Turner (2009) has extracted the part of the story, which told that the main
character, Ulysses, escape from the sirens by plugging his own and crews’ ears with bee
wax to prevent them from hearing the luring voice of siren to bring them to death. ”In the
earliest Greek myths, sirens represented the beautiful women who rested on the shore of
the ocean, singing a song of love and sometimes playing string musical instruments.”
(Gonzalez, 2000) this was contrasting to their characteristics. Another description stated
by Christopher (2011) that sirens were hostile, and capable of wrecking ships, which was
corresponding to Homer’s novel. As we can see, myth and belief are flexible because they
are opinions, not about which is true or false. If I reviewed this a decade later, they might
be different.

Before studying about them, the images in my thought of mermaids and sirens
were just women with fish tails or feathery wings. However, after I studied and reviewed

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many literatures, I found out much more information about them, which surprised me.
Mermaids and sirens are not just beautiful, there are also the versions of aggressive,
dangerous, and eat human them. In my research project, I only found the evidence of
them in the famous Greek literature, which did not reflect the people’s life style, so if I can
study more, I would do some more research about their reflections in ancient people’s
daily life. I think it would be very interesting to see how myth really blended in people’s
life style. I think my research still had a lot of holes, and the game was not interesting
enough for me. Due to my mistake in time managing, my lesson was did not meet my
desire. I think I should make my game more complex and difficult. Also let my groupmates
use their thinking more, instead of telling them all the facts. However, I think I had some
good points. I have shown clear examples and pictures of the mermaids and sirens. All
the facts that I taught my group were evaluated in to four categories: physical
appearances, why their descriptions are different in each region, myth about the creatures,
and evidences of the creatures in real life. This structure made my project organized and
easy to understand, and that was the good point of my research. For the conclusion, I
think my overall work was fine, but it could have been better if more details and complexity
were added. From reflecting and discussing my work, I would be able to improve my next
project, and be a better teacher.

Lastly, I would like to say thank you to all my friends who made this academic
project felt like sharing fantasy stories more like a serious task. I might or might not
accomplish my goal of making a deeper understand of the mythical creatures to my
friends, depended on how much of their attention id gained, but I am pleased of it already.
I will have to do a lot more project in the future, I will apply the lessons that I got from
my mistakes to make my future projects better than my past and current ones, and I will
also remember my good strength and the compliment from my friends and always keep
them in my every work. Thank you.

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References

Finklea. (2016). Mermaid. Retrieved from http://mentalfloss.com/article/75471/9-

mermaid-legends-around-world

Christopher. (2011). Sirenian. Retrieved from

https://www.britannica.com/animal/sirenian#ref92779

Shawna. (2018). Mermaid and Siren. Retrieved from

https://www.britannica.com/topic/mermaid

Eamer. (2015). The Ugly Mermaid. Retrieved from

https://www.hakaimagazine.com/article-short/ugly-mermaid/

Turner. (2009). Sirens. Retrieved from http://www.crystalinks.com/sirens.html

Gonzalez. (2000). History of Sirens. Retrieved from

http://www.realmermaids.net/mermaid-history/siren-history/