GEH1005 Crime Fiction in English and Chinese is a 4 MC Human Culture Module taught by the Chinese Literature Department. Do not worry, the entire module will be taught in English and the Chinese lecturers will be speaking English throughout the entire module. The Chinese stories were also translated to English so there is nothing to worry about. You might think that it's very strange for an Engineering student like me to take such a module (since it's a literature mod if you think about it) but I definitely did not regret taking this module at all.
Assessment
20% Class Participation
20% Group Project
30% Final Written Paper
30% Final Exam (2 hours, open book)
20% Group Project
30% Final Written Paper
30% Final Exam (2 hours, open book)
Lecturer: A/Prof Zhao Zhenxing
Tutor: A/Prof Zhao Zhenxing
Textbooks/Readings
No textbooks for this module. There will be readings given every week. The fun part about this module is that the readings are actual detective stories like Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot etc etc. There is 1-2 readings which is not given in IVLE and he recommended us to buy the book to read. If I remembered correctly, the 2 readings were Murder on the Orient Express and the CSI one (Take note the readings may change for your semester). I am totally fine with buying these books because I love reading mystery books. Well, there are online versions of these books too so I will not say its compulsory to purchase them.
Lectures
No textbooks for this module. There will be readings given every week. The fun part about this module is that the readings are actual detective stories like Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot etc etc. There is 1-2 readings which is not given in IVLE and he recommended us to buy the book to read. If I remembered correctly, the 2 readings were Murder on the Orient Express and the CSI one (Take note the readings may change for your semester). I am totally fine with buying these books because I love reading mystery books. Well, there are online versions of these books too so I will not say its compulsory to purchase them.
Lectures
Lectures were 2 hours long on Thursday, 4 - 6 pm. The lecturer will usually talk about the author/genre for the week with a set of powerpoint slides. Sometimes, we will watch clips of certain shows related to crime/detective fiction. So, this is one lecture that I really don't mind attending. We even watched movies like Psycho and Infernal Affairs (the cantonese one). However, since the lecturer does upload all powerpoint slides onto IVLE and he often just reads from the slides during lecture, it is not 100% required to attend the lectures (even though there isn't any webcast for this module).
Tutorial
Tutorials took place once every 2 weeks and they were 2 hours long. For each tutorial, we we would usually discuss 1-2 readings. This meant that there were some stories that were not discussed at all during tutorial. So, like a typical literature lesson (which I have not experienced since Sec 2), we had to analyse the characters and their personalities/intentions. Since there is a whopping 20% class participation, it would be good to just contribute anything you can think of. This is because the tutor is really nice and doesn't criticise anything you say. Even if you say something simple like 'the antagonist is really evil', the tutor would just be like 'yes, yes, good that you pointed that out'. So... the class participation portion ain't really a big issue. We do get broken into groups sometimes as well (not the same group as the group project) to discuss.
Group Project
As for the group project, we were supposed to film a video about a crime and how the crime was solved. And yes, we have to act. We could create a story from scratch or adapt one of the readings we have. But, the video could only be 5 - 10 minutes long. For my group, we adapted concepts from a few readings and combined them together to create a new story. The acting was really cringy at first but for that 20%, I guessed we decided to get serious and complete it well. We filmed at one of my group mate's hall room and it was really enjoyable for all of us. (Just take note that this group project segment may change for future semesters because in the previous semester, the previous batch was required to write a detective story instead of acting it out.)
Group Project
As for the group project, we were supposed to film a video about a crime and how the crime was solved. And yes, we have to act. We could create a story from scratch or adapt one of the readings we have. But, the video could only be 5 - 10 minutes long. For my group, we adapted concepts from a few readings and combined them together to create a new story. The acting was really cringy at first but for that 20%, I guessed we decided to get serious and complete it well. We filmed at one of my group mate's hall room and it was really enjoyable for all of us. (Just take note that this group project segment may change for future semesters because in the previous semester, the previous batch was required to write a detective story instead of acting it out.)
Final Written Paper
We were required to write an individual literary analysis that compares at least one western detective story with at least one Chinese detective story. Well, it is kinda my first time writing such a paper but it wasn't too bad because the lecturer gave sample analysis for us to reference. I guess I started early too so I was able to complete it on time.
Final Exam
As for the final exam, we were given 2 hours to write 2 essays (aka 2 literary analysis). Surprisingly, I was able to complete on time. Well, this is the important part. It is open book. Which means... you can bring in the notes that you have typed out. So, I would highly recommend typing out your own summary/character analysis of the readings as it would make the paper way way easier. Plus, the lecturer also gave us access to past year papers so we could kinda predict the type of questions that would come out for the finals as well.
Expected Grade: B
Final Grade: A
Final Comments
To me, I felt I did really well for the preparation notes for my finals and and spent quite a bit of time on the final written paper as well. All this, I guess, helped me to get the most surprising A this semester.
Stay tuned for more updates.
- Alan
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