CLASS MINUTES

Literatura Anglófona II DATE: 29/05/2020

Play: The Merchant of Venice

Author: William Shakespeare

Presented by Carolina del Rio

Camila Molina

Carlos Pulido

Sebastian Aguilera

Submitted by Karen Nataly Garavito Martín

In this class minute, I will present my personal comment on the

presentation of William Shakespeare's play: The merchant of Venice,
presented by my classmates. First of all, I will mention the aspects to highlight
in their presentation, and then I will give my opinion about some aspects
which could have been better in this work.

The first element I would like to highlight is the way in which my

classmates made the summary of this play, since they used some important
fragments of the film as resources and made their own narration, which gave
dynamism to the presentation. Thus, the way they told the plot was an element
that I really liked. Secondly, the portrayal of the characters is another point to
highlight, because their proposal to personify the main characters of the play
was very creative. Therefore, they not only caught our attention, but also
allowed us to get closer to the play and understand it in a better way. Hence,
they made an adequate personification and underlined the most characteristic
elements of each character. Finally, the last element that I would like to
mention is the literary analysis of the play, specifically the part regarding the
role of women. They focused not only on the main female figure in the play,
Portia, but also on Nerissa and Jessica (also important figures in this play). In
this way, they made a contrast between all of them. In my opinion the analysis
was appropriate, because they related it to the contextualization that they had
already given us; thus, they talked about the role of women not only in "the
merchant of Venice", but also in the era in which it was written, that is during
the reign of Elizabeth I. For this reason, I think the analysis was clear, deep,
and sufficiently grounded. They were based not only on their opinions but also
on quotes from the play and fragments from the film which reflect the
importance and influence of women.

On the other hand, I will mention some aspects I think could have been
better in this presentation. First, it is the video itself, because in some parts,
the quality of the video and audio made it impossible to understand the
analysis they were doing. Second, I think that the participation of the members
of this group was not equitable. From my point of view, I could say that some
of my classmates spoke more than others, thus there was no organization
between them. Finally, I am going to focus on the organization of the game.
Even if it was a great idea and a great strategy which they implemented
(asking questions through Kahoot to integrate the other students), I think they
should have looked for another strategy that would reinforce the activity;
because when they asked no one answered, and time was wasted. Therefore,
there was a lack of organization.