Rita Soledad Fernandez

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

understanding. I eventually agreed on the episode described above because the

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

media exposure to boss-employee dynamics, a woman rushing to work, zombies,

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

emotions made in an American film.

Considering that I do not speak any Chinese at all, I was impressed by my ability

to create a pretty detailed overview of the program. I wonder if my ability to build

context and understanding based on visual cues is a result of growing up in a bilingual

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

Spanish translation forced me to develop ways to communicate effectively using

gestures and facial expressions and therefore I do not consider spoken words

necessary to communicate.