Compiled Modules (Year 1 & 2)

First posted on: 30 December 2015

For those who want to see a detailed overview & review of the modules I have taken during my first 2 years at NUS.

AY 13/14 Yr 1 Sem 1

Cleared basket: GL1101E (Humanities) | SE1101E (Asian Studies) | SC1101E (Social Sciences) | EC1101E (Major requirement)

Arts GEM requirement: GEK1000

GL1101E: Global Issues

Lecture (2h) every week (not webcasted); Tutorials (1.5h) odd/even week

Individual Assessment: Tutorial participation & attendance. Two journal entries. Term paper.

Group Presentation & Paper: Presentation and group paper on a TNC of your choice

No midterms. Finals (short-answer and essay)

Lecturer: Dr Kim

I felt that lectures were interesting, and lecture notes were kept to a minimal i.e you needed to take notes during her lectures. Dr Kim incorporates her personal anecdotes into lectures and gives it a more personal touch in a way. I still remember her sharing on the introduction and reception of Macdonalds in South Korea when she was a teenager and such stories make lectures less mundane. The module focused quite a bit on Transnational Corporations, which made me think a lot about their influences and also impacts on society (environmental etc). Of all the introductory modules I've taken, I can say that this module really broadened my perspective towards many issues and made me analyse and rethink certain pre-existing ideas I had.

The journal entries required research on global issues which allowed me to acquire a deeper understanding towards certain global issues that I was passionate about. The lecturer and tutor were also very helpful as they were willing to provide feedback and suggestions to improve the second journal entry and also the group paper. The readings for this module were particularly heavy - I felt that it was the heaviest amongst all the modules I had taken in this semester. Granted, certain readings were really good and provided new insights and arguments towards topics I were both familiar and unfamiliar with. However, it was quite heavy and hard to remember many of them if you try to cram them at the last minute. I didn't know that the essay questions during the finals would test on selected readings (you couldn't choose the questions) - so I was unable to construct a solid, coherent argument and answer the question well.

Overall, while the module is more heavy in terms of readings as well as assessments, I recommend it to anyone who wants to challenge themselves and broaden their knowledge on global issues.

SC1101E: Making Sense of Society

Lecture (2h) every week (I think it was webcasted); Tutorials (1.5h) odd/even week

Individual Assessment: Tutorial participation & attendance. One individual paper on a newspaper article.

Midterms (essay). Finals (essay).

Lecturers: Dr Tan Ern Ser and Saroja

This module is relatively lighter compared to GL1101e. Readings were not as heavy as GL1101e either. Examining society using the 'sociological imagination' didn't come very naturally to me. There were different theories (i.e Marx, Weber) that were taught and applied to different areas of interest, such as Family, Culture, Deviance, Power, Religion. Some topics were easier to understand from the sociological point of view, while others were more difficult. It was interesting, nonetheless, to study theories that were formulated to explain how societies (and humans) functioned. Saroja is quite interesting and funny; she has a good sense of humor and the entire LT can be cracking up from laughter from time to time. Dr Tan's lectures were more serious.

EC1101E: Introduction to Economic Analysis

Lecture (2h) every week; Tutorials (1h) every week

Midterms (MCQ). Finals.

Lecturers: Ong Ee Cheng (Microecons), Ho Kong Weng (Macroecons)

As a H1 economics student, the content was manageable. There were definitely gaps that had to be filled and learnt, but it was relatively okay. The microecons lecturer was pretty good in my opinion as I found her explanations to be quite clear. Macroecons was harder than microecons for me, as I had to learn more things that were not taught under H1 econs. The bell curve was pretty steep.

* Prof Ho is no longer lecturing at NUS

SE1101E: Southeast Asia: A Changing Region

Lecture (2h) every week (not webcasted); Tutorials (2h) even/odd week

Group project: Group essay, group presentation during tutorial

Midterms (essay). Finals (essay)

Lecturers: Professor Irving Johnson

This was one of my favourite modules as a freshmen. Professor Johnson conducts his lectures in an interesting manner that keeps me awake. Topics that were taught covered the history of SEA (briefly) and then it went on to address issues such as Power, Gender & Sexuality, Food, Migration, Religion etc. I learnt more about how these issues developed and came about in different areas of Southeast Asia. It was quite eye-opening in a sense, especially the Gender lecture on how certain parts of Southeast Asia were already open to other genders even before colonisation (iirc).

I also enjoyed the tutorials. The atmosphere was pretty chill - we watched quite a number of videos and had interesting discussions. Overall, it was quite a slack module compared to SC1101e and GL1101e. I still remember one finals question was for students to imagine themselves as a migrant worker in Southeast Asia and to write something along the lines of a journal (incorporating whatever issues we had learnt).

GEK1000/EN1101e: An Introduction to Literary Studies

Lecture (2h) every week ; Tutorials (1h) every week

Individual assignment: Essay on one of the books

Midterms (essay). Finals (essay)

Lecturer: Dr Barnard Turner

Warning: Each semester is taught by different lecturers, so the books covered will be completely different. However, I think Dr Turner usually takes the first semester and the books will be the same under him. (I feel that the books in the first semester are more interesting!)

These were the books that were taught under Dr Turner: Northanger Abbey, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Volpone, Raisin in the Sun (play). Among the four books, Volpone was the hardest to understand, because there were many underlying knowledge that the playwright assumed the audience to have. If you thought that Shakespeare was hard (actually his plays were already tailored to ensure that audiences from all classes understood his plays), Volpone takes things to a whole new level. I struggled to understand Volpone, but once you overcome the steep learning curve, it's actually not as bad as it seems. I liked Raisin in the Sun the most, followed by Breakfast at Tiffany's, then Northanger Abbey and Volpone. Raisin in the Sun is interesting as it is a Black play that touches on many issues, such as racism in the U.S as well as the American Dream during that period of time. The ending was somewhat ambiguous, and gives audiences the room to ponder and grapple with the lingering issues afterwards.

The lecture pace was pretty fast; I think one lecture was used to cover one book and we moved on to the next text the following week. The first few lectures were dedicated to poetry and prose, going through iambic pentameter etc. Speaking of lecture pace, it is definitely much faster compared to JC standards. In JC, we had about 1.5 years to cover both poetry and 4 books but everything is covered in 13 weeks....so it is crucial to practice good time management and ensure a consistent studying pace.

AY 13/14 Yr 1 Sem 2

Compulsory Major modules: EC2101, EC2102, EC2303

Breadth: SE2210

Unrestricted Elective: LSM1301

EC2101: Microeconomic Analysis I

Lecture (2h) every week (webcasted); tutorial (1h) every week

Individual assignment: Graded problem sets

Midterms. Finals.

Lecturer: Zhang Yang

Prof Zhang is a good lecturer. Her lecture slides are clear and rather easy to understand, with many examples to help with the understanding of the course material. She tends to speak rather quickly though. Her questions can be rather tricky, so it is very important to minimise any careless mistakes for assignments and exams.

Ec2102: Macroeconomic Analysis II

Lecture (2h) every week (not webcasted); tutorial (1h) every week

Midterms. Finals.

Lecturer: Ho Kong Weng (*no longer lecturing at NUS)

Macroeconomics is somehow always harder for me to understand. We are taught the classical and neoclassical models used for macroeconomic analysis. Basically, you can't run away from graphs; neither can you run away from weird symbols and equations. Tutorials were quite challenging and quite an amount of time needs to be spent to think and understand what was being asked.

Ec2303: Foundations for Econometrics

Lecture (2h) every week; tutorial (1h) every week

Graded Problem Sets (iirc). Midterms. Finals. (Our semester had individual tutorial presentations where we had to come up with questions from newspaper articles).

Lecturer: Emily Beam

Professor Beam is quite an enthusiastic lecturer. She tries to keep her lectures interesting and she explains well. However, there have been instances where she was careless/made some mistakes on the lecture slides that had to be edited. The content taught nearer to the end of the semester was quite difficult and could be confusing at times. Her midterm and final papers were not easy, and can be quite tricky.

SE2210: Popular Culture in Southeast Asia

Lecture (2h) every week; tutorial (1.5h) even/odd week

Assessment: 2 individual essays

Group project: Film a video on anything related to course material, it would be good to make linkages to the readings for the module

No midterms. Finals (essay)

This is one of the modules with a lighter workload overall. The lecture topics covered were quite interesting, one of the lectures covered the global Kpop phenomenon. Readings were also manageable. However, the group video was the only component that was heavy. It was very time-consuming to film the video, and edit it later on. I will never take a module that involves any filming of video ever again because it just eats up too much time. I only received an average grade for both my individual essays because I didn't really get what the lecturer really wanted. Finals was manageable, but I felt that it was hard for me to do well.

LSM1301: General Biology

Lecture (2h) every week (not webcasted); Lab (2h) once every two weeks

Assessment: Lab assignments (x5) (there may not be lab sessions for AY15/16), open book MCQ finals

Lecturers: Two lecturers, one of them was Professor Wu Jin Lu

This is one of my favourite modules that I have taken. The lecturers who taught the module then (I don’t think the same profs teach the module anymore) were very passionate and made the lectures interesting. This was especially so for the lecturer who took the first half of the lessons, he never failed to bring stuff to class so that it would enhance our learning. I still vividly remember that one lecture when he actually brought in leaves of varying shapes and sizes – one leaf was so ginormous I couldn’t believe he actually managed to get it to class. Another lecture I remember is the time when he brought many stuffed toys to help illustrate the content taught. The way lectures were conducted were starkly different from the normal arts module I was usually accustomed to – it was entirely new experience that I would never forget.

The second lecturer also brought in things to help facilitate our learning. He also brought in a microscope so that he could show the class how a piece of wood looked like when examined under a microscope and I think he also brought some materials to demonstrate a chemical reaction in class.

Content-wise, a person like me who has not touched biology since lower secondary – found it to be manageable. Granted, there will be instances where more time needs to be devoted to understanding certain concepts, but my interest for biology kept me going and I enjoyed taking this module. Lab sessions were also pretty fun, and usually don’t require any crazy experiments. The first lab experiment was just learning how to use a microscope to examine and measure cells from a leaf specimen. Biology labs reminded me of my secondary school lab days where learning was more fun, and less stressful as compared to JC lab days. Unfortunately, the labs I took did not have kimchi-making, but the experiments were fun nonetheless. The last experiment was DNA extraction, which was really cool too. Finals were MCQ and open-book.

AY 14/15 Yr 2 Sem 1

Compulsory Major modules: EC2104, EC3303

Major Elective: EC2374

Science GEM requirement: GEK1519

Breadth: GEK2900

EC2104: Quantitative Methods for Economic Analysis

Lecture (2h) every week; Tutorial (1h) every week

Assessment: Midterms (MCQ). Finals (MCQ).

Lecturer: Roy Chen

Due to bad planning, I took this module very late, and it is advisable to clear this during Year 1 because they changed the level 3000 pre-requisites to include EC2104. Roy Chen has a similar teaching methodology as Zhang Yang where he provides numerous examples to help the class understand how to apply the various concepts covered in lecture. His explanations are pretty clear too. I'm not sure whether he will still be lecturing this module, but I know that there are other lecturers who will take this module in different semesters. But if you happen to find that he is teaching this module, I'll recommend you to take it under him. It is possible to score well for this module with sufficient practice from past year papers and good understanding of concepts.

EC3303: Econometrics I

Lecture (2h) every week (webcasted); Tutorial (1.5h) even/odd week

Assessment: Two group assignments (which included STATA). Midterms. Finals.

Lecturer: Denis Tkachenko

This is one of the hardest compulsory modules to be cleared. Although the course content covered isn't a lot (first half of the textbook), the teaching pace can be considered relatively slower as compared to other economics modules. There are theorems to understand and quite a number of proving to do in this module. The learning curve is really steep initially, but over time, I think it gets slightly better. The STATA questions of the assignments were quite hard. The second assignment was really challenging and my group spent around 2-3 days going to the computer lab to attempt to understand and solve the questions. Exams were quite hard for me.

Ec2374: Economy of Modern China I

Lecture (2h) every week (webcasted); Tutorial (1h) every week

Assessment: Two individual assignments. One tutorial presentation on a newspaper article. No midterms. Open-book Finals (essay).

Lecturer: Song Chang Cheng

This is a relatively light module (qualitative) in terms of assessment, but the lecture content is quite heavy. Although it is the economy of modern China, the first half of the lecture went through the history of China's economy to understand the current existing policies and problems such as the hukou system and governance system in rural and urban areas. The later lecture covered the financial system of China - housing market, stock market etc which I felt were quite interesting and relevant knowledge that I would not have understood without the historical context of the country. The readings mostly came from the textbook.

The individual assignments - the first one was slightly challenging as we had to obtain data on China's economy to plot the different components of the economy (investments etc). The data didn't really add up to a 100% and the numbers varied across me and my friends. The second assignment was short answer questions and essay, so it was manageable. Finals were quite difficult. However, if you put in the effort to study the lecture material and understand the content, I believe it is possible to get a good grade.

*Another lecturer is now taking this module. Based on my friends' experiences taking it in 15/16 Sem 1, the module is now much tougher and more time-consuming. There were more readings and tutorials were debates.

GEM2900 – Understanding Uncertainty & Statistical Thinking

Two 2h lectures per week (webcasted); no tutorials

Assessment: Individual assignments and online quizzes

Lecturers: David Chew & Nott, David John

I’m not sure whether this module will continue to be offered in future, looking at how it hasn’t been offered for AY2015/2016. The content covered is more towards the statistical components that was taught in JC, especially for things like binomial/poisson/normal distribution (minus the GC calculator part). The probability part covers more, there are more rules to learn and is more challenging (at least for me). There were some assignments that had to be completed and submitted on ivle, and I think there were also random quizzes to fill out as well. Finals constituted a significant component (60-70%), which was pretty scary honestly, and I wasn’t really able to complete the paper. There is definitely greater competition as Math majors can take this module to clear their GEM and the content would most probably be relatively easy for them to understand. I S/U-ed this module in the end, but I recommend taking it during a semester with a heavy workload.

AY 14/15 Yr 2 Sem 2

Compulsory Major modules: EC3101, EC3102 (Although it was not recommended to take them together, I felt that it was okay to do so)

Major Elective: EC3332

Unrestricted Electives: GEK1527, GEK2506

GEK1527: Genes and Society

Two 2h lectures per week (webcasted); no tutorials

Assessment: 2x individual assignments, brochure

Closed book Finals (MCQ)

Lecturer: Professor Lam Siew Hong

I continued to take another biology-related module due to my interest and also to build on whatever I had learned from LSM1301 earlier. The lecturer was really good, he was very passionate, and did his best to explain the concepts so that everyone could understand. He is also very approachable and always willing to answer questions from students. There were definitely some overlaps between LSM1301 and GEK1527, but GEK1527 took a step further and covered slightly more depth. I found this module more interesting as topics related to society were covered such as genetically modified foods, cloned animals, the question of modifying genetics for future babies, as well as genetic testing. I also pondered about some of these topics before and it did help answer some of my questions.

There was a brochure assignment to hand up and also written assignments to do, which were rather manageable and weren’t very time-consuming. I found the assignments to be enriching and interesting, so I also learned a lot from completing them.

Finals was MCQ and closed book. It was challenging, as the MCQ options were all plausible. The options were something like (a) option 1 (b) option 1, 2 (c) option 1,2,3 (d) all of the above, so it made me doubt myself sometimes. I guess I can say that the bell curve for this module is steep, but I felt that the take aways from the module outweighed my results.

GEK2506: Drugs and Society

Two 2h lectures per week (webcasted); no tutorials

Assessment: Self-recorded ppt presentation

Midterms (closed book; short answer questions). Finals (open book; MCQ).

Lecturers: Pastorin, Go Mei Lin

The lectures were split into two components. The first 6 weeks were taught by Pastorin, who covered drug abuse. The rest of the lectures were covered by Go Mei Lin, for topics such as the pharmaceutical industry, drug abuse in sports, history of selected medicines etc. The content for this module is more towards the heavy side, and can be quite dry for those who have little interest for the second part of lectures. I felt that there was too much content covered for the second part and the lecture material could be toned down to cover topics in more depth instead of breadth.

Midterms for the module requires quite a bit of memory work, and I don’t think the cohort did well for the midterms. Finals are MCQ (120 questions in 2 hours) but students are allowed to bring in double sided cheatsheet. I think some of the MCQ questions were pretty tricky, but luckily the cheatsheet I prepared was pretty handy for other questions. I think it is possible to score well for the module, you just need to pay lots of attention during lecture and have enough memory space.