Chapter 8 of our new book for A-level teachers, both trainees and existing practitioners, is titled Teaching the literature essay. In this chapter we go into considerable detail about how to develop students' knowledge, powers of critical analysis and essay writing skill, using six popular texts as samples. The texts chosen are No et moi, L’Étranger, Der Vorleser, Der Besuch des alten Dame, La casa de Bernada Alba and Como agua para chocolate. The idea is, however, that these serve as examples for any text from the exam board specifications.
In the chapter we look at how to plan the teaching, classrooom activities and how to write about character, thematic content and style. We put forward ways to help students write complex critical and anlaytical sentences and paragraphs, leading up to examples of whole essays. The key is to structure and scaffold the process, rather than dive into essay writing from the outset.
To answer the question "What can I do in class when teaching literature?" we provide, early in the chapter, a pretty comprehensive list of the range of activities a teacher and students can do in class when studying a novel or play. I have copied that list into this post. See which ones you might do already and enjoy the satisfaction of knowing that you do others not mentioned!
Classroom activities
Reading a literary text is a linguistic, aesthetic and academic exercise. If classroom tasks capture students’ reactions and enthusiasm, the process is more enjoyable for everyone. Activities might proceed from the mundane (establishing factual knowledge, rehearsing new vocabulary) to the creative (recounting an event from a character’s point of view, creating an imaginary dialogue). The ‘bread and butter’ classroom activity is dialogue through question and answer with the teacher but see below for some of the many activities which can be done. Build a repertoire of your favourite tasks.
- Teacher or students read aloud. Avoid filling too
much classroom time with reading around the class. Some key extracts
benefit from reading aloud before intensive language activities.
- Play a recording of extracts of the text read by
the author (occasionally available online) or a Foreign Language
Assistant, if you have one.
- Ask questions about the extract. Include cold
call questions to keep everyone involved.
- Answer questions in English (for harder aspects
where lack of proficiency may hinder discussion of complex issues).
- Do jigsaw reading (put jumbled sections of an
extract into the correct order).
- Answer multi-choice questions (oral or written).
- Watch videos of interviews with the author/playwright
if available on YouTube or elsewhere. This can be treated as a listening
comprehension task with appropriate questions and exercises.
- Use online text manipulation software to work on
individual passages. The site textivities.com is a suitable
platform for this.
- Write an obituary of a character.
- ‘Light and shade ping pong’ where pairs
of students or teams take turns to say something positive or negative
about a character (from the Raithby and Taylor book Teaching Literature in the A-Level Modern Languages Classroom).
- Write a diary extract from the point of view of a
character.
- Do tasks along the lines: ‘Who would have
said….?’
- Complete sentence starters.
- ‘Explore themes’. Place large sheets of
paper around the room. Students write relevant evidence from the text on
each sheet. These are then handed out to individuals, pairs or groups who
then expand on the information already written (from Raithby and
Taylor).
- Do individual online research into the author/playwright
for a presentation.
- Go through model essays from exam board sites,
other students or written by the teacher.
- Students design a worksheet as if they were the
teacher.
- Give students an oral quiz in the target language on key elements from an extract.
- Ask students to identify passages they felt were ambiguous or difficult to understand. It is useful to have a translation on hand to see what the translator thought!
- Ask students to summarise orally the contents of a section they have prepared.
- Students compare and contrast in pairs what they have learned about characters before the teacher adds further information to complete notes.
- Students practise orally repurposing a summary of a piece of text, using complex sentence constructions of about 30 words per sentence. Practise the constructions week by week, recycling them over the course of the term.
- Take a sample essay question and build a paragraph together orally once students have been familiarised with a range of complex constructions.
- Discuss how a particular stylistic device has been used to mirror the writer’s key message. This may be an example of where it makes sense to rehearse the discussion in English first, before reverting to the target language.
Extension activities
These might be reserved for particularly high-achieving groups.
- A ‘hot seat’ activity where a student takes the role of a protagonist and defends their actions. This may help them really get into the shoes of the character.
- Students act out dialogue or imagine and act out one where it is not explicitly given. Give stage directions using adverbs – ‘more seriously’ etc.
- Listen to a professional reading of the text, pausing it periodically to ask what happens next.
- Read extracts from the writer’s biography and discuss its potential influence on their writing.
- Encourage students to listen to reviews or analyses of the book on YouTube, target language radio stations, podcasts and to report back.
- Students produce a timeline of who appears in which chapter or scene and the turning points or themes which occur.
- Students produce large mind map of key interlinking themes as a prelude to non-linear planning for the essay.
- To prepare students for the Individual Research Project, ask them to present orally for two to four minutes on a chosen theme or character using information from their file.
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