Madelaine's R/R

Hi everyone,
If you're interested, here are my notes from the class today.
:)


Literature as Content for ESL/EFL
Sandra Lee Mckay
For LLED 315-Madelaine Hill
READER RESPONSE

McKay states on page 319 that using literature in the ESL classroom provides three benefits:
“Literature demonstrates for learners the importance of form in achieving specific communities goals”
“Using literature as content in the L2 classrooms provides an ideal basis for integrating the four skills”.
“Literary texts are valuable in raising students’ and teachers’ cross-cultural awareness”.
WHY: In literature “what” and “how” are not distinct. In other words, “every writer has available a variety of choices for conveying a message…making them difficult to paraphrase..this provides an ideal context for demonstrating the importance of form in language learning and language use”. Use example of how when others relay a story, the people listening will each recall its points in different ways ( the cashier in the supermarket took the can of soup, and rolled it over the scanner…everyone may convey this message differently when you ask what she did with the can of soup).
McKay explains on page 320, that there are two different ways of reading texts:
Efferent (from the Latin: to carry away) Reading: where the reader focuses on the message of the text.
Aesthetic: where “the reader is primarily concerned with what happens during the reading process” .
Argument: She wonders if stylistics (analyzing a literary work) takes away from the aesthetic enjoyment of reading a book…what do you think class?
McKay feels that language analysis can be “productively used in the L2 classrooms to enhance student’s enjoyment in reading literature and to develop their awareness of language” (321).
Methodology:
“In order to promote aesthetic reading, it is important to begin by having students read and enjoy the stories” (the stories should be easy enough to read so that they can enjoy them)
Begin by asking students what they liked about the story.
Apply “practical stylistics” where students are “encouraged to express individual interpretations, and refer these interpretations back to the text” (322).
Characterization:
Describing characters in the story using adjectives,
Drawing pictures of how they envision the characters (if no pictures are supplied by text)
Describing each character in a short paragraph
Comparing each character with someone they know
Completing a chart about each character (web chart) which can lead into an examination of the text.
5. Point of View: McKay explains on pages 323-326 that there are three types of viewpoints, recognized by Fowler as:
Spatio-temporal: sense of time as expressed by the author using flashbacks or the interweaving of stories (“the temporal dimension”) and “the manner in which the author depicts items such as objects, buildings and landscapes”.
You can explore with your students how verb tense effects a story, for example, by examining two different passages that use different verb tenses, and asking the students “which of the two accounts they were actually witnessing” (325).
Ideological: “set of values, or belief system communicated by the language of the text”.
This means to explore the text as a “critical reader” (p.325). This can be done using three main questions: 1. WHY is the topic being written about 2. HOW is the topic being written about 3. WHAT other ways could the topic have been written about.
WHAT VALUES IS THE AUTHOR EXPRESSING THROUGH HIS/HER WRITING?
Psychological: “who is presented as the observer of the events of a narrative, the author or a participating character?”
How does voice (such as first person point of view) affect the way that the characters are developed? By looking at two different view points in two different stories, you can compare and contrast as a class. Start the lesson by writing out what first person point of view is, and words that are used to describe that viewpoint.


6. Using Literary Texts to Integrate the Four Skills:
Reading: reading literature teaches students to closely examine a text, and encourage reading skills in English through enjoyment.
Listening: reading aloud helps foster “global listening skills” (326) exposing them to a variety of dialects and voice qualities (the teacher can read aloud, or you can use tapes/cd’s etc).
Speaking: students speak about the text, and practice reading aloud.
Cultural Awareness.

SOME BOOKS and SOME IDEAS (go through the books from LERC) then hand them out.
SOME THOUGHTS FOR DISCUSSION:
Can anyone think of any disadvantages to using literature in the ESL classroom?
How might those problems be rectified?
How might this benefit other classes (besides English) in school that the students have?