Teaching English By Interrelating Writing And Literay Understandingdocx

=== Teaching English by interrelating writing and literay understanding ===

UNIVERSITATEA DIN CRAIOVA

FACULTATEA DE LITERE

LUCRARE METODICO-ȘTIINȚIFICĂ PENTRU OBȚINEREA

GRADULUI DIDACTIC I

Coordonator științific,

conf. univ. dr. ANGHEL FLORENTINA

Candidat,

CEPOI (LĂZĂRESCU) IONELA- ADRIANA

Liceul Teoretic Novaci, jud. Gorj

2014-2016

UNIVERSITATEA DIN CRAIOVA

FACULTATEA DE LITERE

TEACHING ENGLISH BY INTERRELATING

WRITING AND LITERARY UNDERSTANDING

Coordonator științific,

conf. univ. dr. ANGHEL FLORENTINA

Candidat,

CEPOI (LĂZĂRESCU) IONELA- ADRIANA

Liceul Teoretic Novaci, jud. Gorj

2014-2016

ACORD

Subsemnata, Anghel Florentina, Conf. univ. dr. la Universitatea din Craiova, specializarea engleza, sunt de accord cu depunerea lucrării metodico-științifice pentru obținerea gradului didactic I, elaborata de Cepoi (Lăzărescu Ionela-Adriana), profesor la Liceul Teoretic Novaci, localitatea novaci, județul Gorj, cu titlul „Teaching English by Interrelating Writing and Literary Understandin

Profesor coordonator, Data,

Numele și semnătura

conf. univ. dr. ANGHEL FLORENTINA

DECLARAȚIE DE AUTENTICITATE

Subsemnata,CEPOI (LĂZĂRESCU) IONELA-ADRIANA, având funcția didactică de profesor la unitatea școlară Liceul Teoretic Novaci, declar pe propria răspundere că lucrarea cu titlul „Teaching English by Interrelating Writing and Literary Understanding”, având coordonator științific pe dna conf. univ. dr. Florentina Anghel, a fost elaborată personal pe baza studierii bibliografiei de specialitate, a experienței personale și îmi aparține în întregime. De asemenea nu am folosit alte surse decât cele menționate în bibliografie, nu au fost preluate texte, date sau elemente de grafică din alte lucrări, fără a fi citate și fără a fi precizată sursa preluării, inclusiv în cazul în care sursa o reprezintă alte lucrări ale candidatului.

Data: Semnătura,

CONTENTS

Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………………………………2

Chapter I – From Literature to Writing-Literary Texts and their Interpretation………………………………………………………………………………………………………6

Literary Genres………………………………………………………………………………………………………….6

Text Interpretation-Principles of Critical Schools that can be Applied to Literary Texts in School, Focus on form and Content………………………………………………………………………………8

Chapter II – Teaching Successful Writing Starting From Understanding Literary Texts………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….17

2.1 Using Integrating Skills in Teaching English (Reading &Writing)……………………………………………………………………………………………………………17

2.2 Teaching Vocabulary and Grammar through Reading Literature and Writing Activities…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….23

2.3 The Role of the Teacher in Teaching English through Literary Texts and Writing……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….25

2.4 Evaluation……………………………………………………………………………………………………..29

Chapter III – The Importance for Literature for Teaching English………………………………………………………………………………………………………………32

3.1 Ways of using literary text in teaching writing…………………………………………………..40

Research…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….82

Research Theme………………………………………………………………………………………………………82

Research Objectives…………………………………………………………………………………………………82

Research Hypothesis………………………………………………………………………………………………..83

The group of students participating in the research……………………………………………………..83

Methods and techniques…………………………………………………………………………………………..84

Data analyses…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..85

Conclusions……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..95

Ways to use research results……………………………………………………………………………………..95

Conclusions………………………………………………………………………………………………………..96

Bibliography………………………………………………………………………………………………………99

Annexes……………………………………………………………………………………………………………101

INTRODUCTION

When I chose the theme “Teaching English by Interrelating Writing and Literary Understanding”, I only thought of the opportunity to make my students read more in English and especially literary texts.

I am conscious of the fact that this is a really tough task to fulfil, but I am the kind of person who does not abandon such constructive opportunities, and although I know that it seemed to be as hard as moving mountains I considered that even moving a cliff would be the starting point for something greater.

During my activity I have noticed that our students read less and less. They get bored very fast and their patience is more and more reduced, that is why my idea is to try to make my students more aware of the fact that literary texts are more attractive than the other types of texts, and by giving them shorter paragraphs or texts about their main interests, I will succeed in attracting their attention to the fact that reading literature is not as difficult as they consider.

When teaching a foreign language, the use of literature and culture can be seen as a bridge between the target language and its core, that is because they offer students the opportunity to interact with the target language, in the sense that they present the world in a contextualized situation and open the door to the perception that there is a complex relationship between grammar and the so-called fictional texts, because by using authentic texts, literature opens the door to a wider look on the culture.

“Literature can be regarded as a rich source of ‘authentic material’ – taking into account the sense defined by Joan Collie and Stephen Slater – because it conveys two features in the written text: one is ‘language in use’, that is the employment of linguistics by those who have mastered it into a fashion intended for native speakers; the second is an aesthetic representation of the spoken language which is meant to recover or represent language within a certain cultural context.” (Jose Hernandez Riwes Cruz, 2010, p.123)

Taking into account all these ideas, I can say that the use of literature while teaching a foreign language is more useful than using textbooks, because literature has the power to enrich a language providing elements and perspectives through which students establish an intimate connection with the target language and they cease to consider the texts found in the textbooks as a harsh and cold code, those functional texts which are supposed to show only particular, singular or segmental things which lack the substance given by an authentic literary text.

“Studying literature helps students learn to understand themselves and the world around them. They learn to read more critically – not just literature but the media, social structures, their own experience.” (Sherry Lee Linkon, 2002, p. x)

“The study of literature provides the opportunity to see the world through someone else’s eyes and, in the process understand ourselves better. The complexity and nuance of literary language, together with the narratives and perspectives offered by literature, help us understand how to “read” the world around us and help us understand our own experiences and motivations.” (Sherry Lee Linkon, 2002, p.9)

My intention is to give diversity to the classroom procedures by using literary texts. My hope in this way is to make the teaching of a foreign language more attractive by stimulating students’ pleasure to read and by encouraging their response to the activities which use authentic materials that I consider to be more attractive and in the same time more enriching.

One of the first aims of my work is to raise students’ interest by using attractive activities. A text could be explored in numerous ways and any approach used too much during classroom activities can become tedious. Activities such as role play, creative writing, improvisations, discussions, letters, and other student centred activities that we use successfully during our classes to make them more attractive can be used with the same purpose when we teach literature. Many enjoyable student-centred activities are important when working with students who are not very keen to read and who may not yet have developed a wish to read literature in another language on their own initiative. Moreover, using a great variety of activities gives the teacher the opportunity to figure out students’ weaknesses in other skills, such as speaking or listening.

The second aim of this work is to offer the sufficient quantity of printed page to the students. By using activities integrating language and literature we have considered the notion that learning is promoted by involving many of the students’ faculties. The printed text on the page can look fairly cold, appealing to part of the reader’s visual sense, especially with poetry, and to his/her intellect. The words of that printed text can build an entirely new world in the imagination of the reader, a world of emotion and colour. Teachers generally try to exploit the students’ emotional dimension that is part of literature, since language is not neutral in literary texts.

The next aim of this work is to use the target language while teaching using literary texts. A fashionable method during the classes is to use the target language with the activities chosen, because this is a good opportunity to accustom our students to the universe of the language they are learning. And for many students this could be the only chance to interact with the language they are learning, because they lack the material possibility to travel in the areas where they could use what they have learned at school. The main difficulty with this approach is that some learners may not yet possess the vocabulary and structure to enable them to respond in the target language, but the teacher must have the ability to deal with such situation and if there is the case the mother tongue can be used.

The last but not the least aim of my work is to demonstrate the fact that language and literature can work together. The most important aim, of our approach to teaching English by interrelating writing and literary understanding, is to let the student derive the benefits of learning a foreign language from literary texts which are richer in meaning and from which they can improve their communicative abilities. If the teacher has the ability to make a balanced selection of literary text and of motivating and stimulating activities, then he/she offers the students the chance to realise the fact that they can learn a foreign language easier and more entertaining.

My work is structured into an introduction, three chapters, the research and the conclusions. In the introduction I explain why I have chosen this theme, I write about the importance of literature and writing for teaching languages and I present the aims of my work.

The 1st chapter’s name is “From literature to writing”. All along this chapter I write some general theoretical aspects of my work. The chapter has two parts: the first part deals with the literary texts and their interpretation – where I try to present some theoretical aspects of the literary texts which are considered to be more useful to teaching a foreign language than the functional texts which are drier in meaning, the second part is about writing starting from literary texts – where I try to explain how attractive can become a class if the teacher uses literary texts in planning the activities.

The 2nd chapter is “Teaching successful writing starting from understanding literary texts”. This chapter is structured into four sub-chapters: the first one is about using integrated skills in teaching English, the second one is about teaching vocabulary and grammar through reading literature and writing activities, the third part talks about the role of the teacher in teaching English through literary texts and writing, and the last part of the chapter deals with the evaluation methods.

The 3rd chapter, “The importance of literature for teaching English”, has two sub-chapters: the first one deals with the potential of literature for teaching vocabulary, grammar and developing the skills, the second part presents ways of using literary texts in teaching writing.

The Research of this work tries to demonstrate the fact that students work better with literary texts and they are more interested in working out literary texts despite functional texts which are scarce in meaning.

By using literary texts, students’ skills for writing in English could be improved, therefore practical writing activities (descriptions, the plot, the style, and the theme) together with creative writing activities work well together in developing the ability of writing in a foreign language.

Chapter I

FROM LITERATURE TO WRITING-LITERARY TEXTS AND THEIR INTERPRETATION

1.1 LITERARY GENRES

A literary genre is a category of literary composition, which can be determined by: literary techniques, tone, content, length, and it can be in the form of prose or poetry, being defined by the general cultural movement of the period in which it was composed. The main literary genres are: drama, epic, lyric. But there are situations when the features and techniques are overlapping with those of another genre, which can be seen, for instance, in dramatic poems or poetic prose.

Reading is fundamental to function in today social activities. Reading implies mutual influence: readers provide literary texts with meaning(s) through their personal interpretations; the texts contribute to the readers’ formation and information. “Rather than extracting meaning from the text, the process is just the reverse: readers bring meaning to the text in the form of expectations and test these expectations through reading “. (Frank Smith, 1971, p.32) Reading is also important because it develops the mind and it helps us discover new and useful things, but of an utmost importance is to read literary texts. The activity of reading literature involves the processes of reading, thinking, discussing and writing; its practical value lies in its tendency to stimulate these activities and improve the student’s ability to perform them. Reading increases our vocabulary and the general speaking sensibility. In the classroom, the teacher can lead the student to think critically about what has been read, these activities having the role to shape the skills of reading and speaking and increase the student’s ability to express orally.

The study of literary texts can be seen as a practical discipline which stimulates students desire to organize thoughts in writing. Reading literary texts increases knowledge in an active way therefore students become more aware of cultural values, history, sociology or psychology. Literary study expands our capacity to sympathize with other people, enhances our capacity to perceive human complexity and enlarges our intellectual horizons.

Reading and writing are undoubtedly the most valuable skills one can acquire, they make it much easier for people to communicate their feelings or their thoughts, express themselves in different situations and expand their horizons.

This is a sharp distinction between instruction and learning. At school we often teach reading as pronouncing correctly rather than finding meaning. And therefore meaning should be grasped before the appropriate sounds can be produced. For researchers writing is an act of meaning – making, whereby the writer transforms his or her thoughts into text whereas reading is the interpretative act whereby readers test their expectations for the author’s meaning in terms of actualities of text.

“Instruction cannot be taken out from the activity of teaching/learning; there must be a starting point in everything. Theory might encourage teachers and students to reconsider how textual pleasures are activated, what kinds of pleasures there might be, how these relate to genres – how texts may address subjects in discourse, how they may engage identifications, how they may address the “symbolic order” and the subject’s position within it.” (Nick Peim, 2003, p.78)

Interpretation is a complex process having as main actors the social context and the reader. The context is considered neutral whereas the reader is a free and innocent individual, who analyzes a text only after filtering it through a set of beliefs about the world implied in the process of interpretation. “The basic of interpretation in explicit reference to language means that, if fellow travellers in this community are so predisposed, they can argue against the interpretation and offer their own. The more explicit the analysis offered, the more retrievable it is and the more reasoned disagreement is facilitated. An interpretive community of readers can choose to prefer an interpretation according to how persuasive it is. Such interpretive and analytical procedures do not claim undue authority, cannot be anything other than provisional and are bound in more sense than one to the nature of the description and analysis employed. They represent no more than a starting point for further exploration.” (Ronald Carter, 1991, p. 120)

1.2 TEXT INTERPRETATION – PRINCIPLES OF CRITICAL SCHOOLS THAT CAN BE APPLIED TO LITARARY TEXTS IN SCHOOL, FOCUS ON FORM AND CONTENT

Literary criticism is a natural human response to literature and this is not something else but spoken or written discourses about literature having as purpose to make us better understand a literary work. It provides the readers with an interpretation of the literary text meant to make them better understand it and also to develop their imagination and critical thinking. Any analysis of a literary text implies the development of vocabulary and a better knowledge of grammar rules.

A literary text is opened to different interpretations according to time, place, education or the abilities of the person who reads the text. It is an instrument used to form the individual linguistically, moral, creative or critical. It informs the individual about some cultural or social aspects, which are specific to a certain place or time. There are numerous critical approaches to literature but I shall try to write about five of them: Formalist Criticism, Biographical Criticism, Historical Criticism, Psychological criticism, Deconstructionist Criticism. The idea of this presentation is to show the fact that the literary text offers a great deal of opportunities which can be explored in teaching a foreign language.

Formalist Criticism focuses on form/language and the way in which language is used in literary texts. According to Formalist Criticism, literature is a unique form of human knowledge that needs to be examined on its own terms. A formalist considers that a text can be understood only by reference to its literary features. These features are not examined in isolation but we have to take into account the way in which the artistic elements work together to create the reader’s experience.

A key method that formalists use to explore the intense relationships within a text is close reading, a careful step-by-step analysis and explication of a text.  The purpose of close reading is to understand how various elements in a literary text work together to shape its effects on the reader. Since formalists believe that the various stylistic and thematic elements of a literary work influence each other, these critics insist that form and content cannot be meaningfully separated. The complete interdependence of form and content is what makes a text literary. When we extract a work’s theme or paraphrase its meaning, we destroy the aesthetic experience of the work

The formalist critic knows as well as anyone that poems and plays and novels are written by men—that they do not somehow happen—and that they are written as expressions of particular personalities and are written from all sorts of motives—for money, from a desire to express oneself, for the sake of a cause, etc. Texts are recreated in the minds of readers, who vary enormously in their capabilities, their interests, their prejudices, and their ideas. Formalism examines the literary aspects of the work, emphasizing the internal aspects and not what can influence the text: the biographical component or the historical information, which are not taken into account. What is of utmost importance is the form of the text as a whole: characters, setting, point of view, style; analysed separately then they are considered as a whole.

Biographical Criticism begins with the simple idea that literature can be written by any person having minimum of instruction towards this ability and that understanding the author’s life can help readers understand the work better. Anyone who reads the biography of a writer quickly sees how much an author’s experience shapes and influences—both directly and indirectly—what he or she creates. Reading a biography will also change (and usually deepen) our perception of the work. Sometimes even knowing a single important fact illuminates our reading of a poem or story. A formalist critic might complain that we would also have noticed those things through careful textual analysis, but biographical information offers the practical assistance for subtle but important meanings in the texts. Though many literary theorists have put biographical criticism on philosophical grounds, the biographical approach to literature has never disappeared because of its obvious practical advantage in illuminating literary texts.

It may be helpful here to make a distinction between biography and biographical criticism. Biography is, strictly speaking, a branch of history; it provides a written account of a person’s life. To establish and interpret the facts of a poet’s life, for instance, a biographer would use all the available information—not just personal documents like letters and diaries, but also the texts for the possible light they might shed on the subject’s life. A biographical critic, however, is not concerned with recreating the evidence of an author’s life. Biographical criticism focuses on explicating the literary work by using the information offered by the knowledge of the author’s life. A reader, however, must use biographical interpretations precautious, because writers are notorious for revising or hiding the facts of their own lives; they often omit or offer other shades of embarrassments and invent accomplishments while changing the details of real situations to improve their literary impact.

Historical Criticism seeks to understand a literary work by investigating the social, cultural, and intellectual context that produced it—a context that necessarily includes the artist’s biography and place. The historical and social circumstances of the period the work was written are very important to help the reader understand the text, but we must not leave apart the author’s life, because these circumstances are very important to the meaning of the work. This type of criticism is less concerned with explaining a work’s literary meaning for today’s readers than with helping us understand the work by recreating, as nearly as possible, the exact meaning and impact it had on its original audience. A historical reading of a literary work begins by exploring the possible ways in which the meaning of the text has changed over time. Reading ancient literature, no one doubts the value of historical criticism, but it is rather difficult today to comprehend older text without a scholar’s help, because the cultural, social or linguistic changes were numerous along the time, therefore historical criticism can even help us better understand modern texts.

        Modern psychology has had an immense effect on both literature and literary criticism. Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theories changed our notions of human behaviour by exploring new or controversial areas like wish-fulfilment, sexuality, the unconscious, and repression. Freud also expanded our sense of how language and symbols operate by demonstrating their ability to reflect unconscious fears or desires. Freud admitted that he himself had learned a great deal about psychology from studying literature: Sophocles, Shakespeare, Goethe, and Dostoevsky were as important to the development of his ideas as were his clinical studies. Some of Freud’s most influential writing was, in a broad sense, literary criticism, such as his psychoanalytic examination of Sophocles’ Oedipus.

Psychological criticism is a diverse category, which uses three approaches. First, it investigates the creative process of the artist: what is the nature of literary genius and how it relates to normal mental functions. The second major area for psychological criticism is the psychological study of a particular artist. Most modern literary biographies employ psychology to understand their subject’s motivations and behaviour. The third common area of psychological criticism is to analysis fictional characters. Freud’s study of Oedipus is the prototype for this approach that tries to bring modern insights about human behaviour into the study of how fictional people act. Not only is the diction examined for sexual imagery, but the whole work is seen through Freudian concepts: struggles of the superego, the Oedipus complex, with the repressed contents of consciousness, etc. The aim is illumination of psychic conflicts, not aesthetic ranking.

Deconstructionist Criticism rejects the traditional assumption that language can accurately represent reality. Language, according to deconstructionists, is a fundamentally unstable medium; consequently, literary texts, which are made up of words, have different meanings. Deconstructionists insist, according to critic Paul de Man, on “the impossibility of making the actual expression coincide with what has to be expressed, of making the actual signs coincide with what is signified.” Since they believe that literature cannot definitively express its subject matter, deconstructionists tend to change their attention away from what is being said to how language is being used in a text.

Paradoxically, deconstructionist criticism often resembles formalist criticism; both methods usually involve close reading. The formalist tries to show the coherence of the elements of a text to give meaning, while the deconstructionist attempts to show how the text “deconstructs” into irreconcilable positions. Deconstruction shows the multiple layers of meaning at work. A biographical or historical critic might seek to establish the author’s intention as a means to interpreting a literary work, but deconstructionists reject the notion that the critic should agree to the myth of authorial control over language. Deconstructionist critics like Roland Barthes, Derrida and Michel Foucault have therefore called for “the death of the author,” that is, the rejection of the idea that the author, no matter how ingenious, can fully control the meaning of a text. They have also announced the death of literature as a special category of writing. In their view, poems and novels are merely words on a page that deserve no privileged status as art; all texts are created equal—equally untrustworthy, that is.

Deconstructionists focus on how language is used to achieve power. Since they believe, in the words of critic David Lehman, as well as Nietszche’s that “there are no truths, only rival interpretations;” deconstructionists try to understand how some “interpretations come to be regarded as truth. A major goal of deconstruction is to demonstrate how those supposed truths are at best provisional and at worst contradictory.

Deconstruction, as somebody may have inferred, calls for intellectual subtlety and skill, and isn’t for a novice to leap into. If somebody pursues his/her literary studies beyond the introductory stage, he/she will want to become more familiar with its assumptions. As a critical approach, deconstruction may seem a negative, even destructive, and yet its best practitioners are adept at exposing the inadequacy of much conventional criticism. By patient analysis, they can sometimes open up the most familiar text and find in it fresh and unexpected significance.

The schools of criticism make the concept of ‘form’ and ‘content’ clearer. There is no doubt, that it had been debated too much from Plato onwards. Formalists (New Critics included) put an accent on diction. In fact they exclusively hold that ‘form’ dictates ‘content’ as such, ‘content’ is at the mercy of ‘form’. They examine especially poetry and its constitutive components; for example, meter, rhyme scheme, rhythm, figures, syntax, motifs, styles, and conventions. Genre Critics unlike New Critics consider all genres and its sub-genres. They hold ‘form’ ‘shaping or constructive principle’. To them, the relation of ‘form’ and ‘content’ is in the manner of cause and effect. The “form” and the “content” of a work are inseparable. Marxist concept of ‘form’ is influenced by the man’s relation to the historical place and the social environment. This school altogether opposes all kinds of literary formalisms. This school seeks to observe the dialectical relationship of ‘form’ and ‘content’. However in the long run prefer to give stress on ‘content’. The psychoanalytic approach mainly takes interest in the revelation of ‘latent content’. They divide ‘content’ into ‘manifest content’ and ‘latent content’. This school analyses a work of art in the light of writer’s psychology. In fact, any kind of separation cannot be justified because in absence of any of them, an artistic expression cannot be possible. The form means the way the information is presented. Literature can take many forms: poem, letter essay, description. Form can also relate to the choice of words that designate ideas in an informal or formal manner.

The content is the subject matter being conveyed, the facts being expressed. It can be presented in many different forms, and the reader will have different experiences. The content plays a crucial role as to how the form is expressed. The interpretation of texts is unavoidable, and it opens the door to a wider appreciation of the texts. It is a tool that helps us think more deeply about the literature that we read .Overtime different schools of criticism have developed their own approaches to the act of reading.

The critique is like a detective trying to find clues that help him to find the appropriate meaning of a certain text, and if we tell our students this, we can make them interested in becoming some kind of detective trying to solve an important case – a text. The skills of interpretation should be taught to students; if the students learn how to think they will be finally empowered to understand the texts quickly or to develop their own smart interpretation. Teaching students the craft of interpretation, rather than forcing them to memorize our own interpretation, is the best we can do during our classes, and by doing that we give them confidence, when analyzing texts by their own. Our job as teachers is to give the student minimum of information, and by using it the student will have the possibility to offer new and diverse interpretations and reinterpretations , because a new angle of analysis can offer a new interpretation of a text be it literary of a simple note on a piece of paper.

“What matters for both writer and reader is the context. The creation and the consumption of literature are grounded in time and space. The author has a position – within society and history, but also in relation to the issues, events, characters and places he or she writes about. Writers cannot help but employ the cultural vocabulary of the moment, even in work that is not overtly political or purposeful. The same applies to readers, both the original reader of a text and the current reader. Thus, the literature is influenced and illuminated by its context even as it provides a lens for understanding the context of a text and our own culture…so, we are always aware of the presence of the author – an individual with a perspective based on a specific cultural context, social position and life history, who has imagined a world and a situation, invented characters crafted a voice and made hundreds of decisions and probably a number of revisions in constructing the text.” (Sherry Lee Linkon, 2008, p.10-11)

Teaching literature can be done through ‘strategic knowledge’ together with ‘content knowledge’, according to Sherry Lee Linkon. When teaching literature, the teacher should make use of some ways of learning such as recognizing the differences in the use of language or distinguishing figurative language, all these being part of the strategic knowledge. Another part of the activity of teaching literature can be the ‘class discussions’ which engage the students in the activity, so as to practice different ways of thinking. This kind of activity requires students to use strategic learning but everything will be learnt indirectly; through experience because repetition and variation help students develop their literary thinking skills, but one cannot gain experience without any basic information, that is why we have to teach the basic information to our students, in order to help them understand what they read.

According to the model of phenomenology, texts are not perceivable, any more than anything else is, as objects in themselves. The identity of texts is always already determined by the particular social configuration; within it they take up a specific place, they are already granted a specific identity, already catalogued, as it were, within a system of distinctions organized into categories. It has the power to determine types of reading and producing meanings. The way in which reading practices determine particular meanings is well illustrated by most of the approaches associated with literature in education- were certain specific types of readings and certain specific types of meanings are necessary. “Texts don’t stand on their own as bearers of their own self-defining meanings but they are read from particular point of view, by a subject (or subjects) positioned at a particular point…The interpretation of a text offers choices showing that there are different angles of perceiving things. All narrative texts in their movement from one thing to another pose questions that may be answered in the continuing progress of the narrative and all leave some questions unanswered. Different reading practices will produce different sets of a question to ask of texts and will construe the questions texts raise differently.” (Nick Peim, 2003, p.73-80)

Students should acquire the value of critical thinking and communication skills because they have to understand what they have read, therefore understanding involves not only knowing the material but also learning how to think, that means learning the key content of the field as well as acquiring the necessary information about literature and reading or writing literature. This is the reason for which our job as teachers is to give some theoretical information to the students, even if the students nowadays totally reject theory, a good teacher has to find out the way to transmit some theory to the students. The student cannot understand properly a text without background information, and this cannot be acquired without a teacher’s help.

According To Roland Barth, “Literature is what it gets taught”, and it certainly requires, the recognition of the “ideological position of the writer” and “differently positioned readers may frame different answers to questions concerning the nature of literary language ,so as reading and interpretation could become more inclusive operations. Therefore, the idea of literature is crucial in maintaining the idea of a text being valuable in it.

In dealing with writing activation we should encourage students’ creativity. There are ways to make the most reluctant student to try out poetry, for example, the writing of stories, advertisements; newspaper articles, etc are not only motivating but also educationally useful and creative. One of the best times for students to write is when they are in their own room, at home, doing homework. At this time they will be able to think things through, working at their own rhythm and in their own time. Writing is not only for students at home, however, writing in class has also many advantages: the teacher can help or the mates can give advice. Writing in the class can be either individual or collaborative.

Individual writing tasks change the atmosphere of the room, making it silent, encouraging more intense concentration. When students are writing on their own the teacher can go round helping those who are having difficulties.

Collaborative writing is just as effective in a different way. Students can write stories in groups, design advertisements, make up news bulletins or reviews. Each student can contribute to the process, each can learn from the others. This is an activity which encourages co-operation and because it involves numerous students, it can become motivating from the fact that each student can benefit from the knowledge and the enthusiasm of the others.

Being the proper place of the fictitious, literary texts have offered a safety net for numerous metaphorical interpretations. “Indeed, in many cultures, it may be part of the definition of a literary text that it demands no adherence to literal truth, as such ‘truth’ is perceived by a community of language users. Literary uses of language and the necessary skills for its interpretation go routinely with all kinds of text, spoken and written. Literature exists at many different levels for different people in different communities but it is argued here that literary language is not simply any use of language.” (Ronald Carter, 1997, p146 -169)

CHAPTER II

2. TEACHING SUCCESSFUL WRITING STARTING FROM UNDERSTANDING LITERARY TEXT

2.1 USING INTEGRATING SKILLS IN TEACHING ENGLISH (READING AND WRITING)

According to Jeremy Harmer, writing is a communicative activity frequently related to the status of homework. This is a pity since writing, especially communicative writing, can play a valuable part in the class. Communicative activities mean getting students to actually do things with language, and it is the “doing” that should form the main focus of such sessions. (Jeremy harmer, 2008 p.151)

There are four main language skills and in a general class it is the teacher’s responsibility to see that all the skills are practiced. “There has been made a division between productive skills and receptive skills; this suggests that in some way the skills are separate and it should be treated as such…it is very often true that one skill cannot be performed without another…then people use different skills when dealing with the same subject for all sorts of reason…where students practice reading we will use that reading as the basis for practicing other skills. Students involved in an oral communicative activity will have to do some writing or reading in order to accomplish the task which the activity asks them to perform. Students will be asked to write, but on the basis of reading, listening or discussing.” (Jeremy Harmer, 2008, p.52)

A certain skill can be used in a particular stage of the lesson but later it can change to one or more other skills. “When teaching writing there are special considerations to be taken into account which include the considerations of sentences into paragraphs, how paragraphs are joined together and the general organization of ideas into a coherent piece of discourse. Students need to see the difference between spoken and written English. In part this will happen as a result of exposure to listening and reading material, but it will also be necessary to provide exercises that deal specifically with features of spoken and written discourse.”(Jeremy Harmer, 2008, p.53-54)

Although the first thing students do with the language is to say it, the teacher may ask the students to write the new language, no matter the stage of the lesson.

“Often the teacher will use writing as reinforcement for an oral presentation …thus either immediately before or after the creativity stage, the teacher asks students to write sentences using the new language. The sentences may be the original models the teacher used during the accurate reproduction, stage and the students might be asked to copy the sentences, from the blackboard. They might see the same sentences, but the teacher might leave out certain words – the fill –in exercises; or the students see a piece of connected writing using the new language and then are asked to write a similar piece – the parallel writing; or, although copying is often unchallenging and boring, the main object is to relate the spoken and written forms of the language and to enable the students to write the new pattern as well as say it.” (Jeremy Harmer, 2008, p.73)

The role of writing in everyday life has changed dramatically over recent decades. When selecting activities for students, you need to be clear whether it is useful practice, because there is an idea among nowadays students that what is not encountered in real life or in the students’ environment is not worth paying attention to – practical usefulness is always taken into account by the students.

Whereas in the early 1990’s, many people wrote very little day by day, the popularity of e-mail, web forums, Internet messenger services and text messaging has meant that there is now a huge increase in written communication, even if it is not of great value. “This new kind of communication has its own peculiar rules and rituals, and in some cases has developed its own shorthand, abbreviations and lexis, often because of the perceived need to write quickly, or within a limited word or character count….beyond these new ways of communicating, many people actually do very little writing in day-to-day life, and a great deal of what they do write is quite short: brief notes to friends or colleagues, answers on question forms, diary entries, postcards. The need for longer, formal written work seems to have lost its importance over the years, and this is reflected in many classrooms where writing activities are perhaps less often found than those for other skills.” (Jim Scrivener, 2000, p.234-235)

The basic reason for which students need to learn how to write is to be able to take notes during the English lessons, another reason for which it is worth including writing in the class activities is the fact that writing gives you the opportunity to reflect upon the subject of the task, to prepare, to make mistakes and to find alternatives and better solutions. The activity solving grammar exercises is using the skill of writing to teach the students grammatical structures and not to help students become better writers. The teacher can help students become better writers by helping and encouraging them in an active manner to follow different lead in steps before having to produce the final text. Another important and worth being taken into account procedure is to teach the student how to become aware of the introductory part of the activity so that it can be done more independently in the future. Therefore the teacher’s job is to make students choose a topic, a genre or to get ideas, to teach them how to organize a text, to get feedback on content or on the language use.

“In many cases the tasks we set our students will determine the kinds of activities and lesson stages that are appropriate. When selecting writing tasks, remember that the old school “write a story about…” represents only a very small part of a normal person’s writing. While “creative writing” is often a great activity, we need to make sure that learners mainly get practice in the range of real life writing tasks that they will face. As far as possible, select the tasks most relevant for their needs. You may be able to use these to help you generate more focused ideas of your own that are relevant to your learners: write real letters, e-mails; write your own magazine; write reviews; write questionnaires; write a letter in reply to a job application; fill in a car hire booking form.etc” (Jim Scrivener, 2000, p.238-239)

Most of the time writing implies reading other texts and then summarizing, reporting, responding to them, interpreting them etc. It is however difficult to measure the success of written piece of work. We seldom give it to someone else and, after a few days of waiting, receive it back with comments on it. Yet this is what teachers do in classrooms. By marking their student’s papers they may sometimes be helpful, but but it does not necessarily mean that students will become better writers. (Jim Scrivener, 2000, p.243)

To write something of quality, the students have to be motivated; they should not write just to please their teacher. Therefore our duty is to motivate our students to write for pleasure and this means to write about things or about situations that are taken from their immediate environment, and even if we do not have a great deal of interesting or useful ideas, of great success are the activities selected to writing tasks that reflect things that many students may need to write in real life.

We have to give task, we have to help student understand the tasks or help them getting ideas; but our job is also to correct the written product. So, after doing some writing work, the students should be given the feedback, which is generally the traditional one, the one which corrects every mistake with red ink and write a mark or a grade on the paper.

“Getting back a piece of work with a teacher’s comments and corrections on it can be helpful. It can also be discouraging, especially if there is too much information, is the information is inappropriate or hard to interpret, or if the general tone is negative rather than positive. The red pen particularly has associations for many people with insensitive and discouraging correction and judgments. Some alternatives may be: using a green or a blue pen, write the correct answers on the margin, write nothing- discuss the work with the individual students, give a dictation based on sentences from their work, etc.”(Jim Scrivener, 2000, p.245)

The importance of creating an instructional environment and routines to foster literacy development is of utmost importance. A good method is to read aloud to students in English because this would help them develop English vocabulary and the teacher should provide reading materials and allow sufficient time for students to read. This method has shown positive results on English reading activities.

“The very idea that there is something called literature , the idea that there are literary texts , the idea that reading is in itself enriching, for example , are all, of course, socially, ideologically productive ideas .They are therefore worth pursuing an interrogative manner with students who are often and have been often immediately subjected to them . They are all part of the stuff of institutionally defined literacy.

Teaching ‘literacy’ could well involve some examination of the idea of literacy, rather than simply assuming that literacy is a comfortably established state that everyone recognizes instantly when they see it.” (Nick Peim, 2002, p.69)

Andrew Bubois suggests that “paying attention” is what makes for “reading well”, and this involves not only understanding how language works, but also the ability to determine easily how to engage with language, and this can be learned indirectly through experience.

There are numerous connections between reading and writing, and according to recent views about the nature of writing and reading, the two skills are considered to be interdependent. Both of them are seen to be active and constructive processes because when the reader interacts with the writer and the text or vice-versa, the meaning is created, the whole process being influenced by the reader’s knowledge, by his experience, his feelings, by the temporal context when the process of reading is taking place, and this is, in my opinion the most important element of the process. “Since there is a very close relationship between the two skills, a mutual reinforcement of the two, promote learning when they are integrated in classroom activities. The integration of reading and writing allows for multiple approaches to the tasks, covering all learning styles.” (Carson, 1993, Spark, 1998).

In order to be able to do a writing activity such as answering a question, summarizing the text or retell it, students have to read that text first, so that they are able to resolve the tasks correctly. When doing the writing activity the students transmit to the teacher if they had comprehended what they had already read, this way, the teacher has the opportunity to asses students’ ability to deal with a new text.

Reading as a skill has a great importance in teaching a foreign language, because students cannot become effective writers unless they are effective readers. “They need to see and experience how the written language works. While reading gives the students exposure to vocabulary, sentence structure and rhetorical structures of English writing, writing activities give the students practice in using them. Through writing, students can practice skills related to reading such as paraphrasing and summarizing.” (Leslie Giesen, 2001, p.6)

Giving the students tasks in which they are asked to organize, summarize or analyze information is a much more useful and attractive activity then answering comprehension questions which can be a good activity but students today get bored quickly and the teacher should think their class accordingly to the nowadays students’ typology. Even if answering questions gives the teacher the opportunity to figure out if the students have understood well the text, they are not so accurate because very often the answers can be taken out directly from the texts without being even understood. A good possibility to check student’s comprehension is given by the other type of activities which are considered as useful as they are interesting and less boring. We have to give the students the opportunity to look at texts through the lens of their own knowledge, to give them the chance to become independent and gain confidence in themselves as readers.

Because of the fact that reading is viewed as a communicative process rather than a language learning process, students do not need to know all the vocabulary and grammar to comprehend a major part of the text, and to get its meaning; thus by using reading strategies together with the help of the teacher who can initiate activities that heighten the students’ motivation and increase their level of comprehension. Apart from these, there are also some recommendation that the teacher should follow , to encourage rereading, to give students opportunities to evaluate their own ideas, to spend more time helping students to develop strategies for reading , to make links between what students read and what they write , but also the teacher should encourage students to guess, to tolerate ambiguity, to link ideas, to paraphrase and to summarize; the teacher’s job is to help them in getting the meaning by discussing the title, the theme and the cultural background, before reading the text. The teacher should teach students how to scan, how to find the main idea, to take notes, to skim and read again.

There are also some drawbacks that have to be taken into account; the fact that the students depend too much on the dictionary, or they are afraid of the fact that they will not be able to get the correct answer, but we can solve these problems by teaching the students to underline unknown words without looking out the meaning in the dictionary; to use contextual clues to get the general idea, to skip unknown words and to pick out the important ones that form the core of each sentence.

2.2 TEACHING VOCABULARY AND GRAMMAR THROUGH READING LITERATURE AND WRITING ACTIVITIES

By reading a text which contains a real activity or a conversation for example walking along the river and looking at the passers-by, would offer authentic exposure to the student who would have the possibility not only to learn new vocabulary but also different grammar structures.

“The most common method of introducing literature to students is reading texts aloud. Learning to read in another language appears to be influenced by the same sets of skills when learning to read in the first language (Lessaux, Koda, Siegel & Shanahan, 2006). However English learners may differ greatly from first language readers in terms of the linguistic resources they have to bring to the process. Native English speakers arrive at school with quite a head start. In contrast, it will take English learners several years to develop but at the same time, they must begin the process of learning to read while also learning a new language” (Snow, 2008, p.283)

A variation to reading aloud a text, activity done by the teacher or by a better student of the group, could be to listen to the text first lectured by an authentic person with the authentic accent. Then the students can do a role play activity-which I noticed that it is very entertaining and the students like it and are very active and cheerful.

“A literary text provides students with a much clearer idea about the synthetic structure of a written text and to what extent written language differs from spoken language. By getting used to the formation and function of sentences, to the structure of a paragraph, a section or a chapter, their writing skill improves and their speech skill can gain eloquence. Of course students, considerably expand their vocabulary by being exposed to a literary text. Looking up words, however, is quickly followed by looking up cultural references and this process leads to cultural enrichment.” (José Hernandez Riwes Cruz, 2010, p.231)

Ronald Carter argues that, literary language is the language of literature; found in literary texts it is for many literary critics, an unproblematic category. You know when you are in its company. Such a position cannot however be as nonnegotiable as it seems to be, if only because the term “literature “is subject to constant change. “In the history of English “literature”, literature has meant different things at different times: from elevated treatment of dignified subjects (fifteen century) to simply writing in the broadest sense of the word (e.g. diaries, travelogues, historical accounts, biographical accounts: eighteen century) to the sense of creative highly imaginative literature …literature is subject to constant change; it is not universally the same everywhere and is as a category of text eminently negotiable. Definitions of literary language are part of the same process… language use in literature is different because it makes strange, disturbs, upsets our daily “normal” perception of things and thus generates new or renewed perceptions …”(Ronald Carter, 1997, p. 123-124) According to him the fact that texts are polysemantic does not stop their lexical items automatically at their first interpreter; denotations are always potentially available for transformation into connotation, contents are never received for their own sake rather as a sign vehicle for something else.(p.134)

Apart from offering a variety of information regarding the cultural context of the geographical location that it portrays, a literary text provides students with a much clearer idea about the syntactic structure of a written text and to what extent written language differs from the spoken language, therefore literary texts can be a way in for teaching not only new vocabulary but also grammar structures.

“By getting used to the formation and function of sentences, to the structure of a paragraph, a section or a chapter, their writing skill can gain eloquence. Of course students expand their vocabulary by being exposed to the literary text. Jose Hernandez Riwes Cruz, 2005, p.4)

As language teachers, we usually construct materials and teach lessons based on some combination of grammar and words. By words we mean single lexical items as we find them in the dictionaries, together with combinations of words. Taken together, words and grammar combine to provide the essential ingredients of language. In fact the two go together in such a way that it is hard to stand back and examine the relationship between them, therefore, language learning very often follows a “word first, grammar later” pattern, with the grammar appearing to grow out of a basis in words

2.3 THE ROLE OF THE TEACHER IN TEACHING ENGLISH THROUGH LITERARY TEXTS AND WRITING

The traditional way of teaching characterized by Jim Scrivener with these words, spends quite a lot of class time using the blackboard to explain things – as if transmitting knowledge to the class – with interrogations from time to time, to the learners or from the learners. After these explanations from the lead in stage of the lesson, the student will often do some practice to test whether they have understood what they have been told. “Throughout the lesson the teacher keeps control of the subject matter, makes decisions about what work is needed and orchestrates what the students do. In this classroom probably what the teacher does most of the talking and is by far the most active person. The students’ role is primarily to listen and concentrate and perhaps, take note perhaps to the view to taking in the information. Often the teacher takes as if by right permission to direct, give orders, tell off, rebuke, criticize, etc, possibly with limited or no consultation.” (Jim Scrivener, 2010, p.14)

This is a very popular method in the educational system of many cultures. To a student used to a methodology based on teacher-talk and note-taking practices, involvement and participation in class activities may cause difficulty at first. If we take into consideration reading skills, we realize that many students are used to a word-by-word approach and to a concept of reading which implies knowing the meaning of every word in a text rather than to an interactive approach; exercises to practice skimming and scanning a text, reading for a particular purpose, may have been foreign in many language classes or not as frequent as they should. We want to introduce students to good writing habits and good reading is an important step toward good writing; this is why the teaching of writing skills should be preceded by a good reading ability.

Students will expect that the teacher will teach in the modern way and, it will be critical or suspicious of teachers who do not. In such cases it is important to remember that the teacher should choose what is appropriate in a particular place with particular students. “What the teacher does in any school or with any learner will often represent the best compromise between what you believe and what seems right in the local context…the context by which the traditional way of teaching is imagined as working is sometimes characterized as “jug and mug”- the knowledge being poured from one receptacle into an empty one. It is often based on the assumption that the teacher is the “knower” and has the task of passing over knowledge to the students, and that having something explained or demonstrated to you will lead to learning – and if it doesn’t, it is because the teacher has done this job badly or the student is lazy or incompetent. In many circumstances, lecture or explanation by a teacher may be an efficient method of informing a large number of people about a topic.” (Jim Scrivener, 2010, p.15)

Scrivener brings into discussion the positive learning atmosphere which should rule during the teaching process; thus he lists some important features in creating a strong chain between the teacher and the student, and a positive learning atmosphere during which the teacher : really listens to his students, shows respect, is fair, has a good sense of humour, gives clear and positive feedback, is patient , inspires confidence, is non-judgmental, is well organized ,is honest, is approachable, can be authoritative without being distant or tough. All these features are important to a good teacher, even if some are more important that others, they all can be studied and improved. It is also very important that a teacher should be authentic, not to pretend to be something else than he/she really is and to hide behind masks; or he/she should empathize with students’ problems which is very helpful; also the third very important characteristic of a good teacher is to show respect- to be positive and not to judge the other person; with these three features hand in hand our relationship within the classroom becomes stronger and the positivity is guarantied.

“Although there are some practical techniques a teacher can learn to improve his/her communication with others, real rapport is something more substantial than a technique that you can mimic. It is not something the teacher does to other people. It is the teacher and his moment-by-moment relationship with other human beings. Similarly, respect or empathy or authenticity is not clothes to put on as you walk into the classroom, not temporary characteristics’ that you take on for the duration of your lesson. The teacher cannot role play ‘respect’ –or any of the other qualities. On the contrary, they are rooted on the level on the teacher’s intention.” (Jim Scrivener, p.17, 2010)

New techniques are not sufficient in order to improve the quality of the activity in the classroom, we also need to look at what we want for our students, and our attitude towards them is the most important, more important than learning or imposing techniques learned from books.

“During the teaching process, the teacher brings with him his identity, style, skills and techniques; therefore there are three categories of teaching styles: the explainer, the involver and the enabler. Many teachers know their subject matter very well, but have limited knowledge of teaching methodology. This kind of teacher relies mainly on “explaining or lecturing “as a way of conveying information to the students. Done with style or enthusiasm or wit or imagination, this teacher’s lessons can be very entertaining, interesting and informative. The students are listening perhaps occasionally answering questions and perhaps making notes, but are mostly not being personally involved or challenged. The learners often get practice by doing individual exercise after one phase of the lecture has finished.” (Jim Scrivener, p.18, 2010)

The opposite kind of teacher, Scrivener talks about is ‘the involver’. This type of teacher , besides the fact that he/she knows very well the subject he/she is also familiar with the teaching methodology, using appropriate teaching techniques and procedures which are in accordance to the student’s level and to the students’ enthusiasm. This type o teacher uses communicative activities, o involve their students as much as possible in an active manner, and he/she tries to find appropriate and interesting activities but having total control over the group of students and over the activity in the class.

“The enabler kind of a teacher is confident enough to share control with the learners, or perhaps to hand in over to them entirely. Decisions made in her/his classroom may often be shared or negotiated. In many cases the teacher takes the lead from the students, seeing himself as someone whose job is to create the conditions that enable the students to learn for themselves. Sometimes this will involve her/him in less traditional “teaching”; she/he may become a guide or a counsellor or a resource of information when needed. Sometimes when the class is working well under its own steam, when a lot of autonomous learning is going on, the teacher may be hardly visible. This teacher knows about the subject matter and about the methodology, but also has an awareness of how individuals and groups are thinking and feeling within her class.” (Jim Scrivener, p.18, 2010)

The teacher can play different roles during the teaching process according to the type of the activity; and taking into consideration Jeremy Harmer, the most important distinction to be made is between the roles of controller and facilitator, since these two concepts represent opposite ends of a cline of control and freedom. According to Jeremy Harmer, a controller stands at the front of the class like a puppet master controlling everything; a facilitator maintains a low profile in order to make the students’ own achievement of a task possible. The teacher as controller is closely allied to the image that teachers project themselves. Some appear to be natural leaders and performers while some others are quieter and feel happier when students are interacting amongst themselves. Perhaps the most important and difficult role the teacher has to play is that of organizer; a good organization assure the success of many activities and if the students know exactly what they have to do then they will perform in accordance. The teacher’s duty when organizing an activity is to tell the students what they are going to do, give clear instructions, get the activity going and then organize feedback when it is over. The teachers should never, assume that the students have understood the instructions, he/she can use the students’ native language to give further explanations to check if the students have understood the task well. It is not wise for a teacher to give unclear instructions, this would transmit the idea that he/she didn’t plan out what he has to do or say beforehand.

The main idea of all the description above is the fact that many teachers will find elements of each category that are true for them, or they move among categories depending on the day, on the group which is being taught, to the nature of the activity, or depending on the mood. Therefore, the idea is somewhere in between, there always must be a balance. Another idea should be the one which can give a great opportunity to the students to take part in a lesson with a friendly, relaxed learning environment; the positiveness offers a better chance of useful interaction among the actors of the learning process.

2.4 EVALUATION

The correction of students’ work is an important part of a teacher’s job. The majority of homework is written and the ways we assign it, mark it and return it are very important. Students could be very irritated by the fact that teachers insist on the prompt delivery of homework, but then take weeks to return it, and once they receive it, they notice they get it back completely covered with corrections, which can be very de-motivating for some students. Therefore, it is important to return students work within a reasonable time period, and to consider carefully how you are going to deal with the mistakes you find.

“Humans largely learn by trial and error, experimenting to see what works and what doesn’t. It is the same with language learning. Students errors are evidence that progress is being made. Errors often show us that a student is experimenting with language, trying out ideas, taking risks, attempting to communicate, and making progress. Analyzing what errors have been made clarifies exactly which level the student has reached and helps set the syllabus for future language work.” (Jim Scrivener, 2010, p.285)

According to the methodologist, Jeremy Harmer, the correction of written work can be organized on much the same bases as the correction of oral work. In other words there may well be times when the teacher is concerned with accuracy and other times when the main concern is the content of the writing, the teacher must work in a continuous equilibrium, neither too much nor less . Correction of written work can be done by both teacher and student. If you are correcting written work, always remember to react to the content of the work, showing the student where the work was effective and where it was not. When teachers hand back written work with comment on content and the correction symbols in the margins, they should allow students time, during the class, to identify their mistakes and correct them. In this activity the teacher acts as a resource, and can help where students do not know what is wrong. Ideally written work can form the basis for student-student correction. Students work in pairs exchanging their works. Then, they look for mistakes in each other’s writing and attempt to correct them – and this activity can be considered a communicative activity because the students have the possibility and the opportunity to transmit each other opinions.

“Clearly, a major part of the teacher’s job is to asses the students’ work, to see how well they are performing or how well they performed. There must be made a difference between two types of assessment: correction and organizing feedback. The correction is done almost instantly when the student has to reproduce a certain idea, a slightly less formal style of correction can occur where students are involved in immediate creativity or in doing a drill-type activity in pairs, the teachers have to use a gentle correction, which used in the right way will not seriously damage the atmosphere of conversation. Organizing feed-back occurs when students have performed some kind of task, and the intention of this kind of assessment is for them to see the extent of their success or failure and to be given ideas as to how their problems must be solved.” (Jeremy Harmer, 2000, p.239)

If the teacher gives back a piece of work with his/her comments and corrections on it can be helpful but discouraging, argues the methodologist Jim Scrivener, especially if there is too much information, if the information is inappropriate or hard to interpret, or if the general tone is negative rather than positive. I do not agree with the fact that the red pen has associations for many people with insensitive and discouraging correction and judgments; in my opinion this idea is somehow exaggerated. Even if this is a traditional way of correction, how can we put the limit between teacher and another corrector? For me the red colour is not to be blamed, the teacher’s attitude is more to be taken into account than the colour he/she uses when correcting something. The methodologists give alternatives to the traditional way of correcting which is the red colour, such as: use correction codes in the margin, use a green or a blue pen, discuss the work with the individual students, give a dictation based on sentences from their work; but in all of these options, there is one important guideline to remember: “tell the students before the writing what will happen afterwards (e.g. I’ll be marking tense mistakes only.)” (Jim Scrivener, 2010, p.245). When you encourage students to write creatively it is important to respond to what they write just as much as to how they write it, because students appreciate the response to their ideas, less than the language they used; these could be situations when some writing shouldn’t be too corrected When the teacher gives back written work it is important to give students time to investigate the reasons for mistakes and, if there is the possibility, to re-write their work.

We cannot learn how to write if we are not able to read, the two skills are inter lapping, and even if it is possible to learn how to read in a foreign language, without being necessary to write in that language, the way round is not possible. The ability to produce a meaningful written text cannot become possible without being able to read – writing without reading is just painting some signs. While reading we cannot only enrich our vocabulary but we can also learn different grammar structures, or we acquire cultural, social or psychological knowledge. To make all these possible, the teacher has a very important role: he/she must create a balance between the roles he/she plays during the class, and as a evaluator he/she should not be very tough because the task of the teacher is not to be stressful to the students but to make them become more self-confident while writing something.

CHAPTER III

THE IMPORTANCE OF LITERATURE FOR TEACHING ENGLISH

What is literature?

There are three main approaches to an answer to this question. The first is to argue, as Eagleton does (1983:10), that ‘anything can be literature’ and that it is all a matter of how we choose (or are chosen) to read a text. Because texts are extremely varied and the social and cultural positions from which readers read texts even more varied, a definition of literature can only be relative to specific contexts.

The second approach refers to the fact that certain texts are simply more highly valued than others, and over a period of time they become cultural heritage, a canon of texts which a community then teaches, study, talk about, etc; or there is about a certain fashion for different texts. Nowadays, one can notice the fact that people prefer to read something only because one of his/her friends recommended something and this way they exchange ideas or they have discussions about that text.

The third main approach to this question, which is offered by Ronald Carter in his book “Investigating English discourse”, is the assumption that literature is dependent on the medium of language, and to explore that medium by using tools of analysis of language and texts, can lead to fuller understanding of literature.

Literature offers great benefits for teaching and learning English. Linguistically, literature can help students master the vocabulary and grammar of the language as well as the four language skills, because a great deal of activities which involve the students’ use of these skills, can be developed around the reading of a literary work

According to Gabriela Grigoroiu, there are numerous levels from which one can analyze literature: culturally, literature enables the reader to examine universal human experience within the context of a specific setting and the consciousness of a particular people; aesthetically, the benefits include the teaching of literature for its own sake, for the specific insight it provides into men’s existence within the artistic and intellectual boundaries of a literary framework. All the elements of literature: plot, character setting and theme, promote the reading comprehension by presenting special challenges to readers who demand that they learn to put into practice specific reading strategies , and by helping carrying students along in their reading. Moreover they provide the subject matter, the context and the inspiration for numerous written and oral activities, so that a single literary work becomes the central focus of a classroom study unit. Literature has often been described as a window mirror or key to a culture, for it can help the reader understand and empathize with another culture. Reading a literary work emerges the student in the world it depicts involving him with its characters, plot and themes. Literature can also help language learners gain deeper insights into another culture in the same way that the study of another language helps us perceive the structure of our own culture. (Grigoroiu, 2002. p.232-233)

Literature offers an extremely varied body of written material which is ‘important’ in the sense that it says something about fundamental human issues, and which is enduring rather than ephemeral. Its relevance moves with the passing of time, but seldom disappears completely: the Shakespearean plays whose endings were rewritten to conform to late seventeenth-century taste, and which were later staged to give maximum prominence to their Romantic hero figures, are now explored for their psychoanalytic or dialectical import. In this way, a literary work has the ability to transcend both time and cultural space to offer the reader from another country or from another period of time the possibility to develop his/her own interpretation, therefore its meaning does not remain unique but multifaceted.

Literature is ‘authentic’ material. By that we simply mean that most works of literature are not fashioned for the specific purpose of teaching a language. Recent course materials have quite rightly incorporated many ‘authentic’ samples of language – for example, travel timetables, city plans, forms, pamphlets, cartoons, advertisements, newspaper or magazine articles. Learners are thus exposed to language that is as genuine and undistorted as can be managed in the classroom context, but these types of texts are dry and blunt they lack the richness which only the literary texts can give. In reading literary texts, students have also to deal with language intended for native speakers and thus they gain additional familiarity with many different linguistic uses, forms and conventions of the written mode: with irony, exposition, argument, narration, and so on. And, although it may not be confined within a specific social network in the same way that a bus ticket or an advertisement might be, literature can nonetheless incorporate a great deal of cultural information. It is true of course that the ‘world’ of a novel, play, or short story is a created one, yet it offers a full and vivid context in which characters from many social backgrounds can be depicted. A reader can discover their thoughts, feelings, customs, possessions; what they buy, believes in, fear, enjoy; how they speak and behave behind closed doors. This vivid imagined world can quickly give the foreign reader a feel for the codes and preoccupations that structure a real society. Reading the literature of a historical period is, after all, one of the ways we have to help us imagine what life was like in that other foreign territory: our own country’s past. Literature is perhaps best seen as a complement to other materials used to increase the foreign learner’s insight into the country whose language is being learnt.

Reading literary works exposes the student to many functions of the written language, but what about other linguistic advantages? Language enrichment is one benefit often sought through literature. While there is little doubt that extensive reading increases a learner’s receptive vocabulary and facilitates transfer to a more active form of knowledge, it is sometimes objected that literature does not give learners the kind of vocabulary they really need. It may be ‘authentic’ in the sense already mentioned, but the language of literary works is, on the whole, not typical of the language of daily life, nor is it like the language used in learners’ textbooks.

On the positive side, literature provides a rich context in which individual lexical or syntactical items are made more memorable. While reading a literary text, students gain familiarity with many features of the written language – the form and function of sentences, the variety of possible structures and different ways of connecting ideas – which broaden and enrich their own writing skills, because they can learn by comparing and observing. The extensive reading of a novel, a short story or long play develops the students’ ability to make inferences from linguistic clues, and to deduce meaning from context, which are useful tools in reading other sorts of material as well. As we shall suggest through many activities in this book, a literary text can serve as an excellent prompt not only for writing activities but also for oral work. In all these ways, a student working with literature is helped with the basic skills of language learning. Moreover, literature helps extend the intermediate or advanced learner’s awareness of the range of language itself. Literary language is not always that of daily communication, as we have mentioned, but it is special in its way. It is heightened: sometimes elaborate, sometimes marvellously simple yet, somehow, absolutely ‘right’. The compressed quality of much literary language produces unexpected density of meaning. Figurative language casts new light on familiar sensations and opens up new dimensions of perception in a way that can be tremendously useful to man’s perception of life.

For these features of literary language to be appreciated, a considerable effort is required on the part of the reader who is tackling the text in a foreign language. But with well-chosen works, the investment of effort can be immensely rewarding, the resulting sense of achievement highly satisfying. At a productive level, students of literature will, we hope, become more creative and adventurous as they begin to appreciate the richness and variety of the language they are trying to master and begin to use some of that potential themselves.

Above all, literature can be helpful in the language learning process because of the personal involvement it fosters in readers. The teaching materials used in the classroom must take into account how a language operates both as a rule-based system and as a socio-semantic system. Engaging with literature gives learners the possibility to change the focus of their attention beyond the more mechanical aspects of the foreign language system. When a novel, play or short story is explored over a period of time, the result is that the reader begins to become part of the text. He or she is drawn into the book. The reader is eager to find out what happens as events unfold; he or she feels close to certain characters and shares their emotional responses. The language becomes ‘transparent’ – the fiction summons the whole person into its own world.

I believe that this can have beneficial effects upon the whole language learning process, as long as the reader is well-motivated, and as long as the experience of engaging with literature is kept sufficiently interesting, varied and nondirective to let the reader feel that he or she is taking possession of a previously unknown territory. Obviously, the choice of a particular literary work will be important in facilitating this creative relationship which the reader establishes with the text.

What are the main literary genres? This is a question which cannot be answered without clarifying first the meaning of the word "genre". "Genre" comes from an old French word, "gender" – or "gender" as we know it. "Genre" has since been used to describe the style or category of art, literature, music, or any other type of discourse, written or spoken.

A literary genre therefore means a category of literary composition or endeavour: a category meant to describe the writing style, technique, tone, length, and content of certain literary forms. Literary genres are flexible and it is important to take into account that a literary genre is different from the format of a literary composition. One kind of literary genre can inter-lap with another, different literary genre (cross-genres); or have more specific subgenres under it.

The most common types of literary genres include:

Fiction

Adventure

Children's literature

Young adult fiction

Comic / Humour (Black comedy, Parody, Satire)

Drama

Erotic fiction

Fairy Tales

Historical fiction (fiction based on historical events or people, but with most of the story fictionalized)

Horror

Literary fiction

Poetry

Mystery / Suspense / Thriller (books and stories that involve a suspenseful event, often a crime of some type, with the reader using clues from the story to gradually discover what has actually happened)

Myth and Legend

Occupational fiction (Hollywood, legal, medical, musical, sports)

Political

Pulp fiction

Religious fiction

Science fiction / speculative fiction

Short story

Fantasy

Non-fiction

Biography (a biography is a non-fictional information of someone's life, often written by someone other than the subject of the biography)

Autobiography

Memoir

Creative non-fiction

Essay

History

Narrative non-fiction

Religious

Meta fiction

Speech

It is mentioned that the literary genre can be determined by the writing style, technique, tone, length, and content of the composition. Examples of literary genres determined by:

Style and technique: poetry, drama

Tone: religious, children's literature, women's fiction

Length: short story, novel

Content: science fiction (sci-fi), fantasy, comic / humour

It is obvious that the fiction categories or genres cover a wide range of works, and that's why sub genres have been introduced: to narrow down the difference between what might appear in one story and what might not appear in another, similar one.

The activity of reading a text does not only provide subject matter for composition topics, but the students are actively engaged with the new language and culture. When studying a foreign language – English in our case – reading is the activity which gives the students access to a great amount of language. Students can receive the task of extensive reading when they have to read short stories or essays or other types of lengthy texts, but during this type of reading they don’t have the time to look up unfamiliar words, or they aren’t able to translate every sentence they read; and close reading when students have to read small texts which are easy to analyze in detail.

Writing helps students learn grammatical structures, idioms and vocabulary, and of course it provides the opportunity to be adventurous with the language they want to acquire. There is an increasing preference of the teachers for the quantitative writing and not for the quality of the compositions. The reason is a good one from my point of view: our purpose is to make the students write as much as they can in English, and once the ideas are noted down; grammatical accuracy, organization of the sentences and the rest will gradually follow.

Reading can do far more in the teaching of writing than simply provide the subject matter for discussions and composition topics. While reading, students are actively engaged with the new language and culture, and the more they read, the more they become familiar with the vocabulary, sentence patterns, organizational flow and cultural assumptions. In the following lines I will give examples of activities specific for reading literary texts. The activities will be chosen for different levels and from different genres.

Copy

This is a frequent activity used as a technique with elementary level students. It gives practice with punctuation, spelling and paragraph indentation. A disadvantage will be that students will lose interest or get bored if they are doing this activity as a tedious exercise.

A variation of the activity described above in general terms, will be to copy old literary expressions, quotation taken from well known writers or even ask the students to note down any interesting idea found in the lectures they have to do during their activity.

Examine Cohesive Links

While examining a piece of writing students make discoveries about the devices used by the writer to connect one sentence to another in order to make the text cohesive. Learning how to use these links is an important part of learning how to write a language.

A disadvantage is the fact that while speaking in the class students use single sentences and they have no familiarity with the connecting words that are so necessary in a piece of writing. So our students need to be made aware how these connecting words are used in a piece of writing. Therefore our duty as educators is to guide our students in activities which are useful to their use of cohesive devices which are very important when structuring a certain written paragraph, or when trying to communicate a certain idea.

Summarize

This is an activity that provides students with valuable practice in searching for meaning and communicating that meaning. Faced with a reading passage, they have not only to find out what the main ideas are but also to be able to express them in their own words. This ability to understand concepts, process them and restate them using own words is a major goal of the language learning process.

When reading literary texts or paragraphs taken out from well known literary works, it will be a good language exercise to ask our students to summarize the text, or we can ask the students to write a letter to a friend of them to tell the friend the last short story he/she has read.

Complete

When students examine a reading passage with missing parts they have to take into account a great many features of writing, such as meaning and grammatical and syntactic features, if they have to complete it. In addition they have to put themselves in the position of the writer and then tone, style and organization become important. This kind of activity asks students to discern the original writer’s purpose, audience and personal style and to pay attention to those in the completed version. An example of an activity derived from this type of writing exercise is to ask the student to write another version of the paragraph but in another style, making it more dramatic or on the contrary: trying to make it more comic.

Speculate.

This activity involves thinking beyond the given text. Speculative questions open up opportunities for both speaking and writing. In addition to speculation beyond the given text, students can be given tasks that encourage speculations about the text itself, about its context, content, organization and writer’s choices of words and syntax. While speculating the students have the opportunity to give their opinion about a certain text, about its author or about any other part the tasks ask for.

3.1 Ways of using literary text in teaching writing

Both reading and writing are interactive processes between the reader and the writer of every text. We should take into account that when a text is formed one should take into account two principles: effectiveness and appropriateness. A typology of texts must be correlated with typologies of discourse and situations, since the appropriateness of a text type to its setting is essential. Therefore, learning to write in a foreign language implies much more than acquiring the linguistic tools needed to communicate meaning. What is also required is knowledge about how different kinds of texts are conventionally structured and presented to the scientific community. Thus, the argumentative text type, for example, has a contextual focus on the evaluation of relations between concepts; the expository text type is laid out taking into account the analysis and synthesis of the constituent elements of given concepts; the instructional one aims at the transmission of knowledge and the formation of future behaviour. Text types are expected to have certain traits which fulfil certain purposes. Consequently, the reader will also have to bear in mind the discourse community to which the text belongs and deduce the writer’s aims in publishing such a piece of writing; semantic aspects related to specific terminology will also be conditioned by discourse communities, and this knowledge will be of great help for the exchange of information.

Writing helps students learn grammatical structures, idioms and vocabulary, and of course it provides the opportunity to be adventurous with the language they want to acquire. There is a preference of the teachers for the quantity of the writing and not for the quality, and the reason is a good one: our purpose is to make our students write as much as they can in English, and once the ideas are written down, grammatical accuracy, organization and the rest will gradually follow.

An advertisement, a short story, a letter, a magazine article, a poem or a piece of student writing can work the same way as a picture to provide content in the classroom. Readings can be used to create an information gap that leads to communicative activities. If the students work with a variety of texts at the same time, doing reading activities; they will be dealing with different content, and anything they write to each other will thus be authentic communication which conveys new and real information.

Reading activities provide subject matter for discussions or for composition topics, but while reading the students actively engage with the new language and culture.

The best way for students to grasp the essential value of writing as a form of communication is to produce the kind of practical writing that people do in their everyday life. This kind of practical writing has both a clear purpose and a specific audience: invitations, letters or instructions are types of writing that anyone has to do at some time during daily activities. We might give directions to a tourist asking us where a certain place is, or for example make a particular dish or perform a traditional dance. If our students experiment with this practical writing in the classroom they will be not only practicing writing in the new language but also learning about the conventions of the new culture.

Here are some examples of practical writing which we can use in the classroom: letters, daily notes, lists, instructions, and forms; all of them could be adapted to teaching a foreign language with the help of literary texts.

LETTERS

They are one of the most widespread forms of communication. For this reason we have to give a special attention to teaching letter writing. The main reason for doing this is not the fact that they are an easy form or because they are useful, but teaching letter writing also gives us the chance to deal with a variety of forms and functions that are an essential part of language mastery. We write letters to explain, invite, apologize, congratulate, complain order, apply, acknowledge and thank. Each of these language functions has its own associated vocabulary, sentence structures, connotations, tone and fit the audience, appropriate choice of words.

Within each function there are various levels of formality and informality: formal letters, informal letter or semi-formal letters. Taking into account the three types of function they take we can adapt our activities according to the fact that we teach with the help of literary texts. Therefore, we can ask our students to write a letter to a friend telling him/her about the last poem or short story, or even novel the student has read, or he/she can write a letter to a friend asking him/her what book to take in the next summer holiday. Another possibility is to ask the student to write a letter to a students’ magazine where the students have to make a review of a novel or short story that the teacher chooses.

FORMS

Filling out a form in another language is important this type of writing provide the students the chance to transfer information from one format to another format. This use of language – preserving the meaning while varying the form – allows practice in forming and reforming concepts in the new language.

Examples of forms: forms and interviews, forms and readings, survey forms.

Forms and interviews.

In pairs students interview each other, transferring the information onto a form. They might be given the task of interviewing someone they know: a friend, a colleague, a student in another class, for example – and completing a form for the purpose of completing a survey of people’s family size, hobbies or holidays preferences.

The interviews can be about the last novel they read or about a certain writer the teacher has asked them to discuss about. Another idea is to interview the teacher himself/herself about a certain novel, poem or short story which has already been chosen to be analysed.

Once the information from the interviews analyzed, students can be asked to use that information to write an article for the school magazine where they have to respect the style and the vocabulary with linking devices and the specific structure for this type of writing activity.

Forms and readings.

Students have to read a short text or paragraph and then they extract the necessary information to fill out a form.

The class can be organized in a variety of ways for an activity like this. Only one student of the pair has the text, so that when he presents the information on a form his partner has to reconstruct the description, for example, if the text is a descriptive one. A variation of the activity will be that of listening to the paragraph, filling out a form then, they have to fill out a similar one for a person in their family. From this information, another student can construct a descriptive paragraph. Another example of activity can be the following: the class is organized into groups, every group receives a text, they read it and analyze it, and then the group delegates a leader to talk about the text to the whole class. The students in the other groups are asked to be attentive and to take notes in order to fill the forms they had already been given. Afterwards the students have to write their text starting from the noted they filled in the forms.

Survey forms.

In groups students discuss and draw up a questionnaire that aims at discovering attitudes other students might have towards controversial issues such as:

It is best for your health to eat

2…. 3…. 4…… meals a day

The most effective treatment for a bad cold is

Food…. Drinks…. Rest …. Medicine….

Students form one group move around the room to interview students in another group to gather information for the questionnaire. After collecting enough responses, they organize the information they have received and present it to the class either in a narrative or statistical form, such as in a paragraph or a table.

LISTS

Many people write lists not to show them to anyone else, but for themselves. There are also people keeping up daily notebooks or journals. They write a record of the events of the day or their ideas, about those events. Even if it is a personal writing, it is not excluded from classroom activities. When people write every day for their own eyes and not to be judged by anyone else, they often find that they can write more and more each day; their fluency increases, they work less over each word, when they write something about themselves they worry less about being “correct”, so all of this is useful in learning to write.

Lists are useful because they emphasize certain information in a regular text. A list of information ordered vertically on the page is easier to read and to remember. Certain types of lists are also made for easier reading and remembering. For example, in instructions, it is a big help for each step to be numbered and separated from the preceding or following steps. Lists also create more white space and spread out, and other notes or other details can be added on the empty space.

Like headings, the various types of lists are an important feature of professional technical writing: they help readers understand, remember, and review key points; they help readers follow a sequence of actions or events.

We can ask our students to make lists of interesting expressions which they can use in the following writing activities; they can make lists with the words they consider to be unusual or strange and then make sentences using them, they can make lists with animals, flowers, family members, but in order for these lists to be efficient, the teacher should check them constantly.

WRITING INSTRUCTIONS

This is such a good and common activity that students need to learn how to do it. Writing to tell friends how to find our house, writing instructions to our neighbours how to water our plants, writing a recipe for a friend, that is why there is a variety of classroom techniques that have developed around this activity.

Instructions are those step-by-step explanations of how to do something: how to build, operate, repair, or maintain things.

One of the most common and one of the most important uses of technical writing is instructions—those step-by-step explanations of how to do things: assemble something, operate something, repair something, or do routine maintenance on something. Ultimately, good instruction writing requires:

Clear, simple writing

A thorough understanding of the procedure in all its technical detail

The ability to put ourselves in the place of the reader, the person trying to use our instructions

The ability to visualize the procedure in great detail and to capture that awareness on paper

Finally, our willingness to go that extra distance and test our instructions on the kind of person we wrote them for.

All the techniques and activities described above belong to the free writing kind of activities, during which students generate organize and express their own ideas in their own sentences.

The other type of activities for writing is the controlled writing activities. During the controlled writing the student are given a lot more work to do: an outline to complete, a paragraph to manipulate, a model to follow or a passage to continue. These types of writing is a useful tool at all levels of teaching and not just in the early stages when students have not gained enough fluency to handle free writing yet.

The teacher helps the student use their new language as much as possible, gives them exercises to practice, encourages them to express themselves, and if the teacher understands what the students are saying, this is a moment of total happiness.

The teacher helps the students to go along, correcting grammar, supplying an idiom, suggesting a word. In writing they also need the same opportunity to get words down on the paper as soon as possible and to try out the written language. Only then they will acquire enough familiarity with writing to be able to handle more challenging tasks with confidence.

Controlled writing tasks give students focused practice in getting words down on paper and in concentrating on one or two problems at a time. In this way they are spared from tackling the full range of complexity that free writing entails. Some advantages of this type of writing activities are the following: they are easier to mark, they are much less time consuming.

Controlled writing can fit onto a composition curriculum at any level of ability of the students in these two situations:

Before free writing, when students practice grammatical point or syntactic structure with a text and not just as a sentence exercise, and at the same time use the text as a source of vocabulary, ideas, idioms and organization to help them in making up their own piece of writing.

After free writing, when we see what problems our students are having and assign a controlled task to give them practice with the problem areas.

Some examples of controlled writing may be the following:

CONTROLLED COMPOSITION

The students are given a passage to work with, they don’t have to concern themselves with content, organization, finding ideas and making sentences. They write the given passage down making a few specified grammatical or structural changes.

This kind of composition focuses the students’ attention on specific features of the written language, and it is a good method to reinforce grammar, vocabulary, and or syntax in context.

A good example of an activity of this kind will be to give the students a poem with some highlighted words which they have to replace with the synonyms or with the antonyms. Another example of controlled composition could be to give certain paragraphs to students which they have to change according to the task imposed by the teacher: to make the paragraph more dramatic, to change it according to the student’s ideas or on the contrary: to make it more fun, by adding different interesting words (adverbs or adjectives) to the paragraph.

QUESTION AND ANSWER

The students are asked questions and while answering them they have a little more freedom in structuring sentences. After that they are asked to put together all the answers, and with the help of the linking devices they are able to make up a coherent text.

An example will be to choose interesting fragments from novels or short stories and with the help of the questions offered by the teacher the students will have the possibility to handle the paragraph easier and in a more interesting way. A helpful method is to organize the students in groups, having as leader the student that the teacher knows he/she is the one who reads frequently; this way the students will be more relaxed when dealing this type of activity.

GUIDED COMPOSITION

In this type of controlled composition the students will be given a first sentence, a last sentence, a series of questions to respond to. During this activity students will be able to discuss, make notes, share findings, plan strategies together, before they begin to write.

SENTENCE COMBINING

This method improves students’ sentence structure, length of sentence and sentence diversity. It is a very good way of introducing new language structures without going into complicated explanations. It is a good method, because it provides plenty of practice with the syntactic structure which is more common in writing, and it also gives the chance to use the grammatical knowledge.

PARALLEL WRITING

This is the freest kind of controlled writing. Instead of making changes in a given paragraph, or writing according to a given sentence, students read and study a passage, and then they write their own one on a similar theme, using as a guide the vocabulary, cohesive devices, sentence structure, and the organization of the model passage.

We should familiarize our students with text analysis, in order to facilitate a good structuring of texts. Students have to study the text to see if it is an argumentative article; or the description of a process; or a piece of research; or a narrative type of text. The analysis and classification of texts is a good teaching activity. The teacher cannot leave aside the training of his students in the identification and use of the most important rhetorical functions of scientific English, as well as in all the reading strategies which enable learners to understand texts and their genres. He should also practice with the students the identification and the use of markers; and the cohesive devices and logical connectors most appropriate to each of the different type of texts. The best method the teacher should work with is not the theoretical, lecture-type approach, but providing students with numerous practical applications in groups and individually.

Text analysis is an important means for building schemata for writing. Comparing characteristics of text types helps the student to succeed in matching the reader’s with the writer’s expectations. Writing is seldom done exclusively in one rhetorical mode, so students need to practice different discourse functions so they can construct good, clear pieces of writing. As readers, we have certain expectations about the content, structure, development and graphic appearance of diverse types of written texts. These expectations are used by both writers and readers in composing and reading, and when they coincide, clarity and comprehension are facilitated. If we take into consideration that authors write to be read, we come to the conclusion that our students should be trained to do everything possible to ease their potential readers the task of finding relevant information. Reading puts the learner in touch with other minds so that he can experience the ways in which writers have organized information, selected words and structured arguments. Teaching writing through reading becomes an important pedagogical instrument which may be the basis for successful academic writing courses.

As I have already mentioned, there are different writing activities that a teacher could use during the teaching activity: activities helping to study writing and activities designed to activate the students written knowledge and potential. The activities in the first category are those kinds of exercises which focus on the construction of writing. For example, we may show students two sentences and join them together with and or but (using commas correctly) before asking them to do the same thing. We might ask them to read a short text and say where the capital letters are and why. They might look at a text and be asked what he, she or it refer to, so that they understand how we use pronouns to refer backwards and forwards in a piece of writing. Sometimes we will demonstrate paragraph construction before getting them to write their own paragraphs. We will let them look at letters to identify common lay out patterns, and we should let them work with internet e-mails, so that they observe how they are organized.

At more advanced levels we will get them analyze more complex devices for cohesion and coherence in a text and we will have them focus on different kinds of writing to prepare them for trying these out for them.

Of a different character are the activities which encourage students to activate their written knowledge. Instead of getting students to think about how writing takes place we will put them in real or imagined situations where they want or need to write to communicate with someone else. At beginner levels we will get them write messages to each other or write postcards.

In the following lines I shall try to give some examples of activities that I tried to make up for my students. There is a series of activities for the “before reading” stage of the class, activities for the “while reading” stage of the class and activities which can be used during the “after reading” stage of the class.

WRITE-BEFORE -YOU-READ ACTIVITIES

Activity I: Writing about an experience

Level Intermediate-Advanced

Time 20 minutes

Rationale

The aim of the activity is the fact that students should write about something they experienced in the past and that relates to central ideas, themes of events in an excerpt from a literary work that they are going to read. Thus, students make associations with the text.

Preparation

The teacher selects a suitable reading passage

The teacher devises writing prompt as for example, a reading passage that deals with issues around schooling or education, the teacher could ask students to write about something they recall from their own experiences with school.

Procedure

The students are told the topic or the title of the reading text. Students brainstorm words that they associate with the topic, to activate known vocabulary. They come to the blackboard to write their ideas or on a large piece of paper. If they write the words in their notebooks, as well, students get practice writing.

The students are asked to do the activity for about 10 minutes and if it necessary the teacher can model this stage with the students before they write.

The teacher chooses some students to read their writing aloud then he/she can ask for volunteers to read aloud to the whole class.

Similarities and differences are discussed freely.

The text is read by the teacher..

Variations

As a variation, the teacher can ask his/her students to close their eyes and imagine sights, sounds, smells, feelings they associate with the experience. The teacher may ask them questions such as, where are you, who is with you, and how old are you? This variation can be performed before students begin writing. Then have students open their eyes and begin writing.

Comments

Through this activity, students discover what they already know about a topic. When students from connections with a text by relating it to their own concrete experience, they gain a deeper understanding of characters and issues in the text. After reading the text, students can think about it and consider their own experience in light of the point of view they encountered there.

This activity is an informal kind of writing and can be used to prepare students to write a formal paragraph or essay. For example, this first piece of writing could be developed into a longer narrative of students own experiences.

Activity II: Predicting

Level Beginning-Advanced

Time 30 minutes

Rationale

The aim of this activity is for students to preview a reading passage in order to predict its content.

Preparation

The teacher selects a reading passage which he/she considers to be appropriate for the level of his/her students.

Procedure

The students skim the text they will be reading to get a general idea of what it is about

The students can use the following are strategies:

Read the title and any introductory material

Read the first paragraph

Read the first sentence of each paragraph

Read the last paragraph

The teacher asks students to analyze the text and write down what they think the passage will be about or what they think will happen in the reading based on the information they were offered in step one. According to the nature of reading and the level of class, students could write lists of words or phrases, or they could write a paragraph.

Students are asked to read what they have written to a classmate. Then ask for volunteers to read to the whole class.

After reading the entire passage, students can compare their predictions with the text.

Variations

After previewing the text, ask students what to write their questions in their notebooks or on a large piece of chart paper. After reading, get students to note which of their questions were answered. Ask them to write down the answers they found.

The students are given a piece of paper and are asked to divide it into three columns. In one column, the students write a list of things they already know about the reading. In the other column, students write questions that they would like to see answered or that they still have about the text. As they read, ask students to look for answers to their questions and, later, to add those answers to the third column of their chartsthen, students can reconstruct the passage they were given using their predictions and their answeres to the questions, or they can sum up the text using those predictions.

Comments

Making prediction is a good activity, which gives students the opportunity to become authors of the text and may come to understand the kinds of expectations that a reader has of a writer, which can be helpful for them in their own writing.

Students may also begin to see the role of the previewing and predicting in an understanding what they read. In addition, this kind of activity gives students a purpose for reading and motivates them to discover whether their predictions about the passage are correct or not.

WRITE-WHILE -YOU-READ ACTIVITIES

Activity I: Plus-Minus-Interesting

Level: Pre-intermediate-Advanced

Time 25 minutes

Rationale

The students are asked to read a passage the teacher has already offered and to sort the information into three categories. This type of activity helps students to become able to evaluate and form an opinion about what they read.

Preparation

The teacher chooses an appropriate reading passage.

Procedure

The students are asked to draw a table with three columns and to table the columns plus, minus and Interesting.

The students are asked to find key information in the reading passage and write it into one of the three columns.

The students are told to write ideas that they see as being positive or that they like in the Plus column ; ideas that seem negative or what they don’t like in the Minus column ; and ideas that they can find particularly interesting in the last column marked Interesting.

After reading, students are asked to work in pairs or small groups to share the information on their charts and to explain their positions on the topic.

Finally, discuss and compare the selection students made.

Variations

Students can do this activity as an after –reading activity. They can fill out their charts individually or in groups.

Students can write a four-paragraph essay with one paragraph focusing on each of the categories in the chart, as a follow-up to this activity. They have to follow the structure:

Introduction , beginning with what students found interesting

Pluses (or Minuses)

Minuses (or Pluses)

Conclusions

Comments

Students can get practice in applying critical thinking through this activity. As they read, they interact with the text and focus closely on key concepts while at the same time evaluating or analyzing those concepts according to their own criteria.

In addition students get practice in sorting information into categories. It is a useful activity because it can form opinions about different things. As such, it makes a good starting point for a more formal writing assignment in which students write about their opinions, argue for or against an issue, or write an evaluation of a consumer product or service.

This type of activity can be done with the whole class when doing it for the first time of with low-level students. Everything can be written on the blackboard.

Activity II: Double – Entry Response

Level Intermediate- Advanced

Time 20 minutes

Rationale

In this activity, the significant points from a reading passage are selected by the students and they have to write a response to each point. The activity helps students interact with the reading, focus on what the author is saying, and explore the meaning of the passage for themselves.

Preparation

The teacher selects an appropriate reading passage.

Procedure

The students are asked to divide a piece of paper into two columns. They can either fold the paper in half or draw a line down the middle of the paper.

The teacher tells students that they should copy interesting or important points from the passage on the left side of the paper while they read the text. Those points could include words, phrases, sentences, ideas or details.

The teacher asks students to write their responses to the copied text on the right side of the paper, after reading it. Students can ask questions, note confusion, and make connections to something else they’ve read or seen, and express feelings, thoughts, disagreement, or agreement.

The students must read their ideas aloud.

The teacher invites the class as a whole to compare and discuss their choices and responses.

Variations

Another possibility is to ask the students summarize the points they find interesting or important rather than copy them. This variation can be done either for each paragraph or for larger portions of text.

Students can make ad notations on the margin of the reading passage if the teacher offers them papers printed in this way. They can then write bride responses to those points in the right margin.

Students can engage in a written conversation with each other using triple-entry notes instead of sharing their responses verbally.

Students can divide a paper into three columns, and after they have selected significant points from the reading and responded to them, they can exchange their papers with each other. Each student reads another’s work and writes responses to it in the third column.

Comments

In this activity, students are actively engaged in and focused on the reading as they separate what the author is thinking from what they think. Students enrich their reading and deepen their understanding of a passage because they look for and from their own unique, personal connections to the text. Students also get practice in taking notes from a text.

Activity III: Are they the same?

Level Intermediate- Advanced

Time 20 minutes

Rationale

The teacher selects two different reading paragraphs from the same literary text: short story, novel, or story. Students select what they find to resemble in the reading paragraphs which the teacher has selected and write a response to each point. This activity helps students interact with the reading, focus on what the author is saying, and explore the meaning of the passage for themselves.

Preparation

The teacher selects two appropriate reading passages taken out from the same literary text.

Procedure

The students are given a few minutes to review the text. They are told to remember everything they can.

The teacher makes sure if the students know the meanings.

Students can engage in a written conversation with each other using triple-entry notes, instead of sharing their responses verbally. After they have selected significant points from the reading and responded to them, ask the students to exchange their papers with each other. Have each student read another’s work and when write responses to it in the third column.

The teacher invites volunteers to tell one thing each that they remember from the reading and they find similar with the other paragraph. The teacher clarifies any misunderstandings or confusion.

Ask students to write down what they remember from the reading, using the key words from the handout. Students, they could write phrases, sentences or a paragraph, depending on their level.

Comments

This type of activity is an important step in the reading process because it helps the teacher to figure out whether students have understood the reading, and allows the teacher to discover and work with any misconceptions that might arise. All skills are used in this type of activity, enhancing both their written and spoken language.

In addition, students can try to predict whether the passages chosen by the teacher are taken from texts they have already worked with or from different other texts which they have in their bibliography.

Activity II: Making Lists

Level Beginner-Intermediate

Time any time while reading a text

Rationale

In this activity, students select what they find to be significant points from a reading passage and write down the information. The activity helps students interact with the reading, focus on what the author is saying, and explore the meaning of the passage for themselves.

Preparation

Any reading passage selected by the teacher or any other text that the student reads from the bibliography of for pleasure.

Procedure

The students are asked to write down any interesting expressions or different words they are encountering in their lectures.

The teacher can ask the students to use the expressions in the writing activities that follow.

Comments

Making lists is a useful step in the reading process because students have the possibility to select words and expressions which they consider interesting and then to re-use them in the writing activities. In this way students have the possibility to enlarge not only their vocabulary but they can rehearse different structures.

WRITE-AFTER-YOU-READ ACTIVITIES

Activity I: Retelling

Level Beginner- Advanced

Time 30 minutes

Rationale

Students are asked to read a paragraph, then they have to recall as much as they can of what they read, first in speaking and then in writing. When they reconstruct a text, they have the possibility to practice what they had learned and can clarify if they understood what they have read.

Preparation

Students are given to read an appropriate text, chosen by the teacher in accordance to the level of the students. A relatively short reading is advisable for this activity since students will be asked to recall what they have read without referring to the text.

The teacher selects key words from the reading and asks students to use them when retelling. The words are written on a paper in random order. Also the words can be written on the blackboard or on a large piece of chart paper. Students must write them down and make sentences using them, or write a certain paragraph using them as a homework activity.

Procedure

Students are given a few minutes to review the text, after reading, and are told to remember everything they can.

The teacher must check if the students know the meaning of the words.

The teacher asks students to take turns with a classmate to tell each other in their own words what key remember from the reading. The teacher should encourage students to use as many of the key words as they can.

The teacher invites volunteers to tell one thing each that they remember from the reading, and then he/she asks students to write down what they remember from the reading, using the key words from the handout. they could write phrases, sentences or a paragraph, in accordance to the level of students

Variations

Two separate sets of words can be given to each pair of students’. Each student uses one set to retell the reading.

This activity can be adapted to give students more guidance and modelling in retelling. As a group activity, students tell everything they can remember about the text. The students can write their comments in any order on the board or on a large piece of chart paper

As a final task, students can reconstruct the reading in sentence of paragraph from the information they have organized. During the checking activity, the teacher can write on the blackboard the sentences the students are reading, or the teacher can ask volunteers to do this. Not to scary the students, instead of making the corrections himself/herself, the teacher can ask other students to correct possible mistakes. Then the students should write the complete paragraph in their notebooks.

The teacher can ask advanced students to take notes of the significant parts of the text they are reading, and then use them to reconstruct the reading in writing. In this way the activity can become more challenging.

Comments

Retelling is a valuable step in the reading process because the teacher can figure out if the students have understood what he/she has already read. This allows the teacher to discover and work with any misconceptions that might arise.

Retelling gives students practice in all skills. Both written and spoken language is used in this type of activity. Even more, students have the possibility to see how writers organize texts and they get practice in organizing them.

As a variation to retelling students can write a summary, using the information they have encountered, during the activity.

Activity II: Open- Ended Responses

Level Intermediate _ Advanced

Time 30 minutes

Rationale

The purpose of the activity is for students to learn to react thoughtfully to a text in order to discover ideas and extend their understanding, by writing personal responses guided by prompts.

Preparation

The teacher selects a text be it narrative or factual, because these types of texts offer a good chance of giving responses. The text itself should be that kind of text that motivates students to write a reaction to it. The teacher asks students to skim the passage first to be able to complete a pre-reading type of activities, then he/she asks students to read the text again for more detailed activities proper to the while reading and after reading activities.

The teacher prepares a handout with instructions for the activity along with an open-ended response prompts. Students may be given only one prompt to write from or they can be given several from which to choose. The possibilities for responding to a reading are numerous. Students can be asked to respond in the following way:

Explore the thoughts or feelings about the reading

Relate the reading to their own experience

Agree or disagree with the text

Link texts to each other

Raise questions about something they found confusing or didn’t understand

Write about what they found significant

The prompts can take any of the following forms:

Statements (Talk about what you agree with, Talk about what you disagree with, describe the passage that you like)

Questions (what do you agree with? what do you disagree with? Is there anything you like? Is there anything you dislike? )

Unfinished sentences (In my opinion the main character….In my opinion the style of the text ….I think the author is right because ….. I think the author is wrong because…)

Procedure

The teacher tells students to writing a response to a passage they have read. The teacher gives them the handout and explains the prompt or prompts if necessary. If there is more than one prompts, students should choose just one, if there are students who would like to work all the prompts, they should be encouraged in doing this. Alternatively, students could also be given the option to write whatever they want. Invite the students to write for about 15 minutes. Ask them to put thought and care into their responses, but not to worry overly about grammar and mechanics. The aim is to have their writing flow smoothly as they put their thoughts on paper.

After writing, the teacher asks students to share their responses, by reading them to a classmate or to a small group.

The teacher invites students to read their responses to the class as a whole. Students can be asked to reflect and to discuss on the variety of responses.

Variations

This activity can be adapted to all levels of learning and the role of the teacher is to modify the activity so that it is accessible to beginner students. One possibility is to ask students to respond to reading by writing words or phrases under headings such as, Things I like, List the words that you find strange, Note down expressions that you find interesting or Things I Don’t Understand.

As a pre-reading activity, before beginning it, students could spend a few minutes telling each other what they know about the topic.

To help the teacher sure that the students have understood the main points, he/she can make a quick check.

Comments

This type of activity encourages students to pay attention to meaning rather than to initial recall of information. Because there is no single correct response, students are challenged to move beyond memorizing facts and regurgitating information. Instead, they are engaged in analyzing and reflecting on ideas, themes or issues. Students practice using critical thinking skills as they generate hypotheses, from insights, and build connections between the text and their lives. The response process promotes involvement, questions, deeper understanding, as well as motivation. Though sharing what they have written, students may become aware of the many different possibilities for interpretation, which may lead them to reflect on and revise their own ideas.

Writing responses to reading is a learning activity that requires a fair command of the language, so students may need time and practice before they are able to write thoughtful, insightful responses. Their first responses may, in fact, seem more like summaries.

The teacher can collect the students’ written responses and comment on them in some way. At times, the teacher can write comments or ask questions about what students have written or he/she can evaluate the responses by assigning them from 0-3 points depending on how much thoughtfulness and insightfulness have gone into them.

Activity III: Guided Responses

Level Intermediate – Advanced

Time 20 minutes

Rationale

In this activity, the teacher asks students to follow a directed or guided prompt to write a response to a reading. Guided responses help students look deeper into ideas, style, themes and characters.

Preparation

The teacher selects a narrative or factual reading text that offers a good chance give a response. The students are asked to read the passage, complete any appropriate pre – or during-reading activities.

The teacher prepares some instructions for the activity with a response prompt that will help students discover and analyze ideas from the reading, drawing out meaningful responses from the students.

There are numerous ways in which students can respond. The following are few suggestions:

Use details from the reading to analyze a concept , character , item of event

Respond to a concept , character , item or event

Relate the reading to other works or to their own experience

Look at the reading from a different point of view

Extend the reading

Ask questions

Procedure

The teacher gives students some minutes to review the text, after the reading period, and asks them to remember everything they can. The teacher can organize some kind of contest: the students are asked to group themselves into groups of 4, and they are asked to write down as much as they can remember from the reading activity. The group with the most detailed information written down wins the contest. To motivate the students, the teacher can mark all the members of the winning group.

The teacher can check the list of key words to make sure students know the meanings.

Ask students to put aside the passage and take turns with a classmate to tell each other in their own words what key remember from the reading. Encourage students to use as many of the key words as they can.

The teacher invites volunteers to tell one thing each that they remember from the reading. The students are asked to refer to the text to clarify any misunderstandings or confusion.

The teacher asks students to write down what they remember from the reading, using the key words written down in the while reading activity. According to the level of the students, they could write phrases, sentences or a descriptive paragraph.

Variations

The teacher asks the students to choose a short passage from the reading either because they like it, or they think it is important, or they find it confusing. They have to copy the passage at the top of a piece of paper exactly as it appears in the text .Then, on the same paper; they write the motif for choosing that passage.

The students are asked to select their favourite, or what they see as the most significant, word, phrase or sentence from reading .they have to copy the passage onto a piece of paper .As in Variation 1, the students have to write why they chose the words. The students organized into small groups, read aloud their quotes and responses. Other members of the group share why they feel the quote is significant. The student whose writing is being discussed gives the final response. In that response, students may include new points from the discussion or may change their original in some way. The students are asked to write new responses in which they include any insights they acquired after the post reading activity.

Comments

This is a useful activity because it guides students toward constructing meaning from a reading passage. This kind of writing activity, from a directed response has the role to broaden students’ interpretation and reflection, and helps them go beyond summary in their responses. It encourages students to think, to gather evidences, and to form hypotheses. Completed responses can be saved and may form the basis for a more formal writing assignment, for a future homework.

Activity IV: Summarizing

Level High Intermediate –Advanced

Time 90 minutes

Rationale

This is an activity where students identify the main ideas in a reading and use that information to write a summary.

Preparation

The teacher selects a narrative or factual reading text and asks the students to read the passage, in order to complete any appropriate pre-or during-reading activities.

The teacher prepares a list of guidelines for writing a summary. These guidelines could be put on the board, offered on a paper or on a large piece of chart paper.

The teacher selects a few examples of model summaries for students to read and evaluate. Reading and writing textbooks are good sources for this kind of activity. This is an optional activity.

Procedure

The students take notes or highlight the major ideas in a reading text, either while they read or after reading.

The role of the teacher is to monitor the students’ understanding of the reading by asking them to retell in their own words what they can remember from the reading, first in pairs and then with the whole class. Another possibility will be to ask questions from the text, He/she clarifies any misconceptions or areas of confusion, by doing this.

The students are asked to work in pairs or small groups and they have to tell whether they agree on a list of the main ideas from the reading. They have to refer to their notes or to their annotations in the text.

The teacher organizes the class into groups and asks the students to share their opinions, and then he/she ask for volunteers to write their ideas on the board or on a large piece of chart paper.

The most important ideas are discussed with the whole class. The teacher invites them to suggest any details on the list that don’t contribute to the overall understanding on the text and could be taken out.

After reading, the teacher gives students a few minutes to review the text. Tell them to remember everything they can. He/she can organize some kind of competition, and the winner can be marked, this could stimulate the students’ insightfulness for the activity.

The list of key words is checked by the teacher by asking questions or by resolving a short exercise to make sure students know the meanings.

The students are asked to leave the reading text aside and take turns with a classmate to tell each other in their own words what they remember from the reading. The teacher encourages students to use as many of the key words as they can.

The teacher invites volunteers to tell one thing each that they remember from the reading, and asks students to refer to the text to clarify any misunderstandings or confusion.

The students are asked to write down what they remember from the reading, using the key words from the list offered by the teacher at the while reading activity stage. Depending on the level of students, they could write phrases, sentences or a paragraph. The most interesting writings can be marked in order to stimulate the students; they have to be told that grammatical errors are not taken into account.

The teacher organizes the students into pairs and asks them to put the ideas in a logical order. Then, they regroup as a class to organize the ideas written on the board or chart paper.

The teacher can ask students to write a summary of the text. If the teacher works with beginner students he/she can give them a model summary first, to make the activity less stressful.

The teacher asks students to put aside the text and to use the ideas they listed and organized to write a paragraph summarizing the reading.

Variations

In a more guided activity, the teacher can offer questions related to the main ideas of the text and students can write answers which they can use to build a summary of the reading.

First students are asked to retell the text they are reading, and then they can build a summary from that retold paragraph. To make the activity more interesting the teacher can ask students to point any irrelevant details found in the retold paragraph. Afterwards, students have to rewrite the paragraph organizing the information clearly and eliminating the details they have decided to be irrelevant. To make the activity more motivating the teacher can organize this activity on the form of a contest, marking the best students.

Comments

Summarizing is different from retelling in that, in summarizing, the information from a reading is distilled into its essential elements. Retelling is more complete, less precise reconstructing of a text. Condensing a text requires a great deal of skills in using the language. It is a challenging activity for language learners. Thus, students benefit when the activity is carefully modelled, and when they have many opportunities for practice. To begin with, students can move from writing guided summaries of short, simple texts, to writing independently from longer, more complex readings.

Students should learn the skill of summarizing because this is an important skill which can help students in getting used to remembering the information they read in a certain text. They are expected to be able to summarize information in their own words from other sources as well as from their own experience. The teacher can use this type of activity because it is very useful in the following activities where he/she can tell students to incorporate that information into descriptions, narrations, essays and longer papers.

Activity V: Reviewing

Level Intermediate-Advanced

Time 30 minutes

Rationale

Students are asked to recall as much as they can of what they read, first in speaking and then in writing after reading a passage. Reconstructing a reading gives students the opportunity to clarify their understanding of the text and gives them practice in using the language they are learning. After doing this part of the activity they can be asked to try to write a review of the thing they have read about, for the school magazine.

Preparation

The students are asked to read an appropriate text. It is advisable to work with a relatively short reading for this activity since students will be asked to recall first, what they have read without referring to the text.

The teacher selects key words from the reading that students can use in the retelling part of the activity and he/she prepares a piece of paper with the words in random order. The teacher can ask some volunteers to write the words on the blackboard or on a large piece of chart paper.

The students are asked to write a formal letter to a students’ magazine with the review of the text they have read about.

Procedure

The students are given a few minutes to review the text, after the reading activity stage. The teacher tells them to remember everything they can. The students can write the information they remember in their notebooks or they can speak about what they remember.

The teacher checks the list of key words to make sure students know the meanings.

The students are asked to leave the text aside and take turns with a classmate to tell each other in their own words what key remember from the reading. The teacher should encourage students to use as many of the key words as they can.

The teacher invites volunteers to tell one thing each that they remember from the reading. And to clarify any misunderstandings or confusion, it is advisable to ask students information from the text.

The teacher asks students to write down what they remember from the reading, using the key words from the list they have noted on the blackboard an in their notebooks. Taking into account the level of students, they could be asked to write phrases, sentences or a paragraph with the review of the text they have already read, or to write the review in the form of a letter which they have to send to a magazine.

Comments

Reviewing is different from retelling and summarizing in that, reviewing, the information from a reading is distilled into its essential elements. Retelling is more complete, less precise reconstructing of a text, summarizing almost the same as retelling, but reviewing is condensing a text and in the same time giving opinions. It is a challenging activity for language learners. Students can move from writing guided reviews of short, simple texts, to writing independently from longer, more complex readings.

Students are expected to be able to offer information in their own words after a structure given by the teacher. In addition they will be asked to incorporate that information into formal letters written for magazines of other publications.

LESSON PLAN 1

Date:

Title of the lesson: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Class/Level: Pre-intermediate

Type of lesson: teaching

Objectives: O1 –to be able to give opinion about a certain writer

O2 – to be able to predict what the story is about

O3 – to learn how to retell a story

O4 – to be able to deal with the multi part verbs related to the text

Contents:

LESSON PLAN 2

Date:

Title of the lesson: Strange but True

Class/Level: upper-intermediate

Type of lesson: consolidation

Objectives: O1- to be able to make predictions

O2 – to be able to read for gist

O3 – to be able to read for detail

O4 – to focus on ways of making a story more interesting

Contents:

LESSON PLAN 3

Date:

Title of the lesson: Autobiography

Class/Level: upper-intermediate

Type of lesson: consolidation

Objectives: O1- to talk about personal experiences

O2 – to revise strategies for approaching and understanding unseen reading texts

O3 – to practice word-building strategies (adjectives, nouns and adverbs)

O4 – to practice noun-adjective word formation

Contents:

LESSON PLAN 4

Date:

Title of the lesson:”Give me Shelter”

Class/Level: Advanced

Type of lesson: test paper

Objectives: O1- to be able to understand a text

O2- to be able to deal with the style of the text

O3- to be able to write the ending of the story

Contents:

When planning my lessons for the activities I tried to choose activities such as teaching information in the first lesson plan, consolidating information for the next two lesson plans and of course a lesson plan to check information. The page with the answers for the last lesson plan is added to the Annexes part of this work.

I have tried to choose some interesting literary texts which I considered to be easy to work with. So, I have chosen “The Picture of Dorian Gray” written by Oscar Wilde, a text which I consider very interesting and adapted to some extent to the students ways of thinking and reacting to beauty. The second text is “Strange but True” adapted from the novel” Rebecca”, written by Daphne du Maurier, an interesting text which I have chosen with the idea that young children are very interested by this kind of detective stories. The third activity has two interesting and in the same time dramatic texts: a diary written by the Jewish teenager Anne Frank, who was a very intelligent girl at her thirteen years when she wrote her diary, and Helen Keller’s autobiography, which is a very touching text taken into account the fact that the writer was deaf, blind and severely speech-impaired. For the last lesson plan, which is a test, I chose the text “Give me Shelter” a short story written by Kirkwood.

During the second semester of the school year 2014/2015 I worked on these literary texts during my English classes and all the data obtained after working with literary texts were explained and analysed in the Research part of this work.

1. RESEARCH.

1.1 RESEARCH THEME

There is a trend nowadays which considers that teaching writing is a process which should encourage students to engage in this activity by understanding its conventions but even more, all the actors of the process have to understand that meaning is not what one starts out with but what one ends up with moving from one text to another; this is nothing else but literary enrichment and this cannot be done without literary texts which are more powerful than functional texts.

The idea of this research is to demonstrate the fact that students are working better with and they are more interested in working out literary texts despite functional texts which are scarce in meaning.

By using literary texts, students’ skills for writing in English could be improved, therefore practical writing activities (descriptions, the plot, the style, and the theme) together with creative writing activities work well together in developing the ability of writing in a foreign language.

1.2 RESEARCH OBJECTIVES

The following objectives have been formulated according with the theme and the hypothesis of the research:

To determine the role of literary texts and their impact on students’ skills

To demonstrate the fact that working on/with literary texts can lead to increase the motivation of the students for learning a foreign language and the effectiveness of the teaching process

To develop and reinforce the skills of understanding literary texts using pair work, group work, and even individual work

3. RESEARCH HYPOTHESIS

In an educational context which intends to actively engage the students in learning a foreign language, we consider that the use of literary texts to the functional texts disadvantage offers a richer approach to the study of a foreign language, having as main purpose to form communicative skills and cultural knowledge to students, essential abilities for successful socio-professional integration.

Planning a teaching/learning process which emphasizes the importance of literary texts to the disadvantage of functional texts will determine the consolidation of the ability to understand a literary text, to increase the motivation to learn easier a foreign language and above all, to improve the students’ learning achievements therefore, teaching English by interrelating writing and literary understanding is an efficient approach to teaching a foreign language.

Starting from this hypotheses, our research has as main objective to determine the fact that literary texts are more efficient to the functional texts disadvantage when teaching/learning a foreign language, for a 11th grade class.

4. THE GROUP OF STUDENTS PARTICIPATING IN THE RESEARCH

The research was held during the second semester of the school year 2014/2015, especially during the months February to May 2015, at Novaci Highschool.

To achieve the objectives of the research, the experimental activity followed some steps:

In the first place we gave an initial test to some classes in the 11th theoretical grade in order to choose the appropriate group of students to work with.

All along the experimental stage we tried to use different types of activities, modern methods and approaches so that the group of students we have chosen for the research, are able to deal with the literary texts.

In the end of the experiment we measured the results using different tables and diagrams.

During the activity in the classroom we have implemented our research using the investigation as method, and our intention was not only to gather data but also to improve the teaching/learning process.

5. METHODS AND TECHNIQUES

The first time students come in contact with a written text that they will be required to read in class or at home, there is an opportunity for rich input in the foreign language that will motivate students to read the text. With planning, teachers can instil an enthusiasm for the reading, the result of which may be that learners actually do the reading assignment and learn something from what they read.

The best method to apply during the activities of teaching English from literary texts is the Communicative Language Teaching because it is based on the fact that students will learn better if they actively participate in meaningful communication.

During the research we have used a great diversity of activities, such as pre-reading activities, while reading activities and post reading activities. Because reading important works of literature is an essential part of learning a foreign language and its culture and because developing students’ ability to use a foreign language is a necessary element of successful language learning, using activities to allow students to get to know a text and interact with it will facilitate these goals.

The key to making learners’ first encounter with a text memorable is to plan activities that ensure that all learners are actively involved and participating. All of these suggested activities can be adapted to meet the teaching and learning needs of the teacher and students and to students’ level.

The study of literature is indispensable because it exposes students to meaningful contexts that are replete with descriptive language and interesting characters. Structuring lessons around the reading of literature introduces a profound range of vocabulary, dialogues, and prose.

In addition to developing students’ English language skills, teaching literature also appeals to their imagination, develops cultural awareness, and encourages critical thinking about plots, themes, and characters. Most importantly, the activities that one can apply with literature lessons easily conform to the student-centred and interactive tenets of teaching in a communicative way; that is why during the research the students we working in small groups, in pars and even they were doing individual activities.

6. DATA ANALYSES

The analysis of the predictive test offered the teacher good information about students’ level of English as long as their level of knowledge of the literary texts. The test was initially given to many 11th grade classes, but it concluded the fact that only the students in the Philology class were able to handle the test. We have to mention that the same test (Annex 3) was given to all the classes. Here are the results of the predictive test obtained by the students from the Philology class, and the graphic below offers a comparative analysis between 11th grade Informatics’ results and 11th grade Philology results:

Table nr.1 The results in the predictive test (30 students)

Graphic nr.1 Predictive Test Results

Graphic nr.2 Predictive Test Resaults (percentage)

The results show that the two classes were close from the point of view of the ability to use English with a slightly difference between them. The Philology class could handle better the predictive texts from the point of view of the literary awareness, which can be easily understood because the curriculum of this class offers more Romanian literature classes that could reinforce to these students a better knowledge of the literary terms.

After this initial step, when we had to select the group to work with, we have to move on to the next level of our research when we have to work for some weeks doing activities on literary texts and not the usual functional texts found in the course books. We tried to choose a diverse range of texts either interesting or attractive which the students seemed to handle very well and they were attracted by this kind of texts in an unexpected good manner.

During the classes we were doing activities of reading, pre-reading, while reading and after-reading activities, mixing them with a lot of speaking activities and of course writing activities. The study of literature is amenable to this kind of activities which are student centred; activities that offer opportunities for collaborative group work such as role plays, drama, and other projects where English is the common medium of authentic communication. The choice of texts and activities is crucial because these selections will make the difference between passive reading and active involvement with a literary text. Literature has the power to create opinions and individual meanings for students; hence, they were the ones to initiate and sustain activities based on the literary themes that resonated with them. This helped students become active classroom participants and lead to autonomous learning.

After this period of teaching/learning using literary texts, we gave a final test (Anexa nr.4) to the group of students to check if they will deal in the same way with the two types of texts (literary texts vs. functional texts) or there will be a difference in approaching them.

Table nr.2 . Final Test – Literary Text (30 students)

Table nr. 3 Final Test – Functional test (30 Students)

Table nr. 4 Final Test- Comparing Results

Graphic nr 3. Final Test Results

Graphic nr. 4 Results (Percentage)

Table nr. 5 Comparing Results

Graphic Nr.5 Predictive Test & Final Test – Literary Texts

Graphic nr. 6. Predictive Test & Final Test – Literary Texts (Percentage)

Graphic Nr. 7. Predictive Test & Final Test Results – Functional Texts

Graphic Nr. 8 . Predictive Test & Final Test Results – Functional Texts (Percentage)

Once the data were analyzed we could conclude that in the final test, the literary text was better undertaken by the students in comparison with the initial tests and with the test that used a functional text.

Taking into account the fact that even if the two types of texts were perceived similarly there is an obvious positiveness towards the literary texts which were considered to be more interesting and attractive by the students.

7. CONCLUSIONS

The experiment demonstrated that the students in the research had a clear evolution in learning a foreign language with the help of Literary texts vs. Functional texts. In the beginning the students were sceptic about the idea of reading a literary text, because they were used to working with functional texts. Also, the idea of reading anything scared them a little at first, but after some classes we could manage to attract their attention and interest towards learning English by interrelating writing and literary texts.

We managed to plan activities which ensured that all the students were actively involved and participating – which they loved. The authentic material offered by this kind of teaching, the collaborative group work, and the fact that the students could enrich their cultural knowledge made them be more personally and actively involved during the classes which they considered to be more comprehensive therefore more enjoyable because they offered the students authentic communication.

The information gathered either after the predictive test or the final test allows us to say that the experiment proved the hypothesis of the research that is the fact that teaching English by interrelating writing and literary understanding is an efficient approach to teaching English.

8. WAYS TO USE RESEARCH RESULTS

The texts and the activities selected for the experiment will be used in the future English classes not only for the Philology students where the number of English classes are numerous, but also in an optional class if the curriculum of the school allows it. Another possibility will be to share our experiment with the English teachers in the area Carbunesti-Novaci, at a future term encounter, where we can have the chance to explain and show the experiment to our colleagues, telling them how important is to make our students read something, especially literary texts, and how useful can re-become literary texts in teaching a foreign language.

CONCLUSIONS

Literature is a way to know reality with the help of the artistic image, a special feature of literary works is the fact that they influence not only one’s judgement but also one’s feelings or one’s consciousness.

When teaching a foreign language, the use of literature and culture can be seen as a bridge between the target language and its soul, that is because they offer students the opportunity to interact with the target language, in the sense that they portray the world in a contextualized situation and open the door to the perception that there is a complex relationship between grammar and the humanistic field. Literature can be seen as a door opener that leads to a wider look on the culture, by the use of the authentic materials.

The work with the title “Teaching English by Interrelating Writing and Literary Understanding”, aims to use literary texts to make language teaching more interesting, attractive and enriching. We used a variety of activities to offer to the students the opportunity to get practice in using all the language skills, but with emphasis on reading and especially on writing abilities. The activities were placed in categories according to what students can do before reading, while reading, and after reading. The two most important and reinforced skills along our work, mutually reinforce each other and therefore, promote learning when they are integrated in classroom activities, and students become better readers, writers and thinkers when they learn the two skills together.

My work is structured into 3 chapters: the first and the second chapters offer theoretic aspects of literature, literary texts and literary understanding; the third chapter is intended to offer some concrete, particular theoretic aspects of the work; the research and the conclusions.

In the Introduction I explain why I have chosen this theme, I will write about the importance of literature and writing for teaching languages and I will decide the aims of my work.

The 1st chapter’s name is “From literature to writing”. Along this chapter I presented some general theoretical aspects of my work. The chapter has two parts: the first part deals with the literary texts and their interpretation, the second part was about the way we can use literary texts to write. This chapter intended to demonstrate the important idea that interpretation of texts is unavoidable, and it opens the door to a wider appreciation of the texts. It is a tool that helps us think more deeply about the literature that we read .Overtime different schools of criticism have developed their own approaches to the act of reading.

The 2nd chapter’s name is “Teaching successful writing starting from understanding literary texts”. This chapter is structured on four sub-parts: the first one was about using integrated skills in teaching English, the second one was about teaching vocabulary and grammar through reading literature and writing activities, the third part analyzed the role of the teacher in teaching English through literary texts and writing, and the last part of the chapter dealt with the evaluation methods. When teaching writing there are special considerations to be taken into account which include the considerations of sentences into paragraphs, how paragraphs are joined together and the general organization of ideas into a coherent piece of discourse. Students need to see the difference between spoken and written English. The role of writing in every day life has changed dramatically over recent decades. When selecting work for students, the teacher needs to be clear to offer useful practice. The teacher can help students become better writers by helping and encouraging them in an active manner to follow different lead in steps before having to produce the final text.

The 3rd chapter’s name is “The Importance of Literature for Teaching English”. The chapter has two sub-parts: the first one was dealing with the potential of literature for teaching vocabulary, grammar and developing the skills, the second part was presenting ways of using literary texts in teaching writing. The best way for students to grasp the essential value of writing as a form of communication is to produce the kind of practical writing that people do in their everyday life. This kind of practical writing has both a clear purpose and a specific audience: invitations, letters or instructions are types of writing that anyone has to do at some time during daily activities. We might give directions to a tourist asking us where a certain place is, or for example make a particular dish or perform a traditional dance. If our students experiment with this practical writing in the classroom they will be not only practicing writing in the new language but also learning about the conventions of the new culture.

The last part of the work “Teaching English by Interrelating Writing and Literary Understanding” is a research which demonstrates the fact that students can learn a foreign language if there is a relation between writing activities and literary understanding. The teacher has an important role because the text and the activities have to be chosen in accordance to the main idea of the research: To make English learning easier, more interesting and more enriching, which the research succeeded in.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages”, Teacher Ideas Press, London, 2006

PREDICTIVE TEST

1. TEST PAPER-English 11th Grade

I. 1. Read the text below and complete the following tasks.

If the very idea of a fitness routine leaves you feeling exhausted and you shiver at the thought of jogging round the park in the winter wind; (1). This new gentle form of oriental gymnastics is composed of meditative exercises which involve standing in a series of postures for up to half an hour a day, or combining simple movements with breathing exercises. (2) it is quickly growing in popularity as it is considered to be a good way of reducing stress, stimulating the circulation and strengthening the body’s immune system.(3). But although conventional medicine cannot explain it, governments keen to cut rising healthcare costs are endorsing it. In Germany, for example, Qigong is available on the national healthcare system and many doctors are prescribing it for aches, swellings and allergies. (4)

I. 1. a. Four sentences have been removed from the text. Select the appropriate sentence for each gap in the text. 30 points

A. Chinese practitioners have found it difficult to persuade the western mind of the powers of Qigong.

B. then Qigong might be just the form of exercise you are looking for.

C. Many patients who have suffered from allergies for years have found that, since starting Qigong, they haven’t been ill at all, or only suffer from very slight allergic reactions.

D. Although this type of exercise does not build muscles,

I 1.b Match the words in bold in the text to their definition given below. 30 points

II. Read the text below. In one paragraph write your own ending of the story. (8- 10 lines) 40 points

Recently, Qigong has been used in the treatment of serious. A French air stewardess was told that she had cancer, but qigong made her feel better. Later, doctors could find no traces of cancer.

PREDICTIVE TEST

2. TEST PAPER- English 11th Grade

I. 1. Read the text below and complete the following tasks.

Many people long to escape from the hustle and bustle of modern life. … (1) The Sirrs family, however, decided to do exactly that. Unhappy with their busy lifestyles they sold their 400 year-old cottage in Yorkshire to move to the tiny Scottish island of Graemsay. … (2) attracted initially by the low price, Rob and Jill contacted the agent concerned and discovered that “the estate” advertised actually comprised a post office, six houses and a private sandy beach- all for £60,000. Once on the island the Sirrs tried to imagine what life could be like for them. … (3). However, they had no need to worry. On that first trip they met up to half of the sixty or so island inhabitants and were given a warm welcome! … (4)

I. 1. a. Four sentences have been removed from the text. Select the appropriate sentence for each gap in the text. 30 points

A. They were anxious to meet their neighbours as soon as possible.

B. Incredibly for less than the price of a modest semi-detached house, it was possible to buy half the island.

C. But few people would actually give up a warm comfortable home to move to a remote island in the middle of the North Sea.

D. The couple was thrilled that the people of Graemsay were so friendly. Many of them urged the couple to complete the transaction as soon as possible. Within two weeks of their visit, the Sirrs’ bid of £55,000 was accepted.

I 1.b Match the words in bold in the text to their definition given below. 30 points

II. Read the text below. In 10 lines add as many ideas as possible. 40 points.

Since the move, the family has been visited by many friends who are envious of their beautiful surroundings. For very little cost, they have all the benefits of a beautiful place to live. They also hope that by improving their property they can, in future, give something back to the island.

1ST TEST – BAREM

1st part -60P

I.1. a. 1B; 2D; 3A; 4C; 30 p

1. b. A-gentle-1 30 p

B-swellings-2

C-shiver-3

D-circulation-4

E-oriental-5

2nd part – 40P

CONTENT 10p

GRAMMAR CORRECTNESS 10p

VOCABULARY 20p

2ND TEST BAREM

1ST PART- 60P

I. 1. a. 1C; 2B; 3A; 4D; 30p

1. b. A-inhabitants-1 30p

B-cottage-2

C-comprised-3

D-lifestyles-4

E-estate-5

2ND PART – 40P

CONTENT 10p

GRAMMAR CORRECTNESS 10p

VOCABULARY 20p