Critique on “Teaching Study Skills for English Literature”

Literature, Teacher Development, Teaching, Teaching Practices 0 comments

Critique on “Teaching Study Skills for English Literature”

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña Solano

Thursday, May 7, 2015

Twitter: @jonacuso

Post 167

For Long (1986), “both literature and language teaching involve the development of a feeling for language.” And “literature can provide a basis for extending language use” (McKay, 1986). And, as stated by Vincent (1986), if “the reader must bring to the text linguistic, conceptual, and cultural understanding of a high order,” teachers must be prepared to deal with literature in the classroom with more than the simple formalistic approach to literature instruction, what Short & Candlin refer to as “teaching about literature … instead of teaching literature itself.”

Short & Candlin (1986) carried out, with the help of several colleagues from and at the University of Lancaster (GB), a case study with three different groups of literature teachers from around the globe, and one of these courses took place in Nanjing, China with only Chinese instructors. The course organizers included three different instructional strands: stylistic analysis (language & literary study), reading strategies (levels of meaning, strategies, & difficulties), and curriculum design (purpose, content/methodology & evaluation).

Based on Short & Candlin’s (1986) case studies at Lancaster and Nanjing, what was suggested to course participants is that “if a reader feels some need to process a text as a literary artefact …, he or she will attempt to apply a set of special interpretative conventions.” From my experience, this “predisposition” or “literary indisposition” can trigger a high anxiety level when learners are faced with texts they are not ready to deal with. Students should be confronted with literature from a different angle where they can “perceive the text not so much as a literary one” (Short & Candlin, 1986). It is a shame that the case study authors did not include other activities they developed along their training courses.

Should literature be treated as something that is not connected to language? For Short & Candlin (1986), “if there is a distinct corpus of texts which can be called ‘literature’, it would appear that the corpus will have to be defined at least partly in socio-cultural rather than in linguistic terms.” In other words, literature as “the mirror stage” in Lancan’s words (Bruss, 1981) is a way to have the reader live life or its experiences over again. What literature awakes in the reader/student is what really counts, and if instructors are able to awake all this set of sensations, feelings and emotions, the beginning of some sort of literary criticism can start to happen in terms of literary appreciation.

Bruss, N. (1981), Lacan & Literature. The Massachusetts Review. Vol. 22, No. 1 (Spring 1981). pp. 62-92. Retrieved on 2015, April 2, 2015 from the Jstor webpage at http://www.jstor.org/stable/25089121

Long, M. (1986). A Feeling for Language: The multiple values of teaching literature. Literature and Language Teaching. Edited by Brumfit & Carter. Oxford: OUP

McKay, S. (1986). Literature in the ESL Classroom. Literature and Language Teaching. Edited by Brumfit & Carter. Oxford: OUP

Vincent, V. (1986). Simple Text and Reading Text. Literature and Language Teaching. Edited by Brumfit & Carter. Oxford: OUP

Short, M. & Candlin, C. (1986). Teaching Study Skills for English Literature. Literature and Language Teaching. Edited by Brumfit & Carter. Oxford: OUP