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
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