Critical Necessities: Using Literary texts in the EFL Classroom

1
Critical Necessities Using Literary texts in
the EFL Classroom

• Amos Paran
• Institute of Education, University of London

2
Reasons for using literary texts

• Psychological reasons building on the human
  common ground
• Educational reasons doing what we can to educate
  the learners
• Pedagogical reasons responding to our wishes and
  wants as teachers
• Linguistic reasons building on what people do
  with language and with literature

3
The ubiquity of literature

• You stand like a Gulliver on some rocky outcrop
  while thousands of feet below Dinky-toy ships
  drift towards a Lego-sized settlement surrounded
  by emerald green fields the size of postage
  stamps.
• I am chauffeured in a sleek green 1932
  Studebaker, brought up from the underground
  museum. Im not denying I feel a bit
  self-conscious, looking most unlike Jay Gatsby
  reclining on the leather upholstery in my Helly
  Hansen jacket and walking boots.
• (BA High Life Magazine, March 2012)

4
Secondary Worlds

• Present in every human being are two desires, a
• desire to know the truth about the primary world,
  the
• given world outside ourselves in which we are
  born,
• live, love, hate and die, and the desire to make
  new
• secondary worlds of our own or, if we cannot make
• them ourselves, to share in the secondary worlds
  of
• those who can.
• W. H. Auden

5
The Secondary Worlds of the Gaming Community
6
The Secondary Worlds of Fanfiction
7
The Secondary Worlds of Fanfiction
8
Secondary Worlds

• What really happens (when a reader engages with a
  
• text) is that the story-maker proves a successful
  sub-
• creator. He makes a Secondary World which your
• mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is
  true it
• accords with the laws of that world. You
  therefore
• believe it, while you are, as it were, inside.
• J. R. R. Tolkien

9
Flow and Secondary Worlds

• The sense of effortless action they feel in
  moments that stand out as the best in their
  lives.
• Players living in a self contained universe
• Flow tends to occur when a persons skills are
  fully involved in overcoming a challenge that is
  just about manageable.
• M. Csikszentmihályi

10
Flow matters because quantity matters

• Reading as a complex cognitive skill
• Written language vs. spoken language
• Importance of vast amounts of exposure
• (see Paran 1996)

11
The importance of narrative

• Thats how people live, Milt Michael
  Antonious
• again, still kindly, gently by telling
  stories.
• Whats the first thing a kid says when he learns
  how
• to talk? Tell me a story. Thats how we
  understand
• who we are, where we come from. Stories are
• everything.
• Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex

12
Psychological reasons

• Ubiquity of literature
• Language play
• Secondary worlds
• Importance of flow
• Connection with the complexity of reading
• Centrality of narrative

13
Task 1
14
Eveline/James Joyce

• She sat at the window watching the
• evening invade the avenue. Her head
• was leaned against the window curtains,
• and in her nostrils was the odour of dusty
• cretonne. She was tired.

15
The Prohibited PARSNIP

• Politics
• Alcohol
• Religion
• Sex
• Narcotics
• Isms
• Pork

16
Talking Points
17
Literature outside EFL

• The hospital poetry of U. A. Fanthorpe
• Nurses Poetry Expanding the Literature
• and Medicine Canon
• In Brief A Literature Seminar in
• Clinical Medical Education
• Light to the Mind Literature in the
• Medical Spanish Course
• The Nineteenth Centurys Obsession with
• Medicine Flauberts Madame Bovary

18
Literature and Medicine

• Mention of The Use of Force almost amounts
  to a club handshake among medical humanists. The
  storys importance lies in the way it succinctly
  brings into focus a whole cluster of everyday
  dilemmas that characterize the medical encounter.
  The tension that arises between a doctor, a child
  who wont open her mouth for a throat exam, and
  the childs two parents opens up discussion of
  medical authority, bedside manners, assignment of
  medical responsibility, doctor-patient dialogue,
  childrens rights and fear as a factor in
  treatment. (Hawkins McEntyre, 189)

19
Task 2 Transplants

• Which body parts have been successfully
• transplanted to date?
• Turn to your neighbour and list as
• many as you can.

20
The Body

• He said, Listen you say you cant hear well and
  your back hurts. Your body wont stop reminding
  you of your ailing existence. Would you like to
  do something about it?
• This half-dead old carcass? I said. Sure.
  What?
• How about trading it in and getting
  something new?
• (Hanif Kureishi)

21
POUNDS OF FLESHThe rich go shopping for body
parts - the poor and the dead provide. By Fay
Weldon

• "When human tissue is an investment opportunity
  for Richard
• Branson," writes Donna Dickenson, "you know it's
  become just
• as much an object of commerce as mobile phones,
  CDs or train
• tickets. Virgin's decision in February 2007 to
  set up a new
• business in umbilical cord blood banking is just
  another example of
• body shopping.
• Dickenson's alarm is justified. Body parts have
  become big
• business. In Body Shopping she describes a
  science-fiction world
• that turns out to be the one we are living in.
  The rich go shopping
• for body parts the poor and the dead provide
  them. The nice, kind
• man in the white clinician's coat turns out to be
  a ruthless body
• robber.
• (Review of Body Shopping The Economy Fuelled by
  Flesh and Bloodby Donna Dickenson)

22
Literature and abstract concepts

• Use of metaphor, symbol, image
• Develops symbolic and abstract thinking
• Wolfe (2004) Picken (2007)

23
Task 3 Literature and response

• Read the poem Returning, we hear the
• larks on your handout. Then turn to your
• neighbour and discuss it briefly.

24
Returning, we hear the larks
25
Types of response

• Aesthetic vs. efferent reading
• (Louise Rosenblatt)
• Reading as a transaction with the text
• Can we rescue literature from reading

26
Educational reasons

• Literature as a site for discussing values
• Dealing with values in a non-didactic way, from a
  safe distance
• Developing abstract concepts
• Eliciting a response

27
Pedagogical reasons

• Using literature allows you to teach what you
  like
• Greater variety of possible activities
• Using literature provides a better opportunity to
  incorporate other cultural knowledge

28
Task 4

• Look at the other side of your handout
• and the poem The Wheel.
• With your neighbour(s) prepare a group
• reading of the poem.

29
Reading aloud
30
Linguistic reasons

• Literature is written to be read aloud
• Literature lends itself to repeated readings
• Literature lends itself to learning by heart
• Literature is written with the intention that the
  reader will finish reading
• You dont always have to understand everything

31
Task 5
32
The Dance

• In Brueghels great picture, The Kermesse,
• the dancers go round, they go round and
• around, the squeal and the blare and the
• tweedle of bagpipes, a bugle and fiddles
• tipping their bellies (round as the thick-
• sided glasses whose wash they impound)
• their hips and their bellies off balance
• to turn them. Kicking and rolling about
• the Fair Grounds, swinging their butts, those
• shanks must be sound to bear up under such
• rollicking measures, prance as they dance
• in Brueghels great picture, The Kermesse.
• William Carlos Williams.

33

• Only Connect.
• E.M. Forster, Howards End

34

• Perhaps the greatest of all pedagogical
• fallacies is the notion that a person learns only
• the particular thing he is studying at the time.
• John Dewey (1938)