Learning Language Through Literature in Secondary Schools

Contents

Download PDF (181.4 KB)
pp. v- vi

Contributors

Download PDF (121.5 KB)
pp. vii-viii

Acknowledgements

Download PDF (190.1 KB)
pp. ix-x

Chapter 1 - Worlds of Words: Authenticity of Response and the Experience of Literary Texts in the Hong Kong Second-language Classroom

Download PDF (1.0 MB)
pp. 1-12

Ted Hughes reminds us that reading a poem is a physical, sensual experience. Poems present vivid pictures and open our eyes so that we begin to look closely at what we only saw before. Poems re-attune our ears so that we listen attentively to what we merely heard before. Poems refresh and awaken our five senses:...

Chapter 2 - Their Heads Are Green and Their Hands Are Blue: S3 Sail Off with the Jumblies

Download PDF (1.2 MB)
pp. 13-32

The following lesson plan demonstrates how literature can be used in the English language classroom as a starting point for giving students opportunities to practise their language skills in a meaningful and interesting context. At the same time it fulfils some of the aims as stated in the Experience Dimension of the Target Oriented Curriculum as it relates to Key Stages 3 and 4. Specifically ...

Chapter 3 - Radio Plays

Download PDF (919.5 KB)
pp. 33-44

The power of radio plays to absorb an audience was made strikingly evident about sixty years ago in the United States. A famous actor, Orson Welles, produced a play about a Martian invasion of New York. It was so convincing that many people actually believed that an invasion was taking place, and panicked. Very soon the highways were jammed with cars fleeing the city. In ...

Chapter 4 - Using Hong Kong Stories in Hong Kong Classrooms

Download PDF (1.2 MB)
pp. 45-58

In the lines above, poet Seamus Heaney recalls his boyhood experience of reading English literature in Ireland. The texts he encountered in school said nothing to him about his Irish experience. He records how he went on to discover poems which did deal with the (rural, Irish) world he knew. He learnt, to his Heaney grew up in an English-speaking community. For many Hong Kong ...

Chapter 5 - Using Asian Poems in English Classes: Sample Lessons

Download PDF (533.6 KB)
pp. 59-66

As the editors of this series have pointed out in the first volume, since the mid-1980s, 'literary texts have begun to appear alongside other texts in textbooks and on language syllabuses worldwide'. However, the vast majority of literary texts, selected for use with non-native speakers learning English, are those from English Literature rather than from literature in English. Moreover, the ...

Chapter 6 - From Reading to Speaking and Writing: Dramatizing for the English Classroom

Download PDF (702.7 KB)
pp. 67-76

This chapter will outline the importance of drama in English lessons and illustrate how drama activities can be used to teach integrated reading, speaking and writing skills. From a pedagogical point of view, drama has much to offer. Drama exemplifies how language is enacted to organize and formulate experiences, particularly feelings and attitudes. Drama activities can help students in learning to interpret, ...

Chapter 7 - Little Red Riding Hood in Hong Kong

Download PDF (1.6 MB)
pp. 77-90

Why use a children's story, first encountered in primary school , with (upper) secondary students? The very familiarity of the story is its strength. Students can use the Little Red Riding Hood (LRRH) story as a framework for their own ideas. In order to play with a text, you have first...

Chapter 8 - 'The Course of True Love': Bringing Romance to the English Classroom

Download PDF (1.7 MB)
pp. 91-116

Although the lessons which follow are based on the text of Romeo and Juliet, students are introduced to only a few lines of the original text. This is the age-old story of two teenagers in love. The unit of work which follows provides students with plenty of opportunities to consider contemporary examples of this theme and to interpret the play in ways that are relevant to their own lives ...

Chapter 9 - Drama and Other Literary Strategies in the Teaching and Understanding of Poetry - Approaches to the Experience Dimension of Language Use

Download PDF (1.0 MB)
pp. 117-128

Twenty-five years ago, Barnes (1976) pioneered approaches which tried to discover how young adolescent native speakers of English in England responded experientially to stories, events and poetry. The particular poem that he chose to try out with these youngsters was Warning by Jenny Joseph. This chapter uses the same poem. Barnes' strategy, of listening to what students have to say ...

Chapter 10 - Imitation as Freedom: Creative Writing in the Second-language Classroom

Download PDF (856.9 KB)
pp. 129-138

I have entitled this chapter 'Imitation as Freedom' because I believe that when working with student writers in a second-language setting, the use of models can be paradoxically liberating. I advocate treating these models not as ideals, but as licences for experiment and play. In having something to deviate or free themselves from, students often find that they have more to say, and that this is ...