Learning Paths

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Dear readers, 

     I hope you are all great! In this weeks' installment of my blog, I would like to share with you what I have learned througout this week so far. This week, we had a very enriching lesson in which we discussed many approaches and methods to teach literature in our classes. As a matter of fact, we compared and discussed Literature in the EFL/ESL Classroom by Bagherkazemi and The Role of Literature in Instructed Foreign Language Learning by Paran.

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As for Bagherkazemi, I learned the pays off from teaching and learning from literature. The ones that called my attention the most are:

• It provides meaningful contexts.
• It appeals to imagination and enhances creativity.
•  It encourages critical thinking.
•  Learning is facilitated through involvement and joy, which can be created by literary style.
•  The role of teachers as facilitators, guides and active planners is embodied in the process of
  literary work and analysis.
•  It helps language teachers foster their own cultural, linguistic and interpretive skills.
•  It encourages talking. 

 As for Paran, I got to meet some new ideas which are listed below:

• The findings on the interaction in the literature and language classroom illustrate the importance of two factors:
  the role of the teacher, and the role of the task.
• There must be effective involvement of students for a successful literature class.
• the interpretive mode centres on the appropriate cultural interpretation of meanings that occur in written and spoken form.
• All learners and teachers have different experiences with literature (there is not a single generalization about this).
• the key to the success of the telecourse has been the translation of reliable classroom practices to the virtual environment, along with an extended use of electronic and audiovisual
  educational resources.

 Also, I learned and felt identified with many situations from the studies that Paran presents. I think that there are moments in which it seems everyone feels or thinks the same, but in fact we are far from experiencing the same when implementing literature in our classes. 

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Now, I still have some questions that I really want to clear up whenever possible. I still don't get what the stylistic approach is about and if it is bad or good. I also want to know how appropiate it is to extend the curriculum, if there is a possibility of getting off topic and how can we know is that is happening. 

Probably, the line that catches my attention the most is by Paran: 

 

"...we also need
more systematic evaluation of courses, and systematic enquiries into the views of
the learners."

 

The last line does so because I feel that it is time to give students their preponderant role in the learning process and we should stop worrying about breaking paradigms and failing while trying it. Let's take risks!

 

 

             - Esteban Andrés F.

 

Getting to Know How it Works

Dear readers,

      In my new blog's installment, I will dedicate it to various key concepts we as English teachers must have in mind forever. It is a pleasure to share everything I am learning at ULACIT, so I will try to be as concise as possible.

     In a video that we were asked to watch (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-LkN-Pm_zA) on Language Awareness, I learned that the actual fact of building language awareness in our classes is an outstanding way of raising the bar at second language acquisition. For further analysis, I would like to include the Language Awareness definiton by The University of Alberta, Canada:

"Language awareness is part of WHAT the teacher chooses to teach. As language teachers know, there is much more to a language than simply knowing vocabulary and grammar and reproducing them in either written or oral form. Becoming aware of the nuances and meanings of a language is part of language learning. By increasing students’ language awareness, the students are better able to understand, appreciate and use the language. In this section we will look at what the phrase ‘language awareness’ means, what role it plays in the second language classroom, and ways teachers can increase their students’ language awareness."

Taken from http://www.educ.ualberta.ca/staff/olenka.bilash/best%20of%20bilash/languageawareness.html

     As a result,we as teachers must comprehend that language is nothing without a context that grounds and explains how it works. Thus, students will be able to become more independent and would be able to solve real life problems that language (for our purposes, literature) present on a daily basis. 

  

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      To complement the video, we were asked to read Lazar and Parkinson so that we could enhance our vision on teaching literature. To be brief, I will list what I consider the highlights of both authors' texts:

1. Reading comprehension is a function of cultural background knowledge.
2. Chomsky's Grammatical Competence (quoted) explains that all speakers of any language possess an internalized grammar which allows to produce and understand utterances confrom the grammatical rules of the language they are speaking.
3.  We as learners (readers) are interested in metaphorical or symbolic meanings.
4.  Teaching literature is important because it is motivating, it is authentic material, it helps students to understand other cultures,it develops interpretative abilities, it expands language awareness, and others.
5.  Literature may provide meaningful and memorable contexts for processing and interpreting a new language.
6. Parkinson makes a comparison between old-fashioned ways of teaching literature and some "new-age" activities we can implement in class.  
7. Reading for pleasure should be encouraged in our students so that this does not become a torture for them. 
8. Contextualizing literature is key in understanding the how,why,what,when,and who. 
9. Exhorting students to be critical is important if we want them to have opinions on what is being read. 
10. There are plenty of "fun" games we can implement in literature so we bring to life the artworks read in class. 

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It's a Start!

Dear readers, 

I am very excited to start this new experience at The Latin American University of Science and Technology (ULACIT) in the Literature and Reading in EFL Teaching course.
My name is Esteban Andrés Fuentes and I am an English teacher at a private high school in Cartago, Costa Rica. 

  

 This time, I will comment on the first class I had and which were the highlights of it. The first class was all about getting to know each other, the course syllabus, and some main concepts and ideas on teachig literature. We watched a video about some interactive ways of teaching literature and how we can make the most of it out of simply enjoying what we are reading. I have to admit that some of the activities that I we watched are great, others are questionable, but the most important idea is to try new activities so that our students can decide what they like and what they do not like when being in a literature class. 

 Furthermore, we discussed the importance of multicultural awareness when teaching literature.We all have different cultural backgrounds and it may be hard to understand a piece of literature without analyzing culture in first hand. For that reason, it is mandatory to discuss and explore historical and cultural background before we read a literary artwork. 

 

I love to read, and my biggest expectation of the course is to learn as much as I can to make and encourage my students to love literature and reading. We are nothing without it and we as teachers must continue to strive so that our younger generations give the value literature deserves. I expect to learn about techniques, and fun ways of bringing literature to life in class. That is all I really want to learn.


Until next time!

-Esteban A.