Currently, in many high schools throughout Canada and the United States, English teachers have been developing literature curricula to meet the needs of their culturally diverse students. However, because in most cases these educators have not had at their disposal the interpretative techniques of such postcolonial literary theorists as Edward Said and Gayatri Spivak, they have been relying, instead, for their reading strategies upon traditional literary theories. Unfortunately, when teachers employ New Critical, archetypal, feminist, or reader-response methods of literary analysis in their reading of multicultural literature, they are often unaware of the Eurocentric biases contained within these perspectives. This lack of understanding of their theoretical frame of reference can then lead teachers to encourage their students to accept uncritically problematic representations of various cultural groups as they encounter these representations in their literary texts. Postcolonial literary theory, on the other hand, encourages students to problematize Eurocentric representations of imperialism’s Others. The advantage to students who use postcolonial reading strategies in order to become aware of the different ways in which people at the margins and centres of empire view each other is that they can thus attain higher levels of multicultural literacy by performing more sophisticated and complex interpretations of their texts than they might have done using traditional interpretative approaches. At the same time, the students’ use of postcolonial reading strategies can help them to become more effective intercultural communicators as they cross cultural borders by carrying out collaborative responses to literary texts with students whose heritage differs from their own. This project, therefore, involves a critique of existing conceptions of the high school multicultural literature curriculum by comparing their key features with those of the postcolonial conception. The principal focus of the investigation is upon how the postcolonial approach can help students to understand, more effectively than can traditional conceptions, the necessarily dynamic and heterogeneous textual representations of dominant and subaltern cultures to be found in both Eurocentric and postcolonial literary texts.

The aim of this study is to investigate the extent to which the teaching of literary art to / Thesis (M.Ed.) - University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2008.

The purpose of this study was to show the inadequacy of preparation of prospective teachers of English in composition, trace the historical background of the present situation, and provide model curricula to remedy the inadequacy.The inadequacy in composition in English preparatory programs was established in Chapter I by citing results of studies conducted by leaders of the profession and by major professional organizations such as The National Council of Teachers of English and the Modern Language Association. These results, which apply equally to teachers in public schools and colleges, show that few teachers are prepared properly to teach writing in any mode and are the consequences of preparatory programs in which writing and methods to teach it have been neglected in favor of an almost total literature orientation.Chapter II, The Historical Background of the Present Situation, shows the growth of the three agencies responsible for preparing an English teacher to enter the classroom—the college English and Education departments and the State Department of Education. The independent development and different life styles of the three agencies were traced from their origins in Europe, through the expansion of public education in the post-Civil War era to their twentieth century inter-relationship on college campuses in preparatory programs. The expansion of education following World War II increased requirements for credentials of public school teachers to four years of college, but the Ph.D. in literature remained the credential for teaching English in colleges and universities. Therefore, the college programs for English majors and minors maintained their literature orientation even though it is axiomatic that all English teachers must teach composition for a substantial portion of their professional life. Few prospective teachers receive instruction in writing beyond the freshman composition requirement and techniques for teaching writing are seldom incorporated into methods courses. The only remedy, therefore, is to offer model curricula that balance writing and the study of literature in the preparatory program.Two model curricula are based on assumptions that prospective English teachers can learn to write and teach writing given sufficient instruction; that, if they are taught a balanced program, English teachers will teach a balanced program; that finding faculty to teach writing courses in the model curricula will be difficult at first, but there are a few qualified people on every campus and a national program of internships can be established to provide additional faculty until graduates of the new program are available; and that a psychological orientation is vital to the Cluster Curriculum, one of the model curricula.The two model curricula are the Cluster Curriculum and the English Adjunct Curriculum. The structure of the former is based upon a nucleus of Psychological Development Sessions around which are clustered both subject and pedagogical experiences, thereby balancing writing, literature study, methods to teach both, and opportunities to work within the school system from the start of professional education.Because the Cluster Curriculum is based upon cultural changes, the English Adjunct Curriculum is suggested as a forerunner while the necessary changes take place. The English Adjunct Curriculum can be attached to the current program of English studies by requiring a Writing Adjunct to general studies courses in freshman and sophomore college years, and Writing Adjuncts to literature courses in junior and senior years of English programs. In addition, the English major and minor will be required to enroll in one course in how to teach composition per academic year. To accommodate increased writing requirements, changes in literature requirements are suggested.

In the past years foreign languages have been taught in Spain as a device to translate and interpret literature. Now the emphasis is put especially on language, and literature is only appreciated as a device to improve the language skills and not in itself. However, the author considers that literature should play an important role in second language teachings as a literary experience too, and has devised a curriculum of English Literature for Spanish-speaking students in the last grade of high school.The project includes an investigation of the purposes for such a curriculum, the criteria to be used in selecting the literature for the curriculum and a selection and presentation of literary texts.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether adding affective objectives to the primarily cognitive syllabus objectives of a college freshman literature-composition course would generate data to indicate change in self-identity, relationship, and control.Affective objectives included attending to: (1) students' verbal and written response to literature and other experiences--to the central concerns of self-identity, relationship, and control; (2) students' involvement with "engagement" in literature shown in expressed response to the literary work (discussion or writing about the response) and in the re-creative response (re-creation of the work in some oral, dramatic, or artistic form).The central concerns referred to three broad areas of psychological and social importance to the maturing individual. Self-identity was seen as the student's awareness of both his uniqueness and his common humanity revealed by statements of open-mindedness, understanding of self, good self-concept, creativity, a firm sense of the here and now, not fearing to be wrong, free personal style, confidence, spontaniety, and wholeness. Relationship was seen as the student's awareness of relationship with other people, revealed by statements of democratic character structure, freedom from social pressure, clearer, more open sense of reality, thinking well of others, seeing self and others as interdependent, ability to love, and desire to love. Control was seen as the student's growing mastery of the "what" and "how" of interpersonal communication revealed by statements of or indications of tolerance, seeing the value of mistakes, sense of power, not fearing to be wrong, increased objectivity, responsible choice, facile language functioning, resourcefulness, choosing freely, prizing, acting in relation to values, self-direction, and ascending strength in cognitive functioning.The study was limited to two freshman literature-composition courses with a combined population of forty-one randomly grouped students during the Winter Quarter of 1971-72 at Ball State University. It was preceded by a pilot study.Data considered as acceptable evidence of hypothesized change were generated from statements of self-identity, relationship, and control--of increasing number, or complexity, or both--from four sources: (1) student writing (themes and journals); (2) student-completed evaluation forms (two at mid-term and two at the end of the course); (3) pre- and post-inventories (a value survey and a personal profile); and (4) student interviews (mid-term and final).Student writing showed that a majority of the students showed change in complexity in statements toward which the criteria of self-identity, relationship, and control applied. The following proportions were evident: In first and last themes, six out of seven students-taken alternately from a group of every third student of the population--showed change. In themes 2-6, five out of seven students--taken alternately from another group of every third student--showed change. In journals, four out of seven students--taken alternately from yet another group of every third student--showed change.Student-completed evaluation forms (two at mid-term and two at the end of the course) showed that a majority of the students' statements showed change--either in quantity or complexity or both--in self-identity, relationship, and control.Data from students' pre- and post-inventories neither verified nor negated change in self-identity, relationship, and control.

The argument of this thesis is that Finnegans Wake is a peculiarly appropriate text for an investigation of the academic discipline of English, and that the issue of readership is the best way to approach the Wake. The thesis, which is organised into three main sections, shows that both Finnegans Wake and the discipline of English Studies are similarly engaged in problems of defining audiences. The opening section shows that the Wake has long been seen as a limit to literature, and as a defining text of literary study. Reception theory proves unable to cope with a study of historical audiences. Finnegans Wake was written over a period roughly concomitant with the rapid professionalisation of English studies and underwent a loss of audiences except for its critical reviewers. The extended third chapter sets out in some detail the growth of English studies, both in itself and more specifically as a context for the name of Joyce in the 1930s and beyond. This also includes analysis of the passage of the Wake in university syllabi. The second section considers post-structuralist claims that the Wake disrupts or subverts the space of the academy. It analyses a wide range of poststructuralist and other reactions to the Wake, and proceeds to a study of inscriptions of readership in the work of Derrida, and explores Derrida's idea of audiences for Joyce. The third section presents two readings of key elements of Finnegans Wake. Analysis of the letters, and of some of Joyce's sources, stresses the important role of the professor figures, which is indicative of the extent to which Joyce's last work was influenced by the professionalisation of literary study. Textual analysis proceeds with the Four, who function as an internal interpretive community. A brief conclusion sums up the argument of the thesis.

M.Phil. ( Education Linguistics) / Since communication between language groups is of crucial importance in a multicultural country, the inadequate second language proficiency of school-Ieavers gives cause for concern. The current paradigm shift to relevant and vocationally orientated education raises questions about the relevance of the literature component and literature methodology within a communicative approach to second language teaching. The aim of this study is to investigate the nature of communicative competence and the way in which this is accounted for in second language teaching. The nature of literature is studied to determine whether it allows for a literature-orientated approach which can contribute towards the development of communicative competence within the parameters of a second language communicative approach. Research findings have indicated that communicative competence functions as a cognitive web of interwoven abilities and that second language teaching, which has as its ultimate aim the fluent and correct use of the target language, has to take the complex and interactive nature of the various components into account. It has also become evident that a literature teaching approach, based on the readerresponse theory, affords opportunity for stimulating language acquisition processes. By participating in analytical and communicative acts of learning, proceeding from the literature text, the leaner is involved in a process which can result in the gradual development of linguistic, strategic and psychomotor abilities. Literature thus forms a relevant and functional component of the second language syllabus and can contribute to the development of communicative competence.

Currently, in many high schools throughout Canada and the United States, English teachers have been developing literature curricula to meet the needs of their culturally diverse students. However, because in most cases these educators have not had at their disposal the interpretative techniques of such postcolonial literary theorists as Edward Said and Gayatri Spivak, they have been relying, instead, for their reading strategies upon traditional literary theories. Unfortunately, when teachers employ New Critical, archetypal, feminist, or reader-response methods of literary analysis in their reading of multicultural literature, they are often unaware of the Eurocentric biases contained within these perspectives. This lack of understanding of their theoretical frame of reference can then lead teachers to encourage their students to accept uncritically problematic representations of various cultural groups as they encounter these representations in their literary texts. Postcolonial literary theory, on the other hand, encourages students to problematize Eurocentric representations of imperialism’s Others. The advantage to students who use postcolonial reading strategies in order to become aware of the different ways in which people at the margins and centres of empire view each other is that they can thus attain higher levels of multicultural literacy by performing more sophisticated and complex interpretations of their texts than they might have done using traditional interpretative approaches. At the same time, the students’ use of postcolonial reading strategies can help them to become more effective intercultural communicators as they cross cultural borders by carrying out collaborative responses to literary texts with students whose heritage differs from their own. This project, therefore, involves a critique of existing conceptions of the high school multicultural literature curriculum by comparing their key features with those of the postcolonial conception. The principal focus of the investigation is upon how the postcolonial approach can help students to understand, more effectively than can traditional conceptions, the necessarily dynamic and heterogeneous textual representations of dominant and subaltern cultures to be found in both Eurocentric and postcolonial literary texts. / Education, Faculty of / Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of / Graduate

No description available.

This project promotes the use of literature groups based around a theme. In trying to meet the requirements of the California state framework, to integrate the subjects, this project contains two thematic units. Although the themes were designed for second and third grade, the two thematic units may be used as a guide to help teachers implement the thematics teaching approach into their classrooms.