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Fiction and English Teaching
Summer 2014
Dr. Chao-ming Chen
Office: 02-27051275
Email: [email protected]
Purposes:
This course aims at emphasizing the use of fiction or stories as a popular
technique for teaching language skills and reading strategies in Taiwan’s middle and
high schools, recognized as ESL or EFL programs. Literary and pedagogical theories
will be introduced to help instructors construct appropriate teaching modules for their
English classrooms. Instructors will be required to demonstrate their classroom
practices, sharing their achievements and frustrations in teaching English through
literature. The class will be also oriented to the discussion of possibilities and
potentials in developing new approaches of language teaching.
Required texts:
Language Teaching Theories:
Brumfit, Christopher and Ronald Carter, ed. Literature and Language Teaching.
Oxford: Oxford UP, 1986.
Lave, Jean and Etienne Wenger. Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral
Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1991.
Richards, Jack C. Communicative Language Teaching Today. Cambridge: Cambridge
UP, 2006.
Literary Approaches:
John McRare and Malachi Edwin Vethamani. Now Read On: A Course in
Multicultural Reading. London and New York: Routledge, 1999.
Reid, Ian. The Short Story: The Critical Idiom. London and New York: Methuen,
1982.
Sholes, Robert, ed. Approaches to the Novel: Materials for a Poetics. Scranton:
Chandler, 1966.
Fictional Texts:
Short Stories (Photocopied handouts)
Fairy Tales (Your chosen texts)
Andrew Clements. Jake Drake: Teacher’s Pet.
Dahl, Roald. Charlie and Chocolate Factory, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964.
Meyer, Stephenie. Twilight. New York: Little, Brown and Co., 2003.
Frankenstein (Simplified Version, Linking Publsihing), 2010
Collins, Suzanne. The Hunger Games
Sparks, Nicholos. Dear John
Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice
Optional Texts:
John McRae and Roy Boardman. Reading between the Lines: Integrated Language
and Literature Activities. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997.
Lantolf, James P. and Steven L. Thorne. “Sociocultural Theory and Second Language
Learning.” In B. van patten and J. Williams, eds. Theories in Second Acquisition.
Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2007. 201-224.
Lohafer, Susan. Coming to Terms with the Short Story. Baton Rouge and London:
Louisiana State UP, 1983.
Sholes, Robert. Elements of Fiction. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1968.
Vygotsky, Lev. “Thought and Word.” Thinking and Speaking. Boston: MIT P, 1962.
Requirements:
1. Class attendance and participation:
2
2. One oral report, several teaching demonstrations and worksheets
3. A 5-page final paper
Attendance and class discussion 20%
Oral report, teaching demos and worksheets 50%
Final paper 30%
Class Schedule:
July
3
8
10
15
17
22
24
29
31
31
August
5
7
12
14
19
Introduction to the course; grouping; warm-up
No class
Theory #1: LLT, 1&2 (oral report)
Literary Reading: Short Story, Hemingway’s “The Killers” (D)
Worksheet #1
Theory #2: LLT, 3&4 (oral report)
Literary Reading: Fairy Tales (Rapunzel or Jack and the
Beanstalk) (D)
Worksheet #2
Theory #3: LLT, 5&6 (oral report)
(E) Literary Reading: Jake Drake (D)
Worksheet #3
Theory #4: LLT, 7&8 (oral report)
Literary Reading: Charlie and Chocolate Factory (D)
Worksheet #4
Theory #5: Approaches to the Novel (oral report)
Literary Reading: Frankenstein (simplified version and Shelley’s)
(D)
Worksheet #5
Theory #6: The Short Story (oral report)
Literary Reading: Short Stories, Stephen King’s “The Man in the
Black Suit” (D)
Worksheet #6
Theory #7: Situated Learning (oral report)
(E) Literary Reading: Twilight (D)
Worksheet #7
(Make-up Class) Theory #8: Sociocultural Theories (oral report)
(E) Literary Reading: Twilight (D)
Worksheet #8
Theory #9: LLT, 9&10 (oral report)
Literary Reading: Hunger Games (D)
Worksheet #9
Theory #10: LLT, 11&12 (oral report)
Literary Reading: Hunger Games (D)
Worksheet #10
Theory #11: LLT, 13&14 (oral report)
(E) Literary Reading: Dear John (D)
Worksheet #11
Theory #12: LLT, 15&19 (oral report)
Literary Reading: Pride and Prejudice (D)
Worksheet #12
Wrap-up; final paper due
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Notes:
In class: In this intensive 8-week class, you are required to actively participate in all
the class activities. Each of you will give a 20-minute oral report on the theory part
(listed as theory) and demonstrate a 10-minute teaching (marked as D on the class
schedule) on the chosen work, either in English or in Chinese. Besides, two of you
will work as a team on the assigned worksheets related to the topics addressed in
class.
Final paper: This is not a research paper; instead, it should be an instructional plan
for your future teaching in the novel class. You paper should include the following:
pedagogy, lesson plans (a detailed description of the class), assessment, and expected
results.
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A joke: a structural story
There’s a woman standing at a bus stop with a dog on a lead. Along comes a man and
stands beside her.
“Good morning,” he says.
“Good morning,” she replies.
“Nice dog,” he says.
“Thank you,” she says.
“Does your dog bite?” he asks.
“No,” she says.
So the man leans down and begins to stroke the dog. The dog turns round and
bites his hand.
“you said your dog didn’t bite!” the man complains.
“It’s not my dog,” the woman replies.
Re-arrange the following sentences to make a complete story.
1. All the shutters of the hospital were nailed shut.
2. When they fired the first volley he was sitting down in the water with his head on
his knees.
3. There were pools of water in the courtyard.
4. They tired to hold him up against the wall but he sat down in the puddle of water.
5. One of the ministers was sick with typhoid.
6. Two soldiers carried him downstairs and out into the rain.
7. There were wet dead leaves on the paving of the courtyard.
8. Finally the officer told the soldiers it was no good trying to make him stand up.
9. They shot the six cabinet ministers at half past six in the morning against the wall
of a hospital.
10. It rained hard.
11. The other five stood very quietly against the wall.
What is the order of the sentences: ______________________________________