‘The Émigrée’, by Carol Rumens Lesson plan Introduction Read the following quote, the opening line of the novel The Go-‐between, by L.P. Hartley: The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there. To what extent do you think this is true? Development 1) Presenting the poem – Ask students the following questions: -‐ What does ‘immigrate’ mean? -‐ What is the opposite of ‘immigrate’? -‐ What is the name for one who emigrates? -‐ Why do people emigrate? When a person leaves his or her country for political reasons one usually describes them as an ‘émigré’, from the French word meaning ‘emigrant’. What would it mean to add an extra E on the end of the word ‘émigré’? 2) Reading the poem – Distribute the poem. Students read it once individually, then aloud several times as a class. 3) Understanding the poem – Ask students the following questions, having them cite lines of the poem to justify their answers where necessary: -‐ Does the speaker tell us the name of the place she has emigrated from? -‐ Are the émigrée’s memories of her city mostly positive or mostly negative? -‐ What colour(s) does the émigrée associate with her city? -‐ Can the émigrée return to her city? -‐ What bad news has the émigrée received concerning her city? -‐ When in her original city, did the émigrée speak the same language she does now? 4) Similes – Rumens uses two similes in the poem. Can you find them? -‐ ‘That child’s vocabulary I carried here / like a hollow doll, opens and spills a grammar.’ -‐ ‘It lies down in front of me, docile as paper’ What kind of doll has something hidden inside? A matryoshka, or Russian doll. Why is this an effective simile? © Education Umbrella, 2016 What important things are made of paper? Passports, newspapers, money. Which of these things could be described as ‘docile’, that is, submissive? 5) Personification – How does the émigrée personify her city? What does this say about her relationship with it? 6) Write about it – Choose an interpretation below and write 300-‐400 words justifying your answer: a) ‘The Émigrée’ is about a real city that the speaker left as a child. b) ‘The Émigrée’ is about childhood. © Education Umbrella, 2016
© Copyright 2024 Paperzz
