Literature for Life

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New Ideas for Teaching Literature

• Literature for Life
• Deborah J. Ellis
• Loescher Editore

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The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

• Nothing in education is so astonishing as the
  amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of
  inert facts.

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A Layered and Natural Process
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Stage 1
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Stage 1 Tasks

• ask students to
• draw on existing knowledge
• store new information
• make assumptions
• become aware of expectations

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Stage 2
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Stage 2 Tasks

• expect students to
• gain an understanding of explicit meaning
• reach an understanding of implicit meaning
• comment on overall impact

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Stage 3
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Stage 3 Tasks

• Students explore
• content detail and the technical language
  appropriate to each genre,
• the characterisitics of a text which give it
  quality,
• the lasting appeal and importance of certain
  texts over the years,
• the distinctive qualities of texts from different
  cultures, countries, traditions.

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Stage 4
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Stage 4 Tasks

• Students should draw conclusions concerning
• themes
• effects of style and recurring motifs
• authors message
• and compare their ideas with
• critics and other readers conclusions and
  comments

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Stage 5
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Stage 5 Tasks

• Tasks should
• ask pertinent questions which stimulate the need
  to investigate context
• require active student participation
• provide a bank of pertinent documents
• and they should lead to a deeper understanding of
• the significance of a text in its time
• the importance of a text over time
• the connections and comparisons between texts

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From Stages for Approaching Literary Texts.

• Stage 1 establishing a knowledge base
• Stage 2 making a first reading
• Stage 3 analysing in more detail
• Stage 4 drawing conclusions
• Stage 5 investigating context

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to Stages for a Testo Propedeutico

• Stage 1 learn how establish a knowledge base
• Stage 2 check understanding of explicit meaning,
  learn how to express ideas about overall impact,
  decode implicit meaning
• Stage 3 learn the characteristics and
  conventions of each genre and the technical
  language to describe them
• Stage 4 learn how to recognise theme and
  interpret message, gain confidence to express
  conclusions and compare them with others.
• Stage 5 learn how to investigate context and how
  to feedback findings to others

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Summary

• Natural process
• Process can be divided into stages or depths
• Materials structured in stages allow different
  depths of access of literary texts
• Stages can help define the map for the writing of
  introductory materials

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New Ideas for Teaching Literature

• Literature for Life
• Deborah J. Ellis
• Loescher Editore
• Thank you for listening