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IoE – University of London – 2011

A.Paran, F.Diamantidaki, M.Lindsay, A.Turvey, J.Yandell, A.Franks

Teaching Literature in French Lycées Training

What to do with literary texts - Compilation of Tasks and Activities

* Most tasks can be used as pair or groupwork. Inherently groupwork activities are marked with a *

A) PRE-READING ACTIVITIES : Directed Activities Related to Texts (DARTs)

1) From a picture

✓ Describe a painting or picture connected to the topic of the text / one of its themes

✓ Use a picture illustrating the mood of the text

✓ Make a list of items represented

✓ Make a list of adjectives it evokes

✓ Name the picture / give it a title

✓ Use one or several book covers

✓ Use pictures to reconstruct a narrative

2) Mindmaps*

✓ to pre-teach vocabulary

✓ to list ideas or feelings connected to topic / theme / character

✓ What does Shakespeare mean to you? What images of or references to Sh. do you know? What do you know about the particular play?

3) Predicting

✓ from a picture (obviously!)

✓ from the pre-credit or opening sequence of a film

✓ from the title / 1st line

✓ from list of keywords

✓ Discuss and rewrite controversial statements about the topic

✓ from personal experience

✓ Imagine you are… scenario : list feelings / impressions / adjectives about a situation connected to the text

✓ from quotations (then write a paragraph about story / narrator / theme)

4) Writing

✓ Write a story / paragraph beginning with a quotation of the book and including other quotes or characters from the book / an element from the book cover…

5) Context

✓ Use sources (Ovid, mythology…)

✓ Prepare a historical quiz and provide excerpts of reference material containing the answers.

B) WHILE READING

✓ Start with a key scene other than the incipit

✓ Make them listen to an audiobook (helps go along / keep pace / reinforces meaning)

1) Cloze / Gap-fill

✓ Delete and rewrite the last line of a poem

✓ Delete and rewrite some keywords in a text/poem (differentiation: supply list of keywords)

✓ Delete some words to work on word function and inference

2) Rewriting / text manipulation

✓ Use pictures to reconstruct a narrative

✓ Rearrange a poem presented in prose form

✓ Rearrange the lines of a poem / chunks from a poem

3) Comparing

✓ Different versions of the same poem or story

✓ Different language levels in the text

✓ the use of different tenses (rewrite if necessary)

4) Interpreting

✓ List your feelings and impressions as you read

✓ Imagine shapes or images as you read

✓ List words or phrases connected to different elements in the text and compare them (nature, connotation, register, length, Anglo-Saxon words or latinates…)

✓ Look at the type of detail that the narrator provides and deduce what it shows about his / her personality

✓ Pick out some quotes and deduce what they show about deduce what they show about the narrator’s / a character’s personality

✓ Point out the relevance of the text first to its context of reception to make it while reading or studying, and only then to its context of production

✓ Choose a line or quote and create a still image / statue – watch in groups (less intimidating) then guess which line it is*

5) Summarizing

✓ Filling in a grid to recap information about the plot / the narrator (possible to break down the text into very small chunks, especially incipit)

✓ Writing or filling in a summary of the passage…

✓ … insert one or more factual mistakes for other students to spot

✓ Completing statements ending with ‘because…’ to elicit causality

✓ Draw a poster or diagram representing the settings / the plot / the relationships between the characters / the themes…

✓ Draw a map of the settings

✓ Draw a timeline of the action / put events in the right order

✓ Print out pictures of the characters / the actors and paste them around the class with their names and details

✓ Write a description / definition of a character – class guess*

✓ Pyramid activity: choose three quotes in a passage, then decide on 3 in common with group etc. until whole class*

6) Re-reading

✓ to find thematic elements

7) Voicing / acting

✓ Read passage in lines facing partner – illustrate with gestures depending who / which part of the body the words refer to*

✓ Read passages as ensemble / chorus*

✓ Take a passage and act it like a silent movie (with or without others voicing the actual words)*

✓ Students preparing the staging of a passage and are assigned roles (director, actors, readers…)*

✓ Voice text as a rap

✓ Sing the text

C) AFTER READING

1) Rewriting

✓ in the same style

✓ using the same 1st line of a poem

✓ find an alternate title

✓ write an alternate ending

2) Interpreting

✓ Discuss a set of controversial statements about the text / the narrator’s gender or motivations / the relationship between the characters…*

✓ Discuss the importance / relevance of the title

✓ Find or build a picture illustrating the mood of the text / the narrator / one of the characters

✓ Determine the genre of the text

✓ Determine the narrative perspective used by the author (1st /2nd person, 3rd person objective / limited / omniscient)

✓ Make students act out a passage*

✓ Make students act out a passage around a quote to show what was important in a scene from a play / a chapter*

✓ Match texts to pictures (mood) and discuss choice

3) Characters / personification

✓ Use pictures of allegories through ages

✓ Match characters to pictures

✓ Play a ‘post-it game’ using a character diagram*

✓ Draw a figure representation of a character and paste keywords expressing*

a) what people said about this character(outside figure)

b) what character said about himself(in speech bubbles)

c) what we know about his thought process (in his figure)

✓ Think of an abstract emotion (fear, anger…) and mentally answer personal factual questions about it (what is your favourite colour / film / food /place, what is your emotion wearing, what do you usually do on a Saturday night…), then, posing as your emotion, start a conversation about a casual topic with your partner.

✓ Write a page in the diary of one of the characters (not necessarily narrator -> shift narrative perspective)

4) Cultural / contextual / inter-textual references

✓ Match quotes to references

✓ List references with page numbers, then students find them in the text

✓ Provide quotes from inter-textual references, students must find the parallel within the text

✓ Present references and their definitions as a crosswords puzzle

5) Other creative activities

✓ Create a game based on the text*

✓ Play a game based on the text (in Whiteson V. ed, New Ways of Using Drama and Literature in Language Teaching, TESOL 1996)*

✓ Write advice / a guide for people in a situation similar to the narrator’s

✓ Design the opening sequence of a film adaptation*

✓ Draw the storyboard for a film adaptation of a passage – compare to actual choices of one or several directors*

✓ Create a Powerpoint presentation to illustrate a poem – include recording

D) MULTIMODAL APPROACH

✓ Webquests: assign roles to students*

✓ Groupwork: give out colored tokens to different students to reconstruct different groups (parts of a whole task for feedback) or to assign roles (reporters…)*

✓ Watch different films adaptations and focus on…*

• sets and lighting

• costume and props

• camera and editing

• sound

✓ Use poems written after paintings in parallel

✓ Match texts to pictures / illustrate

✓ Use films without the sound to make the students write and voice a conversation*

✓ Use the sound of a film first to get the general atmosphere

✓ Use interviews of the author or of specialists / documentaries

✓ Practise reading a soliloquy or dialogue aloud, then compare to filmed version

E) PLANNING

a. Decide how many lessons you want to devote to the work you’re teaching.

b. Decide when you’re going to teach them.

c. Decide how many lessons will be devoted to en introduction, how many to reading and understanding the novel, how many to a discussion of the themes.

d. How will you introduce it?

e. What will be the focus of the last lesson?

f. Are there any projects you could incorporate?

g. How will you arrange the reading (in class? In one or several chunks? as a prerequisite to work in class?)

h. At what point will you start focusing on themes?

i. How will you choose the excerpts the students will focus on? What are your criteria?

F) TIPS

✓ Start the year with a questionnaire about what the students read (how much, which genres, statements to agree / disagree with then rewrite etc.)

✓ To get a group quiet: teacher raises hand and counts down, pupils raise their hands and stop talking as they see teacher.

✓ 2 types of comprehension : efferent (facts, context, references…) vs aesthetic (personal involvement and interpretation)

✓ 3 levels of comprehension : factual, literary (themes, imagery, style, genre…), personal (individual interpretation of meaning / appreciation)

✓ When working on poetry, focus on sound before meaning

✓ Draw mindmaps or diagrams on sugar paper to keep and paste in classroom

✓ Help them express their difficulties in studying a text by giving them anonymous post-its to fill in and paste somewhere in the classroom

✓ Why not edit the text? Delete passage, simplify, use simplified readers for some of passages…

G) WEBOGRAPHY

a) portals



b) literature circles







c) webquests



d) online projects



-> Teaching English With Technology

e) study guides





f) narrative theory and activities



g) word manipulation / predicitive reading and writing software

Developing tray : devtray.co.uk (1 computer licence £ 39)

h) reading materials





H) BIBLIOGRAPHY

Baddock B., Using Films in the English Class, Hemel Hempstead: Phoenix ELT, 1996.

Brumfit C., Carter R., Literature and Language teaching, OUP 1999

Cambridge School Shakespeare -> crammed with ideas for interactive teaching… on each page!!!

Carter R. and McRae J. eds, Language, Literature and the Learner: Creative Classroom Practice, Longman 1996 + Durant A., Designing groupwork activities: A case study (p.66-88)

Carter R. and Long M., The Web of Words, Exploring Literature through Language, CUP 1987 (Student’s and teacher’s books)

Gibbons P., Scaffolding Language, Scaffolding Meaning, Heinemann 2002.

Gower R. and Pearson M., Reading Literature, Longman 1999.

Lazar G., Close Analysis: An Activity for Using Novels and Film in the Language Classroom, IATEFL Literature and Cultural Studies SIG Newsletter, Issue 13, pp. 22 to 26.

Lazar G., Using Literature at Lower Levels, ELTJ 1996, vol. 42 n°2 pp.115-124

LAZAR Gillian, Literature and language teaching: a guide for teachers and trainers, CUP 1993

Nuttal C., Teaching Reading Skills in a Foreign Language, Macmillan 2005.

Pope Rob, Textual Intervention: Critical and Creative Strategies for Literary Studies, Routledge 1994.

Tomlison B., And now for something not completely different : an approach to language through literature, Reading in a foreign language 1998, vol.11 n°2, pp 177-189.

Weisberg M., Using Film in English Teaching, IATEFL Literature and Cultural Studies SIG Newsletter, n°20.

Whiteson V. ed, New Ways of Using Drama and Literature in Language Teaching, TESOL 1996

Williamson JA and Vincent JC, Film is Content: A Study Guide for the Advanced ESL Classroom, Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.

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