Reading the Word to Reading the World(s): Teaching Literature in GE Curriculum

18 Pages·2012·0.36 MB·English

by  Vicky Lee

Reading the Word to Reading the
World(s): Teaching Literature in GE
Curriculum
Vicky Lee
June 12, 2012
GE and University Curriculum Reform: An
International Conference in Hong Kong
Literature a subject that stirs
fear and anxiety…

Ousted…excommunicated from the Hong Kong
curriculum.

Why?
A Discipline for the Elites

• An esoteric past times for selected few from
Band One school
• A class marker, a status symbol
• Literature is “the chief weapon against the corruption and
vulgarity of mass urban industrial society” (Leavis, Cambridge
Don, 1930s)

 A myth created by the history of the city

and the colonial city
Remote cultural contexts

• Hong Kong L2 students cannot connect with
literary texts which are narrowly
Anglo/Eurocentric
• No relevance whatsoever for our Hong Kong
students

If students can connect with science fiction
and Japanese anime, they can easily connect
with Dickens.
Complex language
Inaccessible & detrimental for L2 learner

• L2 learner is better off with the “functional”
“communicative” “practical” approach
• functional operationalism: the promotion of
language ‘skills’ (Webb 7)

 Literacy is not just about mere functional
operationalism but helping students “expand in
the realm and reach of meaning” in language
(Willinsky 15).
Teaching Literature in 21st Century
• No longer the esoteric specialization is for
everyone as it is about fundamental human
struggles to live
• Embrace the spirit of GE of
 breaking boundaries and connecting disciplines…
 recognizes that we now live in a time of cultural
and disciplinary hybridization of the regional and
the global, of high and low, east and west, arts
and sciences
For “fruitful, democratic living” (Willinsky 123)
Towards an Eclectic Approach
in teaching literature in
GE Curriculum

• Language based model
• Philosophical model
• The Personal Growth Model
• The Cultural Model
Language based model
(Carter and Long 1991)

• Students focus on specific linguistic features
such as literal and figurative language,
symbolism and other grammatical and
structure analysis.
Philosophical Approach
• focus on theories and philosophical inquiry on
signification, deconstruction, post-
structuralism etc.
• Jane Austen is being read side by side with
philosophers like Derrida and Althusser.
Personal Growth Model
(Carter & Long, 991)
or the “self-” goals
(Willinsky 123)
• text as stimulus for self-reflection
(Savvidou).
• text can as a mirror – we are in fact reading
ourselves, reading our own reactions as we
read the text.
• “Awareness of our own responses can lead to
self-understanding, self-criticism, perhaps a
clarification or a reinforcement of values”
(Rosenblatt,22)