Literature In Secondary Teaching (CLB322)
Semester 2 / 2010

Description

Rationale

A number of recent studies in literary and cultural theory have focused on issues such as the nature of reader-text interaction, the complex of processes involved in the production (writing) and reception (reading) of texts, and the culturally constructed nature of readers and writers.

This subject utilises students' responses to 'literary' texts, and their writing/rewriting/transformation of parallel text as a basis for reflexive analysis of the processes involved in response to literature and the necessary connections between reading and writing.

Aims

N/A

Objectives

On completion of this subject, students should be able to:

1. Understand and evaluate the nature of readers' response to 'literary' texts: their own and those of the students they will teach.

2. Experiment with a range of written genres as part of a deliberate attempt to integrate the teaching of reading and writing.

3. Make informed choices of appropriate texts for teaching in the upper primary and secondary school.

4. Develop teaching approaches to these texts which exhibit an understanding of current literary and cultural theory.

Content

This unit covers the following topics:

1. Reading and Literary Response

A reader-response approach to literature will be placed in the context of cultural heritage, new critical, and cultural theory approaches.

2. Redefinition of Literature

Canonic views of literature will be contrasted with reconstructed views of literary and popular culture texts.

3. Reading Practices and Positions

Open and closed texts. Literary and cultural repertoires. Gaps, silences and contradictions in texts. Reading and power. Reading and gender.

4. The Reading-Writing Nexus

Formula stories and conventional narrative. Textual ideology and unconventional narrative. Intertextuality and re-reading. Textuality in the classroom.

5. Issues in the Literature Classroom

Criteria for text selection. Censorship. Bibliotherapy. Levels of response to literature.

Assessment

Assessment name: Assignment 1

Description: Novel journal and associated extension/transformation activities.

Relates to objectives: 1, 2, 3

Group or individual: Individual

Due date: Mid semester

Assessment name: Assignment 2

Description: Cumulative reading-writing file to be submitted at last class meeting.

Relates to objectives: n/a

Group or individual: Individual

Due date: End of semester

Supplementary Texts

Corcoran, B & Evans, E (1987) Readers, Texts, Teachers, Upper Montclair, NJ:

Boynton/Cook

Easthope, A (1991) Literary into Cultural Studies. London: Routledge

Farrell E & J Squire (Eds) (1990) Transaction with Literature. Urbana, Illinois:

National Council of Teachers of English

Griffith, P (1987) Literary Theory and English Teaching. London: Open

University Press

Moon, B (1990) Studying Literature. Perth: Chalkface Press

Scholes, R (1990) Protocols of Reading. New York: Yale University Press

Other Details

Offered in: 2009
Current Campus: Kelvin Grove
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