For me, learning is an active
process in every discipline. It needs, therefore, an active and direct
involvement of the learner in the process steered and monitored by the teacher.
As consequence of the active involvement in the learning process, mastery on
the subject can be expected from the learner. Otherwise, it would be a
provisional retrieval of the memorized information which goes with the wind
through the passage of time without any considerable actual or practical
achievements. Literature is no exception. Literary subjects are directly or
indirectly interacting with real life and facts in it. A student of literary
studies should be able to interact with life and diverse issues in the world
around with a shaper perception and smarter action and reaction which s/he
achieves through defamiliarization fostered by literature.
As a teacher of
English Language and Literature, I have dedicated myself to introducing my
students to a wide variety of texts and subjects that will encourage them into critical
thinking about the issues that emerge in their personal lives. My main
objective is usually to facilitate their engagement with the ideas and themes
expressed in the novels, short stories, and poems to prove to them the
possibility of multiple significations and interpretations of a single text.
To achieve this objective, my
strategy as a teacher is, first of all, to encourage a friendly relationship
with the subject the students are to interact with for one semester, and more
probably for longer time after their graduation. Therefore, they need to accept
the subject either as a useful or interesting thing in their life. Hence, I
have always attempted to apply a combination of techniques to promote not only
the mastery of the subject, but also long-lasting (even life-long) learning and
developing of the learners. For this purpose, the role of the students in
forming the mood of the class and shaping the objective of the attempts is of
essential importance. In my classes, students are not only passive audience who
are expected to give in whatever they are provided with by the teacher. They
have to learn skills such as critical thinking and rational decision making for
their off-campus affairs as well. For me, teacher’s role is not limited to
stuffing the memories of the students with predefined ideas and clichés turning
their minds into reservoir of stale or preferred opinions.
Since literature and literary studies are constituted of
various fields including reading and analyzing poetry, drama and novel, and
writing on a wide variety of topics, which may be related to literature or not,
requires different approaches to each category. I have experienced a variety of
classes during my teaching years the most significant and challenging of which
were Critical Writing and Short Story Telling. Through writing exercises, discussions, and student presentations, my
objective is to provide the students with opportunities to think critically and
develop their skills in communicating their ideas in more effective fashions. As
I have experienced during my professional years, mere composition skills and
knowledge such as paragraph development and grammar knowledge do not suffice to
create an appealing texture for the reader or audience. The writer needs to consider
the type and class of the audience with getting to know and utilize the most
appropriate writing styles, and more importantly, not to lose her/his own "voice"
among the words and sentences.
As a fresh lecturer with raw
teaching techniques during my first semesters in my university, I found the
writing and short story classes as two of the insufferably boring and
exhausting ones both for the students and me. However, I thought that I needed
to change my strategy partially, at least, to promote the results of the class.
I started with writing class which was more energy-consuming than other
subjects. I tried to attract the students more into the skill. Instead of
giving them obscure topics to write about, I related the subjects to their
personal lives to make them more tangible and understandable for them. In one
of the writing classes, what we expected from a student was her/his ability to
write critical essays on literary subjects. Therefore, I scheduled a warm-up
section prior to entering into the writing task. The discussion of the subject
with active participation of the students in class would prepare the minds of
the students for critical thinking and jotting down their ideas.
Having been dealt
with a wide array of subjects and courses such as essay writing, business
correspondence, writing literary criticism, reading novel and poetry during my
teaching tenure as English lecturer in undergraduate level, I have encountered
heterogeneous classes with students who had various needs, motivations and
aspirations. My attempt has always been to classify reading and writing as two
aspects of one phenomenon which are complementary to each other. Therefore,
they require the presence of the other to promote and develop.
The importance of
writing and reading in one’s ability to comprehend and perceive the world
around through the images, figurative language, and rhetoric of the writer in
creating the meaning and views about the life and the world around have been
elaborated in my PhD thesis on V. S. Naipaul’s travel narratives. The way a
writer composes and arranges the order and position of the words and
expressions in her/his text can not only cause misunderstandings between the
reader and writer, but also create the reality for the reader as well.
Hence, the
appropriate ways of reading, writing, speaking, and listening, as four coral
skills for mastering a language and its literature, brings about the right way
of communicating as writer, speaker, and audience, which is applicable not only
to academic tasks of students, but also their actual life off the campus.
Majid Jafari Saray
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