Workshop Ways of teaching literature part 1

hello today we are going to speak about an important issue in our curriculum which is ways of teaching literature in sense how to teach literature most of the teachers when they teach literature some questions claim comes some come to their mind the main important thing is the objective behind the teaching literature so first of all what are the objectives of teaching literature we have variety of objectives number one it gives the opportunity to the students to be exposed to the history and culture of other countries and nations for example here when we when we exposed our students in grade 12 to the hurry the fifth written by shakespeare we expose them in reality to different historical issues and cultural background which is completely different from our arabic one and remember in episode three in harry the fifth there was an issue here which wasn't really understood by the students only if we if the teacher is able to explain to his students the cultural background of that episode so said that it was in episode 3 when the king of france offered marriage his daughter catherine to king harry the fifth with some duke domes as dowry and here my students and most of of course the students here was something strange for them because the normal thing here that students that women must be given the dowry not give the dowry in the case of european culture they used to give the dowry to the to their to their that is brides okay and here there was problem is that how to explain our students the cultural background of that and how to explain that it was their culture their tradition by that is to give the the woman to give the man dowry in terms of piece of land how come if the the the bride was princess so so she should have given dowies that is different parts of of lands okay so this is an important issue that we have to explain and here we are studying behind the language itself behind literature we are exposing our students to different culture background which every which is really useful as far as of course the characters are concerned in any of course novel or play okay the other objective the other the other objective behind the teaching also is the historical background remember also in teaching huckleberry finn with grade 11 students were exposed to the notion of slavery and this is typically historical historical issue okay in the usa that must be explained to the students and the relationship between slaves at that time which was embodied through the character of jim in huckleberry finn and his relationship with the wasp or with the white people at that time this is of course is related to the role of the teacher to expose his students to the background of either history culture of okay or even literally okay background of that era the second and most important objective is that our objective of teaching literacy is improving the student's level in terms of the language use and here we know that when we teach literature here we make the four skills that is writing reading listening and speaking work all together for the sake of explaining any literary work and know that lot of countries like malaysia like some moroccan countries they teach the language in terms of grammar structure mean function writing by through teaching literary works that is they expose their students to literary works either in terms of poetry plays or novels and through which they can explain they can convey the different classical meanings the different structural meanings and functional expressions that can be used and which lead of course to to to to good acquisition of the targeted language the third objective is we teach literature okay and as far as plays novels or poetry are concerned okay in terms of helping the students to develop their linguistic skills and cultural awareness that is in this sense we give the opportunity to the student to be aware of what is behind him which culture is he is living in which culture he is surrounded by then in sense or another the students will be aware that he is not living only in arabic in an arab social cultural context but he is also surrounded by different western indian and european contexts another thing is that we the other objective we teach literature to give the students the opportunity to deal with the universal human questions and experience so here when we teach literature really the students become aware of his existence of some philosophical issues for example if we speak about the notion of love the notion of hatred the notion of reluctance the notion of of human human relationship with god all these can be can be given in terms through literary texts and here the students learn to learn the critical thinking that we are going to explain also later on okay so the other objective is that we teach literary literary literary texts to enable the students to gain familiarity with many features of the written language as far as composition is concerned and as far as they are interpreted sometimes answers are concerned so here they we give the opportunity to the students to write to express themselves and to improve also their level of writing through reading because when we read we have of course to produce through the skill of writing the other objective is that we study literature to train the students intelligence and sensibility here we are training our students to be sensible and intelligent and we give them the opportunity to or to rationalize things to make things in two contexts as far as the reason is that is concerned so this is one of the major important objective of teaching literature the other objective is literally as literary texts are open to multiple interpretations here students can develop their critical thinking and this is the main of course aim behind teaching literature it gives the opportunity to to ask to make solar cues sometimes to to internalize the exposed ideas in himself and to make sometimes of of mixture between him and the exposed text to him and of course it can such mixture can lead to good or very good or an excellent interpretation and different results of writing and opinions and analysis the other objective story here as far as objectives are concerned we can't really define the main objectives there are millions of objectives behind literary teaching literature but we try to to to to summarize the main important ones as in the the ones that mentioned above but here we have main problem when we teach literature we find ourselves in frank as far as the kuwaiti curriculum is concerned we find ourselves in in front of some problems okay which doesn't also related only to us but also to to to any teacher who is teaching literature the first problem is remoteness the notion of remoteness so here taxes that we are that we are exposing to students are related to culturally geographically socially and historically different background so here we are exposing our students to british typically british or typically american culture or history and such kind of remoteness between our learners as an arabs okay who are studying here who are unaware of the western country okay countries culture find difficulties in understanding that so it is really here lies the role of the teacher to