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[SethinBeijing]

Would anybody have any suggestions on an affective way to teach British Literature to college level students in Beijing? I will begin teaching at the end of the month and have been told that this is one of the classes I will have. I have been told that there is SOME sort of book that the students have, and I will get that book on arrival. I am pretty sure that they will not have (nor be required) to buy novels or anything like that. So, I am kinda flying blind here. While I have some free time before teaching, I could put something together, however, if I were to say, pick 4 authors........and do a lot of lesson planning...I have this NIGHTMARE that they will simply have no access to the books or poems of the ones I would like to introduce. Has anybody taught this topic there?
Any real help or advice would be appreciated.
Thanks.

[Roger]

I taught English Literature to college students in my first job in China. Let me express my heartfelt condolences to you!

If you are totally new to teaching in CHINA then you are in for many unpleasant surprises.

You do not need to waste your brains on "affective" methods to teach them literature - you will need a lot of affection yourself!

If they are not English majors they will be horribly underprepared for this kind of subject.

They will NEVER do homework.

They will have zero understanding of what your materials are talking about.

They will have zero history knowledge to grasp main issues dealt with in your works.

To give you a telltale example: the majority of my students - who were enrolled at a teachers' college, with 8 years of English to their belts, weren't interested in any reading and never read up.
I eventually learnt from the horse's mouth - i.e. the FAO - I should only drill into their brains the ranking of the English authros in a chronological order! Thus, "Shakespeare was the greatest English writer in the 16th century", and that was what students expected to be asked in the final exam!

I would still assign them portions of novels or other materials to study and to give a reasoned comment on them, explaining things that should emerge to them from those texts. But whether you succeed in this I do not know!

Perhaps you can focus on studying contemporary literature - reading news!
And be prepared for the cheating during your exams or tests! Test each student differently from their nethbours in written tests!

[SethinBeijing]

Thanks for the info.....kinda what I expected.
GOD! And it is at a Science and Technology School............I AM DOOMED!

[tw]

[Volodiya]

I've seen my students show interest in literature that presents interpersonal, relational issues or that looks into the lives of its principals in a way that encourages investigation of success, happiness and the role "character" plays in all this- these being universal, timeless and very human themes.
____________________

It's not British, but we recently finished the short story, "The Bridal Party", by Fitzgerald. They had long and noisy arguments about whether Michael and Caroline would get back together; and, to whether there was "truth" in some of Hamilton's assertions about women, for example.

Other things that I think helped- the language was modern, and the entire piece was just 30 pages, or so, in length. I gave them just half of it, initially, to build suspense about how the story would come out. (With more challenging material, you could assign less to read, developing discussions and writing assignments from excerpts.)

There is no harm in filling in just a little of their lack of knowledge of context- as in this case, the stock market crash of 1929. But by sticking to the human relational and character issues raised, you can give them something they can understand and relate to for discussion and writing; thereby revealing, finally, our common humanity, a theme I myself quite enjoy developing with them.

[writpetition]

Sethin Beijing,

I was given the 'onerous' task of teaching literature to a class of grade three English majors. The literature classes, for the most part, were History of English Literature classes. While my students were neither well-informed nor even familiar with most of the authors, I tried to get them interested and keep them interested by reading up a little about the different periods and authors and then filling the lessons with details about the subjects being dealt with. I did this by evoking images from the past, describing (or trying to) their life and times, what their motivations were and so on...

It was difficult at times, but the students did come to class and listen to lectures on Plato and Shakespeare, Old English, the Middle Ages and so on. They even asked questions and participated in class. The lowest turnout in class was about 50% around mid-term. However, when I asked them to read up on Plato's 'Symposium' I found that a tall ask...

It wasn't as bad as it might have been...

[myesl]

My experience teaching English majors was the same as Roger's teaching non-English majors. I had a few students who were actually interested and I could never decide if I should be happy a few were into it or annoyed that not 100% of my class had no interest (which would have made things easier for me in its way). The biggest thing is not too worry. You won't need to know 10% as much as you may now be fearing you don't know (if you weren't a lit. major at uni). But it will be painful if you care at all about teaching; likely nothing you do will get many students interested.

My book was a thin paperback filled with tiny selections from British writers from Chaucer until about 1970. Each chapter also had a couple of pages of bio written in Chinese (which was only so-so). Half or more of the students will at least read that. The selections were often from the most famous works by those authors, but not always. The book was on the whole a good introduction to British literature (as was the book on American literature), though necessarily brief in the extreme.

Good luck!

[SimonM]

Here is one that a friend of mine gave me:

Chinese english students like and can understand Shakespeare. What you do to prime them is this:

Take a relatively well-known sonnet.

Re-write every line in contemporary English (ignore poetic rules, meaning is what we are shooting for here); I know it's saccreligious to do that to the Bard's words but it's just to warm the students up to the real thing.

Cut out the lines of your re-write into single-line strips.
Divide the class into groups (I used groups of three) and give them each a copy of the original poem as writen by shakespeare and a set of your "translated" lines. Ask the groups to put your lines back into the right order.

This activity works really well.

Also my students have expressed a fondness for Romeo & Juliet, Hamlet, MSND and the Merchant of Venice. Movies of these plays (avoid Romeo + Juliet though - that movie sucked) could be a welcome treat if the students have progressed sufficiently to understand the language in them without spending 10 minutes sifting through meanings.

[brsmith15]

A few thoughts:

1. See if you can get the videos for the BBC productions of Sherlock Holmes. These are usually fairly short and very interesting to Chinese because of the linear logic. "When you eliminate the impossible......" "That was the curious incident."

2. I agree with the former poster as regards The Bard. Act out certain parts yourself but in a modern fashion. Go overboard. I can remember a former professor staging Iago as a tough guy. He was great and made us all remember. How about, "Alas, poor Yorick....." Maybe you can find the new video of "Merchant" with Al Pacino as Shylock. I normally hate the guy, but I must give him his due on this one. And Mel G as Hamlet? Wow!

3. Stop the videos from time to time. Ask them what they saw. Elucidate further.

4. Tell them there will be a test later.

[SimonM]