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Showing posts from December, 2018

Spoiler Alerts And The Teaching Of Literature

Jejak Panda Selamat Datang Di Website Kesayangam Anda bandarq online My American Literature students and I were reading The Scarlet Letter , and I asked how many of them had read it before or who at least knew the story.   Most had, but two students did not.   I find it difficult to discuss a novel in discrete sections without reference to the whole work, so I find myself giving away the endings.   One year, my students bought me a t-shirt with WARNING:   SPOILER ALERT emblazoned across the chest.   Since then I’ve tried to be more sensitive about ruining the endings of books. So when two of my current students had no idea who Hester’s husband was or who the father of Pearl was, I said, “OK, I’m going to lead you through the process of figuring out the identities so I can talk about the novel as a whole without spoiling the ending, and you can still feel you figured it out yourselves.”   First of all, I said, “Think of the begin...

Don't Lecture Me, Really.

Jejak Panda Menambah Ilmu Dengan Membaca Di Situs Kesayangan Anda judi ceme online Last Friday I had a feed for my first year students.   About twelve came to my building around dinner time to socialize over chili, corn bread muffins, warm cider, and brownies. We sat in a circle to eat, and since they are all shy and also from two different classes, I asked them to introduce themselves, and then I asked each one to tell us about her best and worst class so far at this, the midterm of their first semester of college. All of them had great stories to tell about exciting classes, and several even said they loved all of their classes.   But some had horror stories to share.   Many of these were predictable, like students who dislike math complaining about their math class, but several complained about courses they expected to love but found disappointing because the courses were just lecture. One student said that she had two English classes she was excit...

Don't Lecture Me, Part Ii

Jejak Panda Hai.. Jumpa Lagi Di Blog Kesayangan Anda ceme online terbaik Last week’s post on the lecture as an instructional model produced incredibly varied responses, from enthusiastic gratitude for my support of active learning to enthusiastic defense of lecturing.   The nature of some of the replies has prompted me to revisit the topic and elaborate upon my ideas. The first thing I think that needs to be pointed out is that neither I, nor any of the researchers I cite, claim that students do not or cannot learn from a lecture.   The cited studies claim that students learn more effectively from active learning pedagogies, not that they fail to learn in a lecture model. Perhaps the most troubling response I received was one that bemoaned the fact that the learning style of middle-class white males was being neglected, and claimed that this group was the “least studied demographic.”   That’s patently not the case.   The studies I cite abs...

(Mis)Reading Emily Dickinson

Jejak Panda Hello.. Selamat Datang Kembali Di Blog Kesayangan Anda bandar judi ceme The first time I read Emily Dickinson’s “My Life had stood—a Loaded Gun” was in a graduate course.   Previous to that, I did not enjoy Dickinson’s poetry.   But I had mostly only read and taught poems like “A narrow fellow in the grass” or “I’m Nobody!   Who are you?”   These and poems like them, at least the way they were taught to me, seemed shallow and sentimental.   They were the kinds of poems that ended up on refrigerator magnets, classroom posters, and Hallmark cards.   But that class began to change my attitude toward Dickinson, which was further altered after I read Brenda Wineapple’s White Heat , which chronicles Dickinson’s semi-erotic epistolary relationship with the writer and editor Thomas Wentworth Higginson.   If you haven’t read it, do. I think even Dickinson fans will never think of her the same way again. In ...