Literature opens minds

This essay will be about how literature has changed my life and the way I see education. I will write about my experience in my literature class and how it has changed my way I understand the world. I will describe some topics that I discussed in this class, then how schools apply literature and finally, I will write how literature can be applied in EFL classrooms.

At the beginning of the semester I believed that the literature class was just about reading old books and posh poems with old fashioned topics. All those prejudices did not let me see how beautiful and important literature is. So during the semester I discovered myself enjoying all the readings and, little by little I was involved in a very amazing process, reflection on my life. Why? Because I realized that literature is closely related to our lives, our experiences and our feelings. It also helps to express our ideas and feelings, to imagine new worlds and to be more creative. As Todorov wrote, ‘literature expands our universe, prompts us to see other ways to conceive and organize it’. (17)

All the classes covered different topics like homosexuality, the role of women in our society, love, palimpsest, discrimination and truth. Obviously those topics are not old fashioned as I thought before. The teacher was a facilitator and she guided us in our reflections on those topics and my own classmates presented the themes as they wanted. When they presented I realized they related the topics to their own lives and experiences and they applied all their creativity in their presentations. So, in that way I could see different points of view, interpretations and realities. And I felt very motivated in the class because I wanted to see and participate in all the presentations. Some topics were very interesting and they generated amazing debates.

And after seen all the presentations I thought how schools are applying literature in their classes? This question made me think when I was at school. When I had to read a book I just read it because it was compulsory and I would be evaluated for it. And I never reflected on the main conflicts or the topic or what the intention of the author was. Currently the situation is the same,

teachers concern the function of one component of the work in relation to the structure of the whole, not on the meaning of that component nor on the meaning of the book as a whole for its epoch for us. So students are asked about the role of a character, of an episode… (Todorov, 2007)

This is an awful problem because teachers are not promoting reflection and critical education. For instance, once I observed in my work experience that the students had to read “Pride and Prejudice” and the teacher told them they had to memorize all the characters because the test would be about them. For that reason students tend to see literature as something boring and monotonous because they just have to memorize the characters. Despite the book has interesting topics to discuss, the teacher preferred to focus his lesson in memorize the main characters.

But how can future teachers change that way of teaching literature? I think teachers training programs should encourage literature as a way to develop critical awareness of education in order to develop critical thinkers’ teachers. Future teachers can not repeat the same mistake that in practice teachers are making. If they are well prepared in their initial programs, they could improve education. I believe that if our society has reflective and critical teachers, they could be an example to their students and students could understand their lives.

It is important to mention that future teachers must be aware of students’ interests, so in that way they could know what topics would be meaningful for them and related to their lives, both teachers and students could discuss all these topics in the classroom. In short they would not be passive, they would be active learners discussing, reflecting and analyzing different topics.

After analyzing how future teacher could improve their practice, I will write how I could use literature in EFL classroom. I would focus on speaking activities because it is the less reinforced in the classroom. First, I would ask students what books they like and what topics they would like to talk about in the class. Then I would bring those topics to the classroom, it would not be necessary make the students read the entire book, but I would present them some general ideas of the book and the author. After that, I would give them some questions to discuss and finally they would have to formulate some question to their classmates. The focus here is to share ideas, in that way I will be doing speaking and listening activities because they have to tell what they think and listen to their classmates’ opinions and see other perspectives. However, what happens with the books that are compulsory because of the syllabus? This is a common problem in the school, so I would analyze with the students what topics they would like to talk or write about.

To conclude, literature has helped me to “keep my mind wide open”, to understand my life and different points of view. Literature opens minds because it helps to create new worlds and imagine stories, it gives the chance to develop new representations of the world and express their ideas. My literature class gave the opportunity to develop these aspects and my classmates gave me examples on how I could apply literature in my future language classes. It also made me think on how future teachers could improve their literature classes, and I think that universities have to focus on teachers training programs in order to develop critical thinkers’ teachers. Future teachers must promote reflection and active students, if that happens, the school could develop its fundamental mission which is to contribute to the improvement of society through the formation of critical citizens, responsible and honorable. (Guerra, Santos, 2000) Finally, through literature, teachers can use different methodologies to teach EFL learners because the topics are very contemporary and it can open students’ minds.

Work Cited

Santos Guerra, M. A La escuela que aprende: retos, dificultades y esperanzas. Madrid: Editorial Morata. 2000.

Todorov, Tzvetan New literary History. Volume 38, Number 1, winter 2007, pp. 1- 12

We are human beings !

This paper will discuss the movie that we have seen in class, which was “The Merchant of Venice”. I will focus on the opposition between the characters Shylock and Antonio. Both were the main characters of the film but they represented opposite power in it. It is important to mention how this movie began, the first images shown were texts which explained how Jews were treated to us, discriminated and hated.

In the movie the events took place in the 16th century, in Venice, which was divided into Jews and Christians. Jews were discriminated, they were forced to wear red hats in order to recognize them and they lived in a ghetto. Antonio, who was a Christian, spat in Shylock’s face, just because he was a Jew and a usurer. One day Antonio decided to borrowed money from Shylock. Why? Because Antonio had a friend, Bassanio, who needed money in order to travel where a virgin queen lived. He wanted to seduce her because she had a lot of money. Antonio and Shylock made a deal, the Jew lent him the money without any interest but if he could not pay him three months later, Shylock would cut him a piece of his flesh. Three months later Shylock and Antonio went to the court to decide if the Jew would cut part of Antonio’s flesh. Shylock was thirsty for revenge because he had lost his pride and he had lost his daughter. But if we analyze deeply why he wanted revenge, we could see that it was because he just wanted to be respected and he wanted to be treated as a human and not as Jewish dog. from this point of view, he wanted to teach to Antonio to respect Jews but maybe through revenge was not the best way to do it.

The movie showed us stereotypes of people, its characters clearly represent different types of power and ways of thoughts. So, what did Antonio represent? Probably he represented the good side. He had everything in his life, he was handsome, Christian, and he also had money and Bassanio’s friendship. On the other hand Shylock represented “the dark side of the force”, because he was ugly, usurer and Jew. First, the discrimination here is something physically. Why did the film director choose the handsome guy to represent a Christian? It’s something absolutely esthetic, because the antagonist could not be the handsome. Otherwise, the antagonist would not be represented as something bad. Second, the discrimination in this movie was basically represented by the hate against Jews. They had to live in ghettos, wore specific clothes and they did not have the same opportunities like the Christians. Something that called my attention was Shylock’s words when he was trying to explain that he was a human to Christians.

“I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die?...”

Those words showed the desperation that Shylock felt and they made me reflect on discrimination; which is the most stupid thing that we could do against someone. We are human beings! We have the same feelings, the same fears, etc. So, everybody must have the same rights and the same opportunities. Therefore, as future teachers, movies like this could help us to encourage students to be aware of cultural differences and similarities and teach them respect. And we could say that segregation, discrimination and racism destroy the humankind and develop hate in the human beings’ hearts and souls.


To conclude, I think that this movie had two theatrical genres, comedy and tragedy. We could recognize comedy in the love story between Bassanio and Portia, and on the other hand, we could see tragedy in opposition between Shylock and Antonio. Discrimination and segregation were important topics in this movie, too. And these types of movies can help us as future teachers to teach values, like respect because all of us are human beings and also teach us awareness of other cultures due to the fact that we live in society.

Source: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0379889/quotes

film review

Outline

Title: We are human beings!

1. Introduction
2. Brief summary of the film
3. Opposition between characters
4. Discrimination
5. Personal opinion
6. Conclusion

The Faerie Queene

It was a very difficult text. I read it many times, but after the class discussion I could understand a little bit better the main idea of the letter.
The title of this poem represented an imaginary world because it took place in the Faery land where the Queene had her kingdom.
He critiqued the social, political and religious problems but he did it in an intelligent way, he expressed all his discomfort through hidden messages. So, for that reason it was an allegory.
He chose to write about King Arthur because he was a brave knight and a marvelous person who had excellent virtues. He also emphasized in some characters, which represented the church and the moral, for instance.
Spencer was smart because he wrote the letter to Raleigh to explain his intentions and what his poem was about and he also was looking for a protector because he wanted to be safe of all the problems (social, political and religious) that happened in those times.

what do women desire?

We want to be understood, loved and safe but at the same time we want to be free, independent and have fun. Probably all those desires are in our genes. Allison had the same needs just like contemporary women have..

We want to be independent but we want to depend on someone. Who can understand women? Even I can not understand myself.

I think that she was like Samantha Jones of Sex and the city, “she had sex not only to give birth but, she just wanted to have fun”. Allison could be Samantha in those times. Both had the control of their life and they discovered their sexuality, body and feelings and both looked for their desires. Clearly Allison was very brave because she was against of all church laws and against the role that society imposed on women.

I would like to follow her way of thought because I believe she was very courageous and she was very liberal. Who has 5 husbands nowadays? I’d like t have 5 husbands and if one of them does not understand me, I could kick him out and I would just 4 husbands left. The same happens if one of them have sexual problems I’d have the rest to solve that problem.

Briefly, men would never understand what women desire, curiously enough we don’t know what we want.

Thank God of all.

Chaucer called this poem truth because he wanted to show how truth could help us to have a better life. Form him truth is a change for our lives, it is a salvation state. Through it we have the redemption of our sins and we could be closer to God.

He meant by “for greed entails hate and social climbing uncertainty”, our society is forcing us to buy and sell unnecessary material things in order to have more social status, for instance if you don not have an I- phone you are outside of the technological world and if you are outside of that world you are old fashioned. We are always trying to have the latest technology to be the more popular in our society.

The same happens in some works, it does not matter if you have to attack your college, in that way you could have a better job, earn more money and have a new car. In fact you could have a better social status. We can not watch with envy what our neighbor has, we have to be proud of what God gave us. As I wrote before truth represents the redemption of our sins and that is the religious implication of this poem.

After reading this poem I think it is related to our capitalist society. It wants us to make addict of consumerism without taking in consideration the truth.

My definition of an epic poem :D

¿What is an epic poem?
I think that it is a way to tell us a story through a long poem. It had fictional situations and through heroes represents the values of the society and they have to fight against their enemies who represent the evilness of the society. It is also related to a especial context and events.
Epic poems are still alive because some stories like Harry Potter that has a hero who demonstrates his kindness and the bravery.