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My Own Philosophy in Teaching Literature

“He knew everything about the literature except how to enjoy it.” A

reflective and powerful quote from John Heller’s famous masterpiece, Catch-22.

I found this quote very honest and contemplative because it’s almost true to

most of us, especially when applied to the field of education. We somehow see

it in ourselves that the aim of learning literature is to understand and know it

solely, leaving out the idea of enjoying it.

The primary goal of education is to teach the students how to learn on

their own. Being a teacher is really a difficult profession, and it is even made

more challenging when you became a literature teacher. As an English

literature teacher, it is more than teaching and developing reading and writing

skills; and it is more than teaching students how to analyse and interpret

novels, poems, short stories, essays and plays. You also have to make students

be creative and sensitive that they can understand what is happening around

the world through literature.

An ultimate call for all literature teachers is on how to teach students

literature in a manner that the learner will enjoy and develop a direct

meaningful experience out of it. Based on a personal experience of taking

different literature subjects that is worth comparing, let’s see some of its

different points. One literature class lets us experienced only heavy readings

and creating analysis, which is undeniably helpful to develop our critical

thinking skills. The other literature class also is similar with the first one, but

only this time, reading and analysis are characterize by having role plays,

reports, group discussions & other collaborative learning activities which

enhances the learner’s 21st century skills. Both of those classes offered me a

wide range of information about numerous literary pieces, but only one had left

a huge impact because of an enjoyablemanner of learning. This helps me


formulate a notion that there is an easy way out of teaching a difficult and

challenging course.

Rather than just learning themes, plot, characters and styles of writing

through reading a literary piece, employing fun activities is highly suggested.

These activities would apprehend the students’ scrutiny and interests. A

teacher must really examine every student’s interest attentively to generate an

active interaction. Interest is really a strong driving force of motivation.

Through this, they learn as they have fun.

A Chinese proverb states that, "Tell me and I will forget. Show me and I

will remember. Involve me and I will understand." Accordingly, meaningful

learning takes place through concrete experiences. David Kolb develops four

learning styles, and one of these is the Divergers. Divergers learn best when

they are actively involved which improves their mental activity by easily

retaining the things that they already participated. One example of concrete

experiences that is applicable and widely used in literature is dramatization.

Students enjoy when there is an interaction with one another, and drama is a

potential tool to an effective understanding.Dramatization helps the students to

understand and to reflect the characters in literature. Not only this,

dramatization also provides various skills on a student. It gives them positive

and confident image as they put their shoes on others and relate to them. It

develops their communicating skills and knowledge of language through

dialogues. Drama is a helpful tool to equip students to a world that is rapidly

becoming team-oriented because it requires the students to work together.

Empathy is developed too when students occupy a character’s soul.Most

importantly, drama will benefit the students as excellent decision makers due

to the fact that they can experiment character’s personal choices and solutions.

This yields a greater depth of understanding which can be a great help to the
teachers itself. As a teacher, it will always be significant to link the drama

presentation to a literary piece that will enrich their knowledge of the world.

The three domains namely the cognitive, affective and psychomotor must

always be taken as guiding principles of every teacher. Through experiential

learning, these domains are successfully accomplished. Literature students can

achieve these when students appreciate and love the way they are learning

interactively. Applying the domains through our previous example,

dramatization promotes cognitive through understanding the flow of a

literature, promotes affective upon reflecting to the characters, and promotes

psychomotor domain through enacting.

Another personal philosophy of mine is guided on A.E Houseman’s

quote, “Great literature should do some good to the reader: must quicken his

perception to dull, and sharpen his discrimination though blunt, and mellow

the rawness of his personal opinions.” I believe that one great rule to pass

literature class is tolerance. There is a need to use literature to teach tolerance.

Its most literal level, the word "tolerance" suggests an ability to merely put up

with ideas and practices that one does not agree with.As a literature teacher,

handling students with ideas that seems to contradict yours is very testing.

On a literature class, we can’t deny that upon analysing and interpreting

a piece of literature, we can’t easily drop down our own personal biases. I

experienced several moments that my own perspective is different to how my

literature teacher interprets it. I am used to how our grammar teacher accepts

our views and develops it. But in literature class, our ideas must be unified

and that is why acceptance and tolerance plays a greater deal on teaching

literature. As a teacher we should use literature to teach students to know how

to accept and deal with one perspective. Somehow with many contradicting

perspectives, there should be a thin line where our perspective will meet. The
teacher's responsibility here is to guide students to important conclusions and

observations that are critical. A good strategy to employ tolerance in literature

is to let them produce an oral or written reflection.Without reflection students

cannot construct meaning from what they read.

A challenging course needs a good philosophy which will be a benefit to

an effective and meaningful learning. My own philosophy believes that learning

literature must be in a fun way, so students are motivated to interpret literary

pieces with all their heart that they may connect it to the world. I also consider

that teaching literature is another way to teach acceptance and tolerance in a

world with diverging lenses.

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