Reading the Word to Reading the
World(s): Teaching Literature in GE
Curriculum
Vicky Lee
June 12, 2012
GE and University Curriculum Reform: An
International Conference in Hong Kong
Literature a subject that stirs
fear and anxiety…
Ousted…excommunicated from the Hong Kong
curriculum.
Why?
A Discipline for the Elites
• An esoteric past times for selected few from
Band One school
• A class marker, a status symbol
• Literature is “the chief weapon against the corruption and
vulgarity of mass urban industrial society” (Leavis, Cambridge
Don, 1930s)
A myth created by the history of the city
and the colonial city
Remote cultural contexts
• Hong Kong L2 students cannot connect with
literary texts which are narrowly
Anglo/Eurocentric
• No relevance whatsoever for our Hong Kong
students
If students can connect with science fiction
and Japanese anime, they can easily connect
with Dickens.
Complex language
Inaccessible & detrimental for L2 learner
• L2 learner is better off with the “functional”
“communicative” “practical” approach
• functional operationalism: the promotion of
language ‘skills’ (Webb 7)
Literacy is not just about mere functional
operationalism but helping students “expand in
the realm and reach of meaning” in language
(Willinsky 15).
Teaching Literature in 21st Century
• No longer the esoteric specialization is for
everyone as it is about fundamental human
struggles to live
• Embrace the spirit of GE of
breaking boundaries and connecting disciplines…
recognizes that we now live in a time of cultural
and disciplinary hybridization of the regional and
the global, of high and low, east and west, arts
and sciences
For “fruitful, democratic living” (Willinsky 123)
Towards an Eclectic Approach
in teaching literature in
GE Curriculum
• Language based model
• Philosophical model
• The Personal Growth Model
• The Cultural Model
Language based model
(Carter and Long 1991)
• Students focus on specific linguistic features
such as literal and figurative language,
symbolism and other grammatical and
structure analysis.
Philosophical Approach
• focus on theories and philosophical inquiry on
signification, deconstruction, post-
structuralism etc.
• Jane Austen is being read side by side with
philosophers like Derrida and Althusser.
Personal Growth Model
(Carter & Long, 991)
or the “self-” goals (Willinsky 123)
• text as stimulus for self-reflection (Savvidou).
• text can as a mirror – we are in fact reading
ourselves, reading our own reactions as we
read the text.
• “Awareness of our own responses can lead to
self-understanding, self-criticism, perhaps a
clarification or a reinforcement of values”
(Rosenblatt,22)
Cultural Model (Carter & Long, 1991)
- seeing the world with new eyes
• Text is seen as a cultural artifact (Savvidou).
• text also serves as a mirror – as we reading about
other communities, we are also reading our own
communities.
• De-familiarize themselves to look at their own
cultures and communities.
• a form of consciousness-raising and awakening
to certain issues across culture
• Opposed to “pedagogic universalism” or “cultural
neutralism” (Durant)
Outcomes
for the Eclectic Model
• Develop a sense of self-exploration and self-
understanding;
• Enlarge one’s capacity to enter into and understand
the lives of others;
• Aware of the connectedness between their own
Chinese cultural heritage and the different cultural
heritages that speak to us in literary texts;
• Reflect on one’s cultural assumptions towards other
cultures;
• Identify enduring sociopolitical issues across different
cultures from different heritages/traditions.
Selected Examples of
the eclectic approach
in the Hong Kong GE classroom.
The Sniper” by O’Flaherty in the
“
Hong Kong GE Classroom
Contexts Personal Current and Historical Issues
and issues in Reflection regional Issues
literary text
Conflicting Opposition Chinese Civil War in the
A day in the loyalties e.g. between the 1940s
Irish Civil Conscience vs. Taiwanese Korean Civil War in
War 1923 – duty, Independence the1950s
IRA vs. Free- Loyalty to a group Movement and Vietnam Civil war in
staters vs. the KMT the 1970s
Personal
convictions,
Familial loyalty v.
national loyalty
“A Rose for Emily” by Faulkner in Hong Kong GE
classroom
Issues embedded in Personal Reflection Local Current Issues Historical and Global
literary text issues
Conflict of How a student sees The generation of Baby boomers
perceptions between things differently status quo and the v.
generations from her parents’? the radical post- Generation X & Y
1980s.
Ethnic boundaries Student re-evaluates Prevalence of ethnic Traditional suspicions
her own perceptions stereotypes in Hong between different
of minorities in Hong Kong e.g. Chinese ethnic
Kong Mainlanders, South groups.
Asians, etc.
Collective memory Selectiveness of one’s The memory of How the memory of
and the present memory. colonial days from June 4th changes from
resistance to generation to
nostalgia. generation and from
region to region
“Living on the Edge of Mai-po Nature Reserve” by L.
Ho in the Hong Kong GE Classroom
Issues Personal Local Current Historical and
embedded in Reflection Issues Global issues
literary text
The Hong Kong Distrust Hong Kong as a
ambivalence identity vs. between Hong shelter for
between Hong Chinese Kongers and fleeing Chinese,
Kong and China identity their Mainland the brain drain,
cousins the anxiety
leading to the
handover in
1997…
Reading the word to reading the
worlds
Move from functional literacy a higher form
of literacy that goes beyond mere language skills
A new literacy that empowers students
to remake the self
to envisage the changing world through
the word…
References
• Carter, R. & Long, M. (1991) Teaching Literature. Essex & New York:
Longman UK Group
• Durant, A. (1995) “Introduction to ‘Language through Literature’
Approaches to teaching Literature in English L2 Contexts’ in Moira
Linnarud et. El (eds.) Spak Och Fikton (Hogskolan I Karlstad Press)
pp.291-311
• Rosenblatt, L.M. (1981) On the aesthetic as the basic model of the
reading process, Bucknell Review, 26(1), 17-32
• Savidou, C. (2004) The Internet TESL Journal, Vol X No. 12
http://itselj.org/
• Webb, E. (1992) Literature in Education. London: Falmer Press
• Willinsky, J (1991) The Triumph of Literature/The Fate of Literacy.
New York: Teachers College, Columbia University
