Today's presentation was on Chapter 4. The members included Adilah, Shahida and Aniza. And miraculously, for the first time, I gave my hundred percent of attention towards the group presentation. Not that the previous presentations bored me to death. It's just that since each group has provided us with the handouts, I thought that I don't have to jot down any notes given vocally by the speakers or Madam Lim.
So today, I felt quite energetic. I had the mood to even grab my pen and furiously started to write down the notes given. Madam Lim had given a lot of examples on how we could teach our future students about literature.
According to the presenters, there are several approaches to literature that a teacher could use to deal with the students. The appraoches include:
a) Reader Response/Transactional Approach
b) Schema Approach
c) Literary Stylistics Approach
d) Literary History/New Historian Approach
e) Biographical Approach
f) Psychological Approach
g) Socio-Psychologial Approach
h) Paraphrastic Approach
i) Cognitive Psychology Approach
j) Mythological & Archetypal Approach
k) Moral-Philosophical Approach
Of all the approaches mentioned above, I prefer Socio-Psychological Approach the most. Let me briefly state the purposes of this approach (copy it directly from the handouts):
1. to enhance the students' knowledge of people
2. to undertsand the age in which the literature was written.
3. to apply this knowledge and understanding to current living.
Madam Lim even suggested for one activity that is applicable to be used for this kind of approach, that is when teaching our future students on the short story: Of Bunga Telur and Bally Shoes.
As a start, the teacher can study or discuss on the prominent/major character(s) of the short story with the students. For example, the teacher chooses Jamal's mother as the prominet female character. The teacher then relates Jamal's mother's characteristic within the Malay context, that is Malay women, especially older women. Older women in the Malay society are perceived to have more power than men do. The teacher can cross-reference Jamal 's mother to the women in Kelantan, by relating the Kelantanese culture with literature.
I personally think that if I were to teach my students literature, I could use some demonstration on the humanistic values because they are easier. However, that does not mean I would overlook on the rest of the approaches.
8:05 PM
