Abstract: Why Do I have to Teach this Way? Mary Chapman (bio) My first response to this question is that I don't have to teach in any particular way in any real sense. As a tenured associate professor at ubc, I have an incredible degree of freedom in my teaching, in terms of my pedagogy, reading list, assignments, and standards of evaluation. Perhaps too much freedom! And yet in the past few years, I have been disappointed by the overall quality of the literary analysis that students are capable of doing in writing and have found it necessary to introduce English majors to certain topics and skills that I had assumed would not be necessary: everything from canonical figures in English and American literature to literary terms to academic genres. Students seem bewildered about what is expected of them in my courses, and I am bewildered about what they have learned in the years leading up to their graduating year. If I have one complaint about senior teaching, then, it is that one does not have any clear sense of what third- and fourth-year English majors know and don't know. Every course seems to have to start from scratch. I can't assume anything about students' familiarity with the canon, particularly in my field of American literature. I also can't assume anything about their familiarity with basic literary terms: Do they know the difference between an image and a symbol? Do they care what the difference is between an [End Page 9] elegy and an ode? Equally, I have no idea of the genres of academic writing a graduating English major will and will not have experience writing: Have they written summaries? Do they know how to prepare an annotated bibliography? Equally, I can make no assumptions about their awareness of research tools: Have they used the mla bibliography? So my revised question is an affective one: What can I do to ease my frustration (and students' frustration) when I find that they are not yet familiar with the basic contours of the literary canon, with literary terms, with academic genres, and with basic research tools? The most recent batch of senior English papers I graded was the most disappointing ever. Students couldn't subordinate historical details to their arguments about literature, and they were uncomfortable or unfamiliar with the formal literary terms required for close readings of poetry. They launched arguments that, methodologically, required a completely different kind of evidence than the evidence they provided; for example, they tried to prove arguments about a poem's reception through a close reading of said poem. And they were extremely hurt when they received my feedback and angry that it was too late—they were graduating seniors!—to make up for things they should have learned three years earlier. Initially, I blamed social media: Students are addicted to their phones and write so many messages in fewer than 140 characters that they can't understand how to write lengthier pieces of literary analysis. Then I blamed grade inflation. Then I blamed students' part-time jobs. But now, I think the blame actually resides with us, the professors who have created the degree programs these young people pursue. Students don't know the basic skills because somewhere along the line, we assumed they knew them and stopped teaching them. If your department is like mine, it is about to undertake a phase of curriculum renewal in part because of this skill deficit. So I would like to brainstorm about best practices in an effort to find some solutions so that a professional panel five years from now won't be bemoaning these same things. Traditionally, if a department thought of curriculum mapping at all, it tended to think in terms of coverage; most programs have wanted to make sure intending majors take a gateway course that exposes them to the English canon. If they have read excerpts of the Norton Anthology in a second-year course, we have reasoned, they will be prepared for studies in English. A gateway course, while laudable, however, if it is focused solely on "coverage," will not solve all our problems; no matter...
Publication Year: 2014
Publication Date: 2014-12-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 1
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