How To-30: How to Teach Literature to College Students

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Literature is a very versatile subject and is generally considered one of the most difficult subjects to teach. There is no right or wrong way to teach a Literature class; however, there is a smart way to teach it. The idea in Literature is not just to get an answer, it is to get an in-depth, provocative and creative answer. The job of the professor is not to teach the student, it is to lead the student.

Steps

Get a degree : No community college will let you teach English with less than a BA, and very few will let you teach with less than an MA. If you intend to teach at the university level, you will most likely require a PhD, as well as recent publication in respected journals. Obviously, most English teaching jobs will go to people who have studied in the Humanities, particularly English majors.
Do your research: Find out about the various kinds of Literature existing in different periods of time and how it evolved through the ages. If your training in step one didn't prepare you in this way, you are probably not ready to be in front of a college English class.
Emulate, but don't copy: If you're about to be teaching college English, you've already spent at least four to ten years in post-high-school classrooms. It would be naive to suggest that you don't know how to teach; You've spent much of your adult life watching other people do it. Use what you know. Take the best examples from your educational past and craft them around your current situation, and within that history, find a voice of your own. If you merely copy your past instructors, or crib lesson plans from a website, you're probably not destined to be much of a teacher.
Always read excerpts of material in class: Students often rely upon study guides and predigested responses to texts they have never experienced as living works of art. Remember to allow plenty of time for regular readings and re-readings of a poem, for example, so that its impact as sound can be enjoyed before it is analyzed simply as a complicated kind of prose. This is equally important with many prose writers such as Dickens or Jane Austen for whom some basic impact is in the rhythmic shape and weight of a paragraph as a key part of its "meaning". They may set a slow versus a staccato tempo, to indicate boredom or excitement for instance.
Keep the class especially challenging for the first few weeks: Usually you will find a group of students will enroll for a class for no good reason. Because of this you tend to get slackers in class or people who are not intellectually cut out for such a subject. If you make the class extremely challenging and provocative for the first few weeks, it will cause a few of the less interested students to become slightly alarmed and they will drop the class. The ones who stay will become more alert and get more involved. (NOTE: If your school receives state funding based on attendance, you might want to wait until the census date has passed before engaging in actions that will cause students to drop; your dean may cancel the class if a minimum number are not enrolled.)

Make it a rule from the get go that the pace of the class will be fast. If the student doesn't begin to answer after 20 seconds, just lash out some interpretive exercise. For example, if a student isn't answering, ask something like: "Name three possible interpretations of the phrase: 'Cowards die many times before their deaths'" or "The color Red symbolizes what?" or "Name three mythological creatures that can fly". These do not have to be related to the material, but must be related to Literature in general. If it is something humorous and informative, it will be appreciated by the students and they will be more alert during class.

Set new questions. Do not borrow questions from textbooks or any other material. Especially not the Internet. Make sure the questions you set have not been discussed in detail in class. Of course the questions have to be similar but ensure that they are not the same. You are grading the students on their literary analysis not on their note-taking skills.
Always ask "why" For any piece of work, the most important question in literature is 'Why?'. Make sure every student knows the importance of this question from the first class. You have to train the class to be opinionated and try to interpret every line according to the reason and the intention behind it. The heart of all Literature is its intention.
Add fuel to the fire: There is no room for a unanimous agreement in Literature. Every line is subject to interpretation, levels of importance and hidden meaning. Make sure that your students are not exposed to one view. The best way to do this is to play devil's advocate. When they express a view, disagree. If they agree with you, change your view. This will make for interesting debate and force the students to defend their viewpoint and explain why they are right. Try to be as unreasonable with your stand as you can, this will get the students more 'heated' and force them to think in the abstract manner necessary to write a Literature paper. This is also good for waking up those students at the back who snooze every class. An argument is much more interesting than the face of the desk.
Add history to the material: As your students become familiar with the material, allow them to become familiar with the face behind the material: the writer. Tell them a little bit about their past and the way they lived their lives and some of the documented inspiration behind their works. A lot of very famous writers lived rather interesting (and somewhat tragic and scandalous) lives, it's always interesting to hear about, and it might provide more meaning to their words.
Involve every single student: Each class has students that are not really interested in the material but come to class each day for unidentified reasons. Each class also has students who tend to monopolize the conversation and centre discussions towards their opinions. Avoid that at all costs. Even the lazy students can usually provide some sort of input. Ask a lot of questions and give everyone an equal shot at answering. Don't stand there and wait for an answer (You will be wasting precious minutes while the student goes: "Ummm....well....errr").

Maintain an interest in each and every student. Students can usually tell if you like them or not or if you prefer one over the other. Avoid this at all costs. Your job is to promote the imagination of all the students and to treat them all equally. Talk to all of them personally at least once.
Recognize the students' weaknesses and strengths: By giving your students a lot of opportunities to do various kinds of work (speaking, arguing, writing, interpreting, etc.) you can assess the weaknesses and strengths of each one. Praise each student on their strengths and talk to them about their weaknesses. Allow your students the freedom to choose the form they are more comfortable with. For example, if a student is good at verbal discussion and not good at written communication, you can allow for one of their assignments to be verbal. To be fair, however, you must give all students a chance to choose the form they are good at. Talk to the students personally about their weaknesses and how to improve them.

Grade the thought, not the content: When marking papers, you need to be aware that Literature is not like most other subjects where the content is what is essential. It is the creativity and thought behind the content that makes a Literature essay stand out. You are also grading the content, obviously. But in Literature, you have to give more marks to the student with a controversial and creative interpretation and a few less to the student with the 'textbook' interpretation. For example, the student who can convince the reader that Frankenstein's monster was actually his alter ego, with support from lines in the book, is a better student than one who treats the monster as just a creature who had the misfortune to be created by man.
Give appropriate homework. The students must be treated like adults, the homework should be appropriate and challenging. Be clear about how you like your papers to be written and make sure they follow a certain format. The best kind of homework is a variable kind. Make sure they do a lot of research-based papers but also give them a good amount of unconventional homework like: an essay on the difficulties of a literature student, or writing a poem, or interpreting a fairy tale (there actually is a lot of symbolism in stories like 'Beauty and the Beast' and 'The Pied Piper').
Emphasize references. No matter how creative the thought, it has to be backed up by quotes from the material. A student might have a particularly brilliant idea but if it is disproved by the material, the idea is worthless. Stress on the fact that every claim has to be supported by lines, verses and dialogue in the text.
Read out the work of other scholars: Expose the students to interpretations by other Literature analysts. You ought to keep the papers submitted by your old classes as well, to read out to the new ones. Challenge the students to respond to those interpretations. Ask them questions like: "In what ways could he/she be correct or incorrect?"
Enjoy the experience: If you are heading to class and you are dreading it or feeling like you ought to just turn back and go home, it is time to reschedule the class or postpone it. If you are not giving a class 'your all', the students will notice and it affects the environment of the classroom. Also, the students will probably like you more for the extra couple of hours of time you've given to them.

Tips

If your students have a problem with interpretation or seeking hidden meanings, try this exercise at the beginning of the class. Write a word on the board, any simple word, like 'Dust', as each student to interpret what it could mean. For example, since dust settles in untouched places, it could be a product of abandonment or it could mean something that is worthless or abundant, or remnants of something...etc.
If the classes seem to be getting monotonous, change the pace. Move to a garden or some place outdoors. Call for a role play, where every student has to be a writer (one student can be Shakespeare, another Shelley) and ask them to do their best imitation of them. Refer to pop culture and modern media and ask them to interpret them (it would be interesting to see how they can compare 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde' to 'Fight Club') or you could make it mandatory for all the students to adopt an accent during one class (e.g. a British accent if you are teaching outside of England for example).
Bring pictures to class. There are many paintings and illustrations of mythical creatures, heroes of literature and writers. In the modern world, there is much more emphasis on the visual as compared to the written word. It would add a bit of interest to the classes and you can use them for comparison. For example, you could ask: "Is this illustration of 'The Inferno' an accurate description of the text?"
Encourage your students to read. Not just the texts, but anything that interests them. They have to get into a habit of reading to truly bring forward their best to a Literature class.

Warnings

Be flexible with your deadlines and schedule. It is unrealistic to assume that the students will require an equal amount of time to understand and debate all the different materials. This is almost never the case. If students are having trouble with poetry but are very good at the prose, spend more time on poetry. It is understandable to have a schedule but things will be easier to handle if you expect it to be erratic. Your job is to be a professor not an organizer.
If you have students who cannot handle the class or cope with the work, suggest to them privately that they drop the class or if they are really interested, recommend that they audit the class instead.
Do not alter your grading scale to match the class potential. You are not meant to have an equal amount of A's and B's and C's. You are measuring the quality of the work. If all of them turn in horrible essays, give them all an F but allow for a re-take or extra credit.

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Friday, May 30, 2008