Final Essay: Literature 2009

Christmas Carol: Teaching Young Children

There are many ways to introduce reading into EFL classrooms. Most of the time this is done with students who have already a little background knowledge of the target language. The purpose of this essay is to show that young children also can be introduced to the process of reading by selecting appropriate books/stories and activities to work with inside the classroom. To accomplish this goal the activities will be developed according to a specific story "Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens.

According to Bernice Cullinan, to become a good reader requires three main characteristics: they need to be surrounding by books, parents should read to children frequently and also, connect books with real life. This is the idea behind introducing reading into young children while they are starting to study English as a foreign language. This decision should include ways of promoting that reading can be enjoyable and helps develop understanding of the world.

Following this idea, Christmas Carol is a classic which can be shown to students in any Chilean classroom. It is a story which has as a main character Mr. Scrooge, a very greedy man who does not enjoy Christmas time. The story begins when his recently death friend appears as a ghost telling him that he will receive a visit during Christmas eve. There will be three ghosts which will show him the Past, Present and Future Christmas. After experiencing all these journeys recalling parts of his life, Mr. Scrooge understands the importance of enjoying Christmas and changes his attitude towards this holiday forever.

This story seems appropriate for young children and it will depend on the way teachers present this reading and activities that students enjoy this experience. Teaching young children requires an important amount of activities that contrast students short attention span, and include visuals and gesture in order to accomplish an effective understanding of the story. Therefore, in this part there will be presented three activities which have as goal to promote students' enjoyment and engagement before, while and after reading.

Before reading it is fundamental to establish rapport with your students and the story box seems a good activity to begin with. According to Rita Collins in his article "Using story Boxes in Language Learning" story boxes allow students to explore the objects inside the box which will help them to create some images before reading. This idea brings realia into the classroom as a way of giving students the opportunity to use their senses in their learning process. For instance, before reading this tale the teacher can talk about the objects inside the box; some of them could be a Christmas tree, some coins, a toy of a ghost and a picture of an old man. Then, the teacher can ask students questions about the objects such as what is this? Have you ever used/seen/touched the object? and so on. This activity permits students to think about these objects and see how they are or not related to their own lives. The idea is to prepare students to be more focus on the reading considering their background knowledge related to the story.

Reading activities should always consider students enjoyment. According to Robin Campbell when there is pleasure involved in activities, students will play and learn at the same time. This is a natural process where students get connected to their previous experiences. For this reason, reading aloud should be an activity to promote students engagement to the story. This activity allows the incorporation of dialogue between teachers and students; the teacher has the role of asking questions, using the illustrations to create an interactive class which consequently will encourage students enthusiasm and enjoyment of the story.

After reading and according to the characteristics of most young children it would be excellent to introduce art: for example, a collage. Creating a collage will permit students to express their ideas about the story by using pictures, words and any other material which can be cut from magazines and newspapers. Students are free to arrange their pictures in any way it shows their understanding of the story. This is an excellent possibility to share what they have done to the rest of the class and how they interpret the reading/listening of the story. For instance, they could bring pictures relating their own feelings towards Christmas day.

Reading for pleasure should be an activity presented in every single classroom. The constant exposure to books will promote students habit to read and express their ideas towards stories. Moreover, if parents and teachers give them the opportunity to relate them to their real life, reading will become an enjoyable activity inside and outside the classroom. Any type of stories could be appropriate, especially if we consider that most Chilean students do not read constantly. Teachers can use stories inside the classroom as a way of improving language skills and promoting different ways of resolving conflicts.

In conclusion, this paper tries to contribute in a way to include reading into EFL classroom because some teachers do not take the time to prepare or plan activities based on literary works. English teachers need to consider reading as a tool which increases the understanding of the target language. Meaningful activities will always engage students into learning and discovering more than what it is presented in class. Therefore, age and proficiency level should never be an impediment to the incorporation of variety of activities in the classroom. Teachers must trust students abilities. There are many ideas that can be introduced into the class, teachers only need to know their students, their interest and likes, and manage the English program and language proficiency in order to accomplish school, teachers and students goals.

Bibliography:

Campbell, Robin. Read-Alouds with Young Children. Newark: International Reading Association, 2001.

Collins, Rita. "Using Story Boxes in Language Learning". Forum 2009: 18-21.

Cullinan, E. Bernice. Invitation to Read: More Children's Literature in the Reading Program. Newark: International Reading Association, 1992.

Tompkins, E. Gain and Lea M. McGee. Teaching Reading with Literature. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co, 1993.

OUTLINE: Final Paper_2009

Christmas Carol:

Introducing literature to young children

I. Introduction:

There are many ways to introduce reading into EFL classrooms

a. Thesis:

There are different activities which can be used to introduce reading to young children

II. Body:

Christmas Carol story

Activities to introduce reading to young children

Examples

III. Conclusion:

Literature can be adapted and introduced to any EFL classroom

"September 1, 1939" by W.H Auden

W.H Auden was one of many people who were hopeless by the events that were happening in 1939. Reality was not what you wanted to see and the future became vague.

I believe he wrote because he needed a way of keeping hope. He could see how the world was becoming apart but he had a need to save all those images about a better world.

He believed that the only way to save us is by loving each other. Through love we can be reeducated and understand the importance of seeing everybody as an equal in order to keep peace and love among us.

The way he wrote and the words he chose to express his feelings are still appealing to our own reality nowadays. He wrote about problems that we still have and do not know how to face.

This is one of the aspects why I would use this poem in a EFL classroom. So students can appreciate how societies still don't learn from their mistakes, and we should start to helping by learning from our own mistakes. Look at ourselves and learn from the best and worts that we can do to each other.

Ivette: The rocking-horse winner

It is really amazing to see the way the author mixes his own life with an irreal one. This is possible to observe in both stories.The most noticeable in the stories is the existence of a very complex issue for society which is the desire of money. In the first tale, the protagonist is a boy that suffers because of the conflicts that the wish of money brings to his family. That is why he hides his sad feelings by gambling for money.The second story is focused on the relationship between life and death. The relationship is mainly presented by the inhuman work world of the mine and the beautiful and vulnerable, natural world. For example, the important things that we can lose if the attention is payed to money instead of love relationships. Thinking on what is happening in our society, it is part of our common sense notice that money cannot buy happiness and it represents a harmful force as well as alcoholism. Nowadays is really common to observe children working in the streets or even worse begging for money. Is that what we want for our children? I am totally sure the answer is no. So, I think that our effort in schools can make the difference. If we contribute children to be comfortable at least when they are learning, things can improve. D.H Lawrence points out very contemporary issues. I really enjoyed reading both stories because of the many issues that they bring, and that make sense in our society.

I really believe Ivette was able to give the main idea of both short stories. Although it can be appreciated that she described more the rocking-horse winner over the second short story. I think this decision had to do with the interesting topic this story develops and how well it can be connected to our own reality.
I totally agree with the idea of happiness beyond econominal issues. However we need to consider that money rules our life. We need to be aware of the decisions we take in order to keep or gain more money. Nowadays most people are capable of almost anything to "rise in social/economical class". This is the moment when we as future teachers need to do something about it. As Ivette pointed out "we need to make an effort to do things differently". I beleive we need to start from giving a good example to our students and teach them values according to our beliefs and the society in which we live in.
Finally I would like to say that maybe this post could be improved by giving a more explicit relation between both stories because I think the author notoriously takes aspects of his society and values from his own experience, which he beleives are important to share with the readers.

"The Waste Land" by T.S Eliot

T.S Eliot was born as an American citizen however he decided to become a great British poet in those years. He experienced what a post war period was and the decline of human beings as a community.

“The Waste Land” is one of his well-known pieces of work in which consist in 5 different stories, being told by many different narrators. What I think the author tried to develop was the idea of many people being affected by the inclemency of war and how everybody felt: lack of hope and regrets of what had happened.

According to Wikipedia.com “The Waste Land” takes into consideration 5 traditional elements: earth, air, fire, water and aether. The first element, EARTH has a direct relationship with the burial and understanding the importance of land as the place where people exist. Then, AIR is represented by the many voices or narrators that this work has, implying that there is a developed intellectual mind behind the creation of this work. FIRE is represented by the passion the author put in this work, understanding that the only way of writing all those complex feelings is by feeling them yourself. WATER represented by the use of images of sea and a voyage. And finally, AETHER as the material that fills all the region of universe, this means that even though you talk about a waste land there must be something in that place besides nothingness.

2 short stories by D. H Lawrence

These are two everyday objects which can be found in any place or story. However, D. H Lawrence has the ability to transform them into the main objects of his stories which have a fundamental role of keeping strong feelings within them.

On one side, Chrysanthemum is a flower that may grow in many parts of the countryside. But, for Mrs. Bates they were the memory of a promise that never was completed, a process of suffering and the end of his husband’s life.

On the other side, Rocking-horse is a toy which usually is related to boys’ entertainment. But for Paul this was the beginning and the end of his life. He got so much immersed with it, that his life depended on it and what was the result? Death

Imagination and creativity are part of this author's work. He created new roles for those objects that are very well-known but he gave them a new set of actions which influence the past, present and even future of his characters. Being creative is part of writing, and having the ability to take your readers to new worlds and see whatever that the author sees, it's what makes you successful.
It has been awhile since I don't get engaged with a good short story, and this was the case. After discovering Dickens, I must say D.H Lawrence is an author that I will read and recommend to my friends, colleges and students.

"The Mark on the Wall" by Virginia Woolf

As we have seen in other works, Virginia Woolf is a woman who has the time and intellect to reflect about anything that crosses her mind. This time she refers to the mark on a wall she is looking at while reading.

She starts to describe every single detail which seems important to understand what is that mark and why it is there.

After some analysis, she tried to connect her train of thoughts with something related to this mark. It seems she never trust her sight because every time she looks at this mark, it changes.

What I believe she does is trying to see beyond her eyes. She sees with her eyes and with her mind at the same time. She connects every thought with her life, taking anything that surrounds her into part of her writing. This is one of the reasons why she prejudices what she sees based on her thoughts which stop her to see who makes the mark: a snail on the wall.

The best idea that I believe represents Virginia Woolf's works is the subjectivity in which the writer creates his/her work. Every single part of our life is worth it to be printed in a book and nobody has the power to say which experience is more important than another. Writing is an art, but we can all be artists.