How to teach English Literature oline

Abstract.

The Covid-19 pandemic has caused a real revolution in education. Everything has moved online, for instance work meetings, lectures and regular lessons. Thus, school teachers had to find all the possible solutions to convert their teaching to remote online options. According to the research, distant learning with the help of online boards, such as Zoom, Miro, Wakelet, Socrative and others, is supposed to catch students’ attention and make them interested and motivated (Newton 2020). These tools provide teachers and their students with a wide range of eye-catching materials, such as highlighted pieces of text, pictures, videos. They enhance general understanding of the material and enlarge students’ passive and active vocabulary, which is especially important while teaching English literature, a part of Israeli curriculum. Nowadays many students do not like reading and find literature lessons boring. They prefer watching to reading, so the forenamed smart boards have a great educational effect on them, especially on those students who struggle while using traditional printed books and misunderstand texts. So online lessons can enhance the process of learning English literature and develop such important skills as collaboration and leadership.

Why don’t children want to read books?

One of the main reasons is lack of basic reading skills. Some students read slowly and try to memorize the content of the text. As a result, they find it tiring and overwhelming. The text seems too long for them and they often give up even when they start reading the first page full of text. Besides, they find sentences too long and complicated even in their mother language to say nothing of a foreign one.

Another reason why students don’t read is choosing books that are too hard for them. Since reading at home is a part of Israeli curriculum, students are given different tasks in the junior-high and high school. They are supposed to choose a book, read it and do a book report or give a classroom presentation. Thus, in the seventh or eighth grade might start reading Harry Potter which is suitable for the tenth or eleventh grade. Some of them have already read it in Hebrew, Arabic or Russian which helps them understand it better. Therefore, they might submit excellent works but miss a lot of English vocabulary due to reading in their mother languages.

What is more, they don’t see a point of reading. “Students who don’t like to read probably haven’t experienced the joy of getting lost in the magic of a story or learning something new about a favorite topic.” (Babbin 2020) Perhaps they are not interested in the content of reading even if all the texts in the literature textbooks seem to be interesting for them and approved by the national Ministry of Education.

And finally, students might have learning disabilities (LD), such as dyslexia, ADHD or many more. Reading is a system of communication based on associating letters and sounds and interpretation of written symbols and spoken language. An aspiring reader must build reading vocabulary so that eventually the person can read complex, long, or unfamiliar words. “Since he has stored each letter that has been transformed into a sound, he has accumulated within his brain an entire storehouse of letter representations” (Burani, 2008). If students lack this skill, their reading is very slow or they read letter by letter. Dyslexic students can memorize hundreds of words but struggle with decoding them, get stuck while reading long and complicated sentences and misunderstand the whole text. Those who have ADHD get distracted easily and cannot focus on reading. As a result, they miss a lot of details and misunderstand the text as well.  

Since smart boards contain eye-catching tools, they enable teachers to download materials that can catch students’ attention and keep them interested and motivated in learning literature. Moreover, while learning stories and poems, students can create their own materials and share them with their classmates. Sometimes it is the only way to keep them motivated and to prevent them from quitting “strange online lessons”. Besides, online learning helps them to develop the skills of communication.

In many Israeli schools, each class is equipped with a projector, a TV screen and a computer which enables each teacher to conduct a collaborative work, so that students would be able to participate in doing tasks on their mobile devices. The spring 2020 “brought a sudden shift for teachers and their students into an online setting” (Ralph 2020). During the quarantine, Israeli schools practiced teaching via Zoom and other boards in order to involve kids in online classroom activities, including self-checking tasks. For many teachers, it was their first online experience, so they had to learn quickly. It was frustrating trying to help students in this way.

“Teaching an online course requires different methods from the traditional classroom, so it’s important that teachers adapt or develop their skills to the online learning environment” (Cooper 2016). Due to coronavirus pandemic, schools in many countries of the world had to conduct lessons online. Many students and their parents did not accept this idea and complained that it didn’t work well. There are some reasons why school children refuse to study online.

• They are distractible

• They have learning disabilities

• They are not very strong students

• They are afraid of making mistakes

• They use their personal devices to play games and to communicate with their friends only.

• They don’t like studying.

• They are too young

• They are bored

Research studies show that computerized lessons enhance learning in less motivated students. Nevertheless, they might be bored while sitting in front of the screen for 45 minutes. So with the help of videos and other online activities distant lessons become “student-centered and offer the possibility of new classroom management and new relationship between teachers and learners” (Fazinic V, 2015).

The importance of five C while teaching literature online.

In some of my online classes, students have organized small groups for “remote team working”. They do it in order to give presentations about authors and their literary production, contextualizing them historically, literately and sometimes politically. Thus, a short story “A Summer’s Reading” by B.Malamud was written in 1930s, during “the great depression” in the USA, and reflected the life of immigrants at that historical period. Another short story “Rules of the Game” by A.Tan is also about immigrants. Moreover, Israeli teenagers are supposed to analyze the way of life and language mistakes made by those who lived in America for some years and still did not speak English very well. I sometimes ask my students which mistakes the characters of the story make, which customs and traditions they still keep and which new ones they have accepted. The third novel is “The Wave” by M.Rhue which teaches students a higher order of thinking skills (HOTS) to help them identify why the certain events happened in the history, and the result of those actions. While reading this novel they understand what makes a dictatorship and how Hitler succeeded to make the majority of the German population follow his ideology.

Therefore, while teaching English literature, it is highly recommended to keep student’s attention with the help such Cs as Content, Context, Cultural Engagement, Curiosity and Creativity.

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1.Content

While teaching, especially in an online classroom, it is especially important to choose the material that can provoke the learners’ interest so that they will be interested what the literature piece is about. Therefore, the Israeli Ministry of Education has created the Literature Program which contains poems, stories and novels whose content is interesting to young Israelis and are easy to follow. Besides, it is highly recommended to give students virtual pre-reading tasks. For instance, general knowledge questionnaires and quizzes for self-checking, working in pairs and small groups. Teaching HOTS while- and after reading together with the traditional content questions, helps to develop critical thinking in the kids of all ages. The content of the certain story or poem can be better understood if you use some pictures and graphic organizers on Miro or Wakelet. Moreover, students can upload them or even create themselves, which also enhances their motivation to learn “boring” literature.

2. Context

Bridging text and context is an important part of the final exam in English Literature in Israeli high schools. The context vies with the literature for the students’ attention. It can include the following things:

·  the settings of the poem, the story or the novel

·  how it can been read at different times and in different situations

·  biographical details about a writer’s life

·  how it relates to literary traditions

·  times and places referred to in the literature piece

Thus, “Context is best used to drive student argument about a text, rather than bolted on to demonstrate knowledge.” (Woodger I, 2020). Since each context requires a special vocabulary and certain acquired skills, what a course often becomes is the study of literature in a particular context. Therefore, before teaching a poem, such as “Count That Day Lost” by George Elliot, we need to let our students know that it was written in Victorian England and to tell or display some virtual materials about general realities of that period. After you have done that, it is a high time to show them a short film where the poem is recited and kids can see some views that will keep their attention and think about the historical, literary and cultural context. “Exposing students to other work written at the time can demonstrate how the past, and its people, were just as nuanced and complex as we are now.” (Woodger I, 2020).

3. Cultural engagement

Research claims that learning and understanding literature from a variety of cultures broadens  students’ horizons “what the society is, who humans are, and why the world has become as it is" (Tapp S, 2007). Since Israel is a multi-cultural society, it is very important to make your students pay attention to this aspect. In addition to compulsory pieces of literature, Israeli students are supposed to choose some books for home reading. “With the ever growing trend of globalization and modernization, it becomes more and more common to see teaching and learning practices on literature that are different from the teachers’ and the students’ cultural backgrounds” (Zhang Y, 2016). Language exists in a socio-cultural context and the intercultural approach is much wider, more demanding, richer and has authentic interpretation of language more than communicative language teaching (CLT) and content-based instruction (CBI). While taking part in an online discussion, both frontally and in groups, students are supposed to discuss the forenamed aspects.
 

4. Curiosity

As it was mentioned above, it is very important to provoke students’ interest while teaching “boring” literature, especially in virtual classes. For instance, visualizing leads to curious and creative thinking. And brainstorming is a powerful way to encourage students to think creatively. According to the research, it is very important to catch your students’ attention at the very beginning of teaching a new piece of literature, so that it will provoke their interest and motivate them to look forward for next chapters and next literature lessons in general. “If you can hook students at the first of a unit, then your job will be a lot easier for the duration of the study and students will be naturally more engaged with the content.” (A.Bible, 2021). Therefore, you can show a short video, tell a proverb, give an interesting quotation or ask a question that will make them think. In other words, you should intrigue them.

When they are intrigued, they can work in pairs, and you can offer them some space on the smart board, so that they will write their ideas and predict what the story or a poem is going to be about. They can work in groups and this collaboration encourages them work together. In such a case, each student is involved in the classroom activity and responsible for the task. Everyone is motivated and no child is left behind.

5. Creativity.

Finally, students can create their own pieces of art. For instance, they can draw pictures of the characters and scenes online and publish them on the walls of the virtual classroom. Moreover, they can invent a different ending of the story or think what might happen ten years later. For instance, they can imagine what might happen if the main character meets someone who influenced his life when he was young and continues to do so. In addition, the main character can find this person, write him a letter, which can be published in the virtual classroom. In my opinion, teachers should divide the class in pairs, so they can play this game. The main character might become a famous and rich person and give interview to different journalists or other people. These activities develop the skills of negotiation and leadership.

Conclusion.

To sum up, we can teach schoolchildren of all ages and levels online. We can make the process of teaching and learning effective if we keep a good connection with our class and teach them the skills of collaboration and self-discipline. Some teachers claim that there is no or very little difference between online collaborative learning and well-conducted traditional classroom. Others think that it is still challenging to catch students’ attention and to keep them in front of the screen for 45 minutes, especially when you teach kids in elementary school or students with learning disabilities in junior high and high school. The lessons of English Literature can also be taught online with the help of smart boards which contain eye-catching materials. Moreover, if teachers use provocative and intriguing methods, they can keep students interested and stay focused from the beginning till the end of the lesson. Excellent pre- and while-reading tasks help them realize what the poem or the story is about and make them interested in the further episodes. As for the after-reading tasks, students can create them themselves and exchange them with other groups. In this way they learn how to collaborate, which is one of the most important skills of the 21st century.

f3djd@yahoo.ca

Bibliography.

1. Babbin, E. 2020 Six reasons why kids refuse to read. https://www.understood.org/en/learning-thinking-differences/child-learning-disabilities/reading-issues/6-reasons-why-kids-refuse-to-read

2. Bible, A. 2021. Building book love. https://buildingbooklove.com/creative-ways-to-introduce-literature/

3. Brann, A. 2017.  Creativity. Is your intelligence having fun?

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5. Burani, C. (2008). Morpheme based reading aloud. https://europepmc.org/article/med/18262178

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7. Fazinic, V. 2015. Filmmaking in the classroom. IATEFL 2015, Manchester Conference Selections, p.142.

8. Hart, M. 2020. How to create a collaborative online learning environment. https://www.owllabs.com/blog/collaborative-online-learning

9. Kaldonek-Crnjakovic, A., 2017. Multisensory, structured, metacognitive method in teaching English as a foreign language to dyslexic learners. IATEFL Inclusive Practices & SEТ Newsletter, Issue 1, 2017, p.17.

10. Newton, D. 2020. Most teachers say they are not prepared to teach online. https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereknewton/2020/03/26/most-teachers-say-they-are-not-prepared-to-teach-online/#16934f497f2c

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14. Tapp, S. D. (2007). Cultural competence education: A user-friendly instrument to assess professional development needs. In M. A. Trent, T. Grizzle, M. Sehorn, A. Lang, & E. Rogers (Eds.), Religion, culture, curriculum, and diversity in 21ST century America (pp. 29-50). Lanham, MD: University Press of America.

15. Woodger, I. 2020. Clarifying context in GCSE and A Level English Literature. https://www.ocr.org.uk/blog/clarifying-context-in-gcse-and-a-level-english-literature/

16. Zhang, Yu. 2016. On Strategies for Teaching Culturally Diverse Literary Texts https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1531&context=sferc

Bio.
Julia Koifman was born in Ukraine. Graduated from Simferopol State University in 1995 and got the MA degree in TEFL. In 1999 she immigrated in Israel and got a TEFL certification at Shaanan College in Haifa in 2002. In 2006 she started teaching in Beit Ekshtein high school for special education needs (SEN) and in 2009 became an ENGLISH COORDINATOR

 in the same school where she still works. She has published some articles about overcoming dyslexia and other SEN. Mrs. Koifman is a member of IATEFL, TESOL and ETAI organizations and a regular presenter at local and international conferences. In 2018 she won a scholarship for participation in IATEFL conference in Brighton, UK.