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Course and Experiment Instructions for investigators/tutors
Educational philosophy
The traditional lecture-seminar version of
the course
The present approach embodied in this course was originally conceived
by Mick Short and Mike Breen, now Professor of Language Education at
the University of Stirling (see Breen and Short 1988, Short and Breen
1988).
It was originally a 'long thin' course, running through the first year
of undergraduate studies in English (one lecture and one seminar per
week for 23 weeks, plus two reading weeks). Because of larger-scale
changes to our curriculum it is now being run as a 'short fat' course,
in one term (two lectures and one seminar per week for 9 weeks, plus
one reading week) as part of first year English Language studies. Its
design features are spelled out below.
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The main aim of the course is to enable first year students to
read texts sensitively, and perform stylistic analysis on texts
they are encountering for the first time (in this sense the approach
follows on from, and shares assumptions with, less analytical 'practical
criticism' courses with which many will be familiar). All three
literary genres (plus relevant comparisons with non-literary texts)
are explored and a wide range of texts and textual extracts are
used.
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We assume that students beginning the course will have little,
if any, knowledge of the formal and pragmatic properties of the
English language, and of stylistic analysis (though increasingly
some, but by no means all will have done some English language work
at AS and A-level at school).
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Students should interact with literary (and non-literary) texts
from day one and in each week of the course.
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Language description and analytical skills are introduced at the
points needed to help describe a particular text or account for
a particular meaning or effect being discussed.
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Learning should be as 'hands-on' and interactive as possible, with
students doing tasks individually and in small groups in both lectures
and seminars.
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Learning should be fun. Besides the acting out (by staff and students)
of dramatic extracts etc., lectures have always involved 'silly'
moments (e.g. games, jokes, illustrative comic sketches) designed
to illustrate and reinforce points being made.
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To hold learner interest, learning should be in digestible chunks
and varied (and appropriate), in terms of texts, analytical methods
and pedagogical approach, both within and across sessions.
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The checksheet approach developed in Short (1996) is used extensively
(and will also be used in the WWW-based version of the course).
The WWW-based version of the course
If the teaching investigation is to be able to compare like with like,
we need to ensure that the course content and as many of the above design
features as possible are present in the WWW-based version of the course.
That said, the new format has involved some changes. Below we list some
of the salient features of this version of the course (which provides
very similar, but not identical, content compared with the traditional
version described above):
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There is a heavy emphasis on students working with other students
if possible, to help reproduce the 'social' element of traditional
teaching. In the Lancaster version of the experiment, students will
work on the website in pairs in workshops run in computer laboratories,
as well as being able to 'log on' outside these class hours.
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Students are continually involved in doing tasks on texts and related
matters, and then comparing their conclusions with ours, via a variety
of 'feedback' means (e.g. 'guess and test' and 'drag and drop' devices,
or comparing an account of a text or text-part they have produced
with one we have produced).
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The WWW-based version of the course is divided into thirteen topics,
several of which have two 'sessions'. Each page of each 'session'
has a menu down the left-hand side of the screen, which indicates
the other 'pages' in that session and some other elements (e.g.
links to a grammar website, a topic-contents summary, a glossary,
and advice on reading). At the end of each page there is a link
to the next page in the session. This structure has several purposes;
(a) to signal to students that the course is similar to others they
will be taking, (b) to indicate what we think is a sensible order
for them to go through the web pages (though we know they will also
'go their own way' to some extent), and (c) to aid navigation through
what is, after all, a complex site.
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There is also a navigation bar at the top and bottom of each page
with links to the contents page, the welcome and introduction pages,
a glossary of terms page, the Lancaster students discussion site
and the course homepage). We hope soon to include a search facility
to enable students to search for words ('e.g. 'foregrounding') and
phrases ('e.g. Romeo and Juliet ) throughout the site,
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The 'learning should be varied and fun' assumption is achieved
through a number of means. The breaking up of the materials into
a series of reasonably short web pages with interactive exercises
on each page keeps our commitment to the idea that learning should
be varied. Besides written material, there are audio and video-clips
(e.g. of texts to be analysed, and discussions of particular exercises).
We also use photographic and cartoon presentations, variations in
text colour, size and shape and appropriate moving visual effects.
Most of the academic WWW-based courses we have seen so far have
been very text-dominated and, of course, stylistic analysis is also
very text-dependent. But we are working hard to negate the 'boring
set of lecture notes dumped on the web' effect.
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Besides interactive links from one page to another within the website
itself, there are also links to other sites (including sites about
authors whose texts are being analysed and the University College
London Internet Grammar site, which is available free of charge
to those on the JANET network).
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The Lancaster site also has an on-line discussion area (the Language
and Style Chat-Café) where students (and staff) can ask questions
and pose answers. We advise Co-investigators to set up an equivalent
to the Chat-Café in their own institutions (for technical
reasons the Lancaster Chat-Café can only be accessed by students
registered on the course at Lancaster).
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There is a self-assessment mechanism for students to practise stylistic
analysis on different aspects of three texts (one from each literary
genre) before doing their coursework assessment at the end of the
course (which takes the form of a stylistic analysis of a chosen
text). This self-assessment mechanism is based on extracts from
the essays written by students on the 2000/2001 version of the course.
References
Breen, M.P and M. Short (1988) 'Alternative Approaches in Teaching
Stylistics to Beginners' Parlance 1, 2, 29-48.
Short, M (1993) 'Stylistics Upside Down: Using Stylistics in the Teaching
of Language and Literature', Textus VI, 3-30 (reprinted in R.
Carter and J. McRae (1996) Language, Literature and the Learner,
Longman, 41-64).
McIntyre, D. (2003) 'Foregrounding
foregrounding: reflections on foregrounding theory as a teaching methodology
in a lecture course on stylistics', Style 37, 1: 1-13.
Short, M. and D. Archer (2002) 'Investigating
the Effectiveness of WWW-based Stylistics Teaching', CUE Newsletter.
Short, M. and D. Archer (2003) 'Designing a Worldwide Web-Based Stylistics
Course and Investigating its Effectiveness' Style 37, 1: 27-46.
Short, M. and M.P. Breen (1988) 'Innovations in the Teaching of Literature
(1): Putting Stylistics in its Place', Critical Quarterly 30, 2, 1,
1-8.
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