Cloze exercises with a Twist

August 22, 2016

Here is a little more developed approach to cloze exercises.  I particularly like the aspect of having the students develop their own short contributions.  Many of you probably use this technique with poetry, but here is a nice adaptation to prose.  And possibly short...

If you’re teaching any of the Greek plays…

July 1, 2016

…I want to recommend the work of Daniel Mendelsohn, which appears in many places if you Google his name + Greek plays.  His most recent offering in the New York Review of Books: ‘How Greek Drama Saved the City’ confirms my sense that I can learn a...

Beyond ‘Persepolis’

June 8, 2016

Much good work is being done with Persepolis, both in Parts 1 and 4.  Do remind students, however, that including address of both the words and the images is expected in order to recognize the nature of the work. I would like to point out that there are two other...

Camus’ ‘L’Etranger’ : a new angle

May 18, 2016

In the past year, Kamel Daoud won the Prix Goncourt for a work called The Meursault Investigation. In this work the Algerian novelist and journalist, offers what the New Yorker calls ‘A tour de force reimagining of Camus’s The Stranger, from the point of...

Murakami: reading the texts, playing the game–which sends you back to the texts

March 18, 2016

There is no question that the stories of Haruki Murakami are provocative. They are also very popular with students who read them as Literature in Translation. It’s hard to ignore the student appeal of short stories with titles like ‘On Seeing the 100%...

“Stuff your eyes with wonder.”

January 18, 2016

The title comes from Ray Bradbury, according to the blog connected to ‘The Big Read,’ a website from the American National Endowment for the Arts. If it’s not familiar you may find some very useful (as well as delightful) materials there. A number of...