Aim high - Aim true: the importance of clear learning aims for the literature class

 What’s your reason for 'doing' literature in your class?

What’s your reason for handing out this or that text? For doing this or that project around literature?

For example, you have this great project in the bovenbouw, centred around the First World War – a staple of English classes in this country. WW1 saw a school of poetry emerge (the Great War poets, unsurprisingly) that other countries didn’t, or certainly not on the same scale. So out come Wilfried Owens, and Sassoon, and the Poppy Fields, and the sadness of it all. Out come the chronologies, and facts about that war, and tales of battles lost and won, and tales of death.

But what, exactly, precisely, are your reasons for this project?

Are these reasons to do with Literature-reading, literature-interpreting, literature-as-instrument? Or are the reasons to do with ideas about what learners should know historically and culturally? Is it to say 'War is bad, death is terrible', or do you want to explore themes like Fear, Patriotism, Sacrifice, Stupidity, Courage, Waste?

For example, that Sassoon text you chose, or that Owens poem you want learners to read: what was your reasoning behind that selection? And was that reasoning overt, self-aware, or was it the result of unconscious (teachers') beliefs?

• Did you want learners to have heard – and to know – the names of those poets?
• Did you want your learners to have heard about WW1, that School of poetry, that period?
• Did you want your learners to read poetry, full stop?
• Did you want them to read, even fuller stop?
• Did you want your learners to go through that poem and analyse its form, say, through its rhyming scheme, its imagery, its rhythmic organisation, its assonances and used metaphors?
• Did you, perhaps, believe that learners should be exposed to those poems because, well, those poems count, they matter, they are a part of History, a part of Culture – English Culture, World Culture: what the French call ‘Culture générale’, that is, knowledge of all types of things and people and places that ultimately stand for a social, intellectual and societal status?
• Or, more prosaically, did you perhaps need an activity that would fulfil some intellectual (i.e. social) standards – poetry! – and just worked it in as tiny sub-part of the overall project, which, really, focused on language skills, historical knowledge, exchanging with fellow learners…and giving a mark?

It's not to say that all or some of those are bad: they’re all fine for different reasons, to different people. Equally though, they’re all bad if you don’t know why you’re doing them, or if you claim you’re doing something else instead. For example, if you claim to want learners to be acquainted with WW1 poetry – that’s not going to happen with just the one text; if you claim learners will study poetry (ditto); if you claim learners will know more about literature (ditto).

But if you see that one poem can only be an isolated example (however famous it might be), and you recognise that you’re using the text as an illustration, or as a starting point for something else…SAY IT, acknowledge it, don’t confuse aims, don’t claim you’re doing A while in fact you’re only doing B. Have clear aims, and manageable goals.

I mean, all this is really very simple: when you teach grammar, or vocabulary, you’re expected to have learning aims, something like: At the end of this lesson, learners will have learned and practiced the lexis associated with travelling, or with greeting; they will have practiced language functions; they will have learned about and practiced the present perfect – whatever. I don’t mean you write them down every single day, but you know what you want – or at least, you really, really should know.

But consider: how clearly articulated are your learning aims when teaching (with) literature? What is it, exactly, specifically, that you are trying to do, that you want your learners ‘to have learned/be able to do’? Do you have a clear idea, or does it not go further than ‘Let’s use that text to introduce them to…’? Or ‘It’s good for them to be exposed to poetry’, or ‘They should know about WW1’.

Hopefully, it’s not something like ‘They need to know about Sassoon’, or even more problematic: ‘Sassoon’s poetry is so wonderful, they will love it!’. That’s not using literature as a teaching aid, that’s addressing issues of Culture Générale, of History of Literary history.

Is that bad? Not in itself, of course not. But is that what you thought you’d be doing? Is that using Literature, or hearing about it? Aren’t those two things completely different?

Knowing your aims, in literature as in grammar, is a necessity. Clarifying those aims, in literature much more than in grammar, is an absolute necessity. ‘Present perfect’ or ‘Vocabulary to describe people’ are fine, and what they need is a body of examples (i.e. restrictions) to make sure it can happen. In literature, ‘Introducing them to a text’ quickly becomes vague: introduce them to it…to do what? To think about what? To understand what? To practice what?

Are all those possibilities – and hence, the differences – clear to you?

It's possible (and perhaps desirable?) to dissociate aspects of a literary text so that you can focus on one of them – it may look too narrow but what is the advantage of claiming completeness when you obviously cannot achieve it?

But in any case, it is most certainly desirable to tailor your material, activities and lesson plans to that goal(s) you have: Dickens or Sassoon are great for historical stuff, but are they right for thinking work, considering the level, knowledge and experience of your learners? The answer might be ‘yes’, but beware of that well-known Confirmation Bias thing: do you say ‘Yes’ because you’d already chosen the text and want to justify using it?

If you can get people to think with a 400-word text, why not concentrate on that and ignore all the baffling terminology, stylistic remarks, biographical information and all other irrelevant aspects? Irrelevant, that is, to your immediate AIMS.

Know your aims, circumscribe their application, attend to what is possible, have high hopes and lofty goals but keep to strictly identified, well-delineated learning aims. All else will follow from that.

        I wrote about this last year, in a different yet related way, in levendeTalen: https://lt-tijdschriften.nl/ojs/index.php/ltm/article/view/2314