Literature-based Activity

Natasha Jovanovich, Serbia

Nataša Jovanović has had a substantial 15 year long experience in ELT working with a private language studio for ten years now, her ESOL experience and a range of ESOL courses extended over the years to advanced levels of proficiency and to teaching Cambridge exams, IELTS, TOEFL and ESP English. She is based in Belgrade, Serbia. Apart from teaching, her translation of the book by dr Helen Fisher, an American author and research professor at Rutgers University, was published in 2005. The book embraces the issues of gender studies and the role of women in today’s world, business, science and family life.
E-mail: natasa-jovanovic@sbb.rs, natashabbc@gmail.com

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Introduction
The activity
Worksheets

Introduction

This is a literature-focused activity with the aim to make reading more interesting, to stimulate students to read, to foster vocabulary acquisition and to get students to use search engines in language learning

The activity

Preparation: A 4 format handouts, a computer, a printer, /an OHP - optional/

Import photos of famous authors in literature from www.flickr.com or http://images.google.com/images. Print the worksheets together with the imported photos on separate sheets, a sheet per author.

Optional: prepare a power point presentation and slides/slide show of images and present it to the class if possible in your teaching situation.

Procedure

Students try to guess the authors’ names and make sentences using the pictures and prompts below. They use search engines if a computer room is available. Students come up with more details about the author while surfing the Internet or the teacher may suggest more prompts or key words.

Possible variation: the teacher adds authors’ popular quotations with advanced level students or provides the excerpts from the books written by these authors below for students to match with the photos and/or biographical details. As for the text selection - texts to be selected are those which have relevance and interest to learners and appropriate to their level.

Once they guess the name of each successive author, they can write up sentences in the spaces provided / W SH 2 / related to the given entries, using the tenses, active/passive voice, prepositions and adverbs/adverbial phrases as follows:

Sample sentences:

Shakespeare was born in Stratford Upon Avon .
Hamlet was written by Shakespeare .

Finally, the students compare their sentences and see how they used the language chunks.

Worksheets

Students’ worksheet 1

Stratford Upon Avon
KING LEAR
MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR
THE GLOBE
1564 -1616
FIRST FOLIO
THE BARD
MEASURE FOR MEASURE

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
FALSTAFF
Swan of Avon
glove maker
38
154
Anne Hathaway

COLOMBIA
Magical realism
Love in the Time of Cholera
One Hundred Years of Solitude
GABO
1982
Mercedes Barcha
Chronicle of a Death Foretold
Of Love and Other Demons

1854 -1900
Lady Windermere's Fan
DUBLIN
De Profundis,
OXFORD
LONDON
PARIS
The importance of being Earnest
NOVEL
PLAYWRIGHT
POET
Fingal O'Flahertie Wills

1899 -1961
CUBA
The old Man and the Sea
1964
USA
Expatriate in Paris
Short story writer
Novelist
Farewell to Arms
The Lost Generation
Men without women
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Spain

Realism
P&P
S&S
Emma
Hugh Grant & Emma Thompson
Published anonymously
1775- 1817

Students’ worksheet 2

Write the SENTENCES in the empty spaces provided.

The Basic IT in the Classroom can be viewed here
The Literature course can be viewed here