The history of African music recording and archiving can be seen most clearly and compellingly by detailing the history of a few key individuals, who were pioneers in their field. At the turn of the 20th Century, a colonised Africa was viewed as backward and void of any real culture worth preserving, which is why these ethnomusicologists were not only groundbreaking in their ideas, but revolutionary. They understood, far before the rest of the Western world could even comprehend, that traditional African music – with its complexity of rhythms, flair for storytelling and historical richness – was worth preserving.
Hugh Tracey 1903 – 1977
Arriving in Rhodesia – now Zimbabwe – in 1921 with his brother, who had been awarded land after his efforts in World War 1, the young man of only 18 years old had the foresight of a wise elder. He was surrounded by disdain for African culture from the Christian missionaries, who forbade the playing of the mbira, due to the pagan themes of ancestor worship and the insurrectional ideas gleaned from spirits that featured heavily in the songs. However, Tracey was able to see past the prejudice and ignorance. He was fascinated by the songs, which were sung by the Shona farmers, with whom he and his brother worked alongside on the tobacco fields. He was said to have been ‘bitten’ by Africa; ‘he got cultural malaria.’ Tracey, although very aware of the colonial oppression of African culture, or perhaps because of it, made it his life mission to record traditional African music; a mission which many others adopted after him. After making the first recording of indigenous Rhodesian music, being awarded the Carnegie Fellowship grant to study South Rhodesian music, with which he made over 600 recordings, and inspiring traditional English musicians, Ralph Vaughn Williams and Gustav Holst, at the Royal Academy of Music, who urged him to “discover every chord” of traditional African music, Tracey ran out of funding. He became a broadcaster, utilising every opportunity to promote African music.
However, he could not stay away from Africa long, and in 1946 realised someone needed to fully dedicate their time to “appraising the social value” of traditional African music, otherwise it would disappear. Tracey would have to step up and be that someone, especially at a time when African radios wanted to broadcast in their own regional vernaculars but had no recordings of regional music to play. He was lucky enough to obtain funding from Eric Gallo, who owned a recording label in South Africa. They had a “gentlemen’s agreement” that any artists Tracey discovered who had commercial potential, he would forward to Gallo. He therefore started the career of some of Africa’s first popular musicians, such as Jean Bosco Mwenda. Masanga, by Mwenda, was one of the first truly popular songs in Africa.
However, as Tracey’s particular concern was that the recordings he made were kept authentic and not manipulated for commercial use, he strayed from the popular African music he was helping to create, and continued to focus more on the traditional. He secured funding from various projects, after a lecturing tour in the UK, and set up The International Library of African music in 1954, where his 20000 recordings are today stored. The ILAM will be explored further in a later blog of this series.
- There are a few of Hugh Tracey’s recordings available online on the British Library Sound Archive, under the David Rycroft South African Collection. However, to play these you need to be studying further or higher education to obtain access to these.
- More Hugh Tracey, his Sounds of Africa and Music of Africa, can be found on the British Library Sound and Moving Image Catalogue – however, this simply confirms the existence of the recording. To listen to the recordings, one must make an appointment with the Listening Service to listen to the recordings on site at the British Library.
- Michael Baird produced 21 CDs of Tracey’s work; Historical Recordings of Hugh Tracey series. These can be bought online at SWP Records and a review of most of the CDs can be found here. Michael Baird said “The sad conclusion after compiling this series is that so much music recorded by HT [Hugh Tracey] has since disappeared — within the space of fifty years. This is something HT foresaw and why he spent most of his life recording this music for posterity. It was not so much Tracey’s ‘knack’ of being at the right place at the right time, but his awareness and vision coupled with organisation and his tremendous energy which give us the opportunity to listen to the many exceptional musicians he recorded today. In this series we are able to present many of the foremost musicians of the 20th century from this part of Africa — and that is a gift. It is especially a gift to the peoples involved, for the legacy as played by their forebears belongs to them.”
- ILAM has reissued, without modifications, on CD, Tracey’s Music of Africa Series
- Several albums can be bought on iTunes
Klaus Wachsmann 1907 – 1984
Wachsmann was a German born English ethnomusicologist, who travelled in Africa in 1937 as a missionary, serving in several offices in the Office of the Protestant Missions in Uganda. He was to do unpaid work with sacred music at Namirembe and with choral school choirs, before being promoted to more senior roles and then he was paid a salary. However, instead of quelling the African music culture – as those missionaries who Hugh Tracey encountered clearly did – Wachsmann lived for 20 years in Uganda working to preserve and archive it. During World War II, according to Peter Cooke in Ethnomusicology in East Africa: Perspectives from Uganda and Beyond, Wachsmann had his camera confiscated because he was regarded as a “friendly enemy alien”. This, coupled with the fact there was no running water at the Museum he was then to work in, explains why there are so few photographic records to go with his 1500 sound records. After his missionary work, he became Curator of the Uganda Museum and while there collected many musical instruments.
He received a grant from the British Government in 1949 – demonstrating that even Government authorities began to realise how essential documenting traditional African music was – which enabled him to record these 1500 recordings with the help of a sound engineer, who was responsible for the fantastic quality of the recordings, which he kept at the Uganda Museum. Wachsmann left Africa, and his tapes, in 1957 and worked in London as the Scientific Officer in charge of Ethnological Collections at the Wellcome Foundation until 1963. It was then that he was invited to become a lecturer at UCLA and was reunited with his tapes at the university, as the Uganda Museum did not have the equipment to archive them adequately. However, disaster struck and the tapes were unfortunately destroyed by a flood of the UCLA basement, demonstrating the difficulties of archiving with an easily destructible medium like reel-to-reel tapes and the importance of now digitising these perishable recordings. The sound engineer who had recorded the music with Wachsmann kindly offered up the copies he had made a kept aside.
Wachsmann went on to lecture at various universities and was awarded the bronze medal for “Devoted Service to Africa” from the Royal African Society in 1958. His legacy lives on as he gives his name to a prize for advanced and critical essays in organology, at The Society of Ethnomusicology. Moreover, the Klaus Wachsmann Music Archive at the Makerere University, Uganda, has recently been set up. There is a course in archiving at the university and archive at UCLA has been collaborating with Makerere University to provide up to date tools and skills, such as the digitisation of DAT and reel-to-reel tape. Dr Sylvia Nannyonga-Tamusuza from the university, in this article, sums up the importance of archiving “My hope is to create materials for secondary schools from the archive. In that way, (students) can be able to remember and to understand what was there before […] With the recordings, we can give (students) some background and some context; they would be able to understand and go find out more by themselves […] My thinking is that a culture that doesn’t have a history is a dead one.”
- His recordings are available to play online, for anyone, in the Klaus Wachsmann Collection at the British Library.
- Copies of his recordings can also be found at the UCLA archive, but cannot be streamed online.
David Fanshawe 1942 – 2010
David Fanshawe recording the Luo Tribe, Kenya, 1973. Photo Judith Croasdell
David Fanshawe did not limit himself to the confines of ethnomusicology and is described as an ‘internationally distinguished composer, ethno-musicologist, sound recordist, archivist, performer, dynamic and entertaining lecturer, record producer, photographer and author.’ As he was so broadly accomplished, he was involved in every aspect of the recording and archiving process of his music, which he gathered from across the world; beginning in the Middle East in 1966 and spreading through North and East African from 1969 till 1975. He later went on to record across the Pacific Ocean for ten years, from 1978. He is stated to have recorded hundreds of tribes and is commended for forming close relationships with them, which allowed him to gain permission to record their music.
Mary K. Oyer, b. 1923
Mary Oyer graduated from Goshen College – a private Christian college, historically affiliated with the Mennonite Church – in 1945, but was soon to return as she was invited to teach the General Education course integrating the study of music and visual art. She continued to teach at Goshen College, when in 1968 Oyer applied to be sent to a US Government funded program for Black Studies, operated by the faculty of UCLA. She was accepted and spent the summer of 1968 at UCLA and then travelling to five Sub-Saharan countries, from Senegal to Kenya in the summer of 1969, with a stop off in Uganda on her way home. Here she encountered Evalisto Muyinda, an out of work court musician playing at the Kampala Museum. She was taken by the endingidi, the one-stringed fiddle he was playing; she made her first recording, using her friend’s recorder, and bought an endingidi from Muyinda. [Can be found in the search under ‘Working Title: Evalisto Muyinda at the Uganda National Museum’] My favourite part about the Mary K. Oyer African Music Archive is that when searching every track, it lists the accompanying commentary from Mary Oyer, so you can hear in her own words the description of the music and the story behind it. By the end of the summer, after initially deciding between a focus on music and art, Oyer knew she wanted to channel her efforts into indigenous music. As a teacher, ‘She saw the enriching possibilities for including cross-cultural music in her related arts courses at Goshen College’ and began to teach an annual African Arts course. Over 20 years, Oyer visited 22 countries as she was lucky enough to receive funding from various projects: Kenya National Archives, Kenya Conservatoire of Music, a teaching assignment Kenyatta University and she worked with Mennonite Central Committee and Peace Corp. She was able to use her role as teacher and lecturer to spread the importance and beauty of traditional African music to young school children in Indiana, up to university students across the US and Canada. Oyer’s legacy has been continued due to a few key individuals understanding the significance of her work. Professor Debra Brubaker began the archive, Solomon Fenton-Miller began digitising the tapes and creating an outline for an archive of the information found on those recordings and Lisa Horst Schrock completed the digitisation process and interviewed Oyer about her travels and field recordings.
- All of Mary K. Oyer’s recordings can be found and listened to online in the Mary K. Oyer African Music Archive Database. You must email the Goshen College Music Department Office Coordinator (email address can be found on the website) to obtain a login and password to the database, who responded very quickly. There is a very useful Help page that makes it very easy to manoeuvre the archive. It is intended mostly for scholars, however, anyone expressing an interest will be granted access
Peter Cooke, b. 1930
Another teacher, Peter Cooke, began recording traditional African music when he began teaching at the Makerere College School in 1964. He was bereft of recordings of local music, and, at this time, only had the recordings that Hugh Tracey had made a few decades before, which were from all over Africa. When asked about the importance of recording traditional African music, he states ‘It was crucial to me to be able to direct the attention of young Ugandans to their own musical traditions: so often at weekends my wife and I drove off with students from different parts of the country to sample the music of their own local village musicians.’ An impressive example of initiative that lead one man, and his wife, to create essential recordings, in order to inspire his students. He was then transferred to run the music department in the National Teachers’ College at Kyambogo, where his recording work ‘took on even more importance.’ However, when it came to the archiving of Uganda tribal music, Cooke faced a disappointing set back; ‘It was important to leave copies of materials behind for further use by the Ugandans and others that followed me after I left [Uganda] in 1968. Unfortunately the tape copies I left behind just vanished during the chaotic years of Amin’s rule.’ He then contrasts the situation in Uganda with the ease and quality of archiving in Scotland, where he next went on to work at the School of Scottish Studies, University of Edinburgh, highlighting the imperative need for a more sustainable system for archiving in Uganda. Cooke also noted the importance of dissemination, which is why his work is produced on CDs, with teaching booklets making use of well documented recordings, complete with transcriptions and texts.
Cooke recording the Abasaasi, a team of drummers and singers outside the Kabaka’s country palace at Abamunanika in 1987 who had gathered to sing the praises of Prince Ronald Mutebi who had just returned from exile in London
However, as Cooke’s aim is, and always has been, to make traditional Ugandan music available to Ugandans, he was determined to see his work accessible there and it is now available at the Makerere University, although it wasn’t a simple decision; ‘until I was assured that a well managed archive was being set up at Makerere I was loath to deposit my materials there, after what had happened at Kyambogo Teachers’ College. The Makerere archive eventually came about through the good works of Sylvia Nannyonga Tamusuza and her Norwegian partners, though I had approached the librarian at Makerere about such a possibility many years previously.’ He has also sent his recordings back to other places in Uganda, such as to the Batwa ‘through the good offices of Chris Kidd, a post-grad at the time who was working with the Batwa’ and the family of Benedicto Mubangizi, who Cooke describes as a ‘marvellous person – teacher, educator, choir trainer, composer and folklorist’. He had made copies of this musician’s work in the 1960s and 1980s and tries ‘as much as possible to get samples back to the individual musicians’ he works with, but states ‘This is not always possible.’
When asked about how he would like to change the way his materials are archived, Cooke’s concern, firstly at the Makerere University, is that the archive is not accessible to everyone; ‘I am also very concerned to see that the Makerere recordings are made available to more than simply the university staff and students in that institution. In other words I would like to see that listening facilities are afforded to any Ugandan who want to listen to recordings at the archive. At present I don’t know what the position is.’ In addition, he hopes that ‘one of the original aims of the Makerere archive is followed through – namely to create ‘out-stations’ where further copies of the material at Makerere are made available in different areas of Uganda.’
Soga ebigwala trumpet team at Nambote village 1994
His material is also available at the British Library, which is able to be accessed by everyone online. However, it is quite a difficult archive for novices to use, and, as highlighted by Cooke, ‘Alternative names are an example:- Ebigwala, bigwara , amagwara, magwara, amagwala etc. for the Soga gourd trumpets,’ that make searching on the British Archive, regarding East African music, often a tricky task. In addition, sometimes it is difficult to know, for those who are not experts, exactly how the East African words are spelt: Cooke suggests that ‘a “fuzzy” keyword search facility seems very necessary.’ Moreover, the British Library online archive is difficult to use for Ugandans, as they often experience power cuts, do not have the necessary bandwidth to stream the content and are unable to actually download the material for study. Cooke is well aware of the short falls when it comes to the availability and accessibility of his material, and calls for the improvement of the online facilities available to those who want to share their music.
Finally, Cooke shared his thoughts on the future of archiving African Music, particularly in their country of origin. He gave frustrating examples of tapes being stored in terrible conditions, archives being so disorganised that, even with funding, it would take 20 years to archive properly and equipment being broken because it was not used according to instructions. However, there were examples that gave hope for the archiving of East African music, in Africa; ‘I visited the Ethiopian archives while stranded in Khartoum for four days (by Ethiopian Airways in 1988 I believe) and found […] local scholars, some of them trained in the UK, were doing good work with minimal resources and doing some fine fieldwork with video-cameras.’ He ends with ‘There are plenty of Ugandans who understand the value of a good archives. They need to be able to persuade their government to fund them properly. They also need to pull together.’
- Nearly all of Cooke’s material is available online at the Peter Cooke Uganda Collection, British Library
- There is an archive of his work at the Makerere University in Uganda, which must be listened to onsite. The availability of this archive to the general public is unknown to Cooke (though his concern is that it should be available to everyone)
- His personal website gives details of all published work he has done and where it can be found
- He also has copies of his recordings at the Indiana Archive, Bloomington
S. Nannyonga-Tamusuza, T. Solomon, 2012. ‘Ethnomusicology in East Africa: Perspectives from Uganda and Beyond’. Kampala: Fountain Publishers
With thanks to everyone I interviewed and who kindly helped with any aspect of this article.


When the Romans won wars, they brought home large numbers of enslaved foreign prisoners, to work the fields, mills and mines of the countryside, and to provide an enormous range of domestic services for wealthy city-dwellers. Slaves did the hard labour, but they were also essential for all the things that made a rich Roman’s life comfortable. Most of the work we would classify as part of the ‘service industry’ or the ‘entertainment industry’ was done by slaves. Bath attendants, cooks, baby-sitters, nurses, tutors, secretaries, prostitutes, weavers, dancers, hairdressers and waiters were all usually slaves; so, probably, were actors. It has been estimated that in the decades following the third and final Punic War, when Rome won its decisive victory over Carthage (146 BC), some 30 or 40 per cent of the population of Italy were slaves.
Many slaves were literate, some of them very highly educated. Cicero’s beloved secretary, Tiro, inventor of the first known system of shorthand, is only the most famous example. But we have no first-person narrative by a slave about his or her experiences – no ancient equivalent of Olaudah Equiano or Harriet Jacobs. The Roman story of slavery is told from the perspective of the masters. Slavery made Roman cultural life possible, but Roman authors usually either ignored it, or made jokes about it.
Roman comedy – the plays of Plautus (c.254-184 BC) and Terence (c.185-159 BC) – as well as the two comic novels, the Satyricon by Petronius (who lived a short, eventful life under Nero, c.27-66 AD) and the Golden Ass by the great orator, neo-Platonist philosopher, priest and magistrate Apuleius (c.123-180 AD), give us some of our best evidence as to how the dominant Romans felt about the slaves they lived with, needed, used and owned. The Golden Ass includes the most sustained narrative from the perspective of the enslaved. It tells the story of Lucius, whose curiosity leads him to steal a magic ointment from a witch, and rub it on himself in the hope of turning into an owl. Instead, he turns into a donkey, that most put-upon and slavish of animals, and endures a series of cruel and brutal humiliations – as well as having various interesting sexual experiences – before finally eating roses, which break the spell and turn him back into a man. The novel includes an inset narrative which mirrors the main story: the tale of Cupid and Psyche, in which the curiosity of Psyche leads to her own painful Odyssey of labours and wanderings as the slave-girl of the goddess Venus.
But imagining the comic awfulness of being turned into a slave as punishment for an excessive interest in the lives of the lower orders is not quite the same as sympathising with real slaves. Moreover, the startling ending of the novel seems to undo whatever satirical impact the narrative might have had, by suggesting that the whole thing is a religious allegory: Lucius is saved from his metaphorically slavish desires by conversion to the cult of the goddess Isis. As Apuleius’ novel reminds us, the Romans were aware that they had to be careful even in how they imagined being a slave. Owning slaves is presumably possible, psychologically, only if one resists thinking too much about the slave’s humanity – and hence the potential equality or interchangeability of slave and master. In Rome, only foreigners (barbari – non-Latin-speakers) could be slaves; the slaves were deliberately ‘othered’, by both language and race. But, unlike in the case of American slavery, skin colour provided no clue to the difference between slave and owner. Slaves might talk differently from masters, but they looked disturbingly similar.
One neat solution was provided by Aristotle, who claimed that some people are slaves because they have slavish souls. But in time of war, it might become awkwardly obvious that enslavement could happen to anybody. Plautus’ play The Captives seems to deal with precisely this issue: a master changes places with his slave, but both turn out to be of noble birth in their own countries. It is a comedy, so of course both characters are eventually set free, and get to marry the girls of their dreams. But Plautus plays with the possibility of imagining that even good people might be permanently enslaved, through no fault of their own.
Slaves were considered part of the familia – the domestic household – and were often buried in the same grave as their masters; yet they were also human chattel, with no legal or civic rights. Comedy is the genre that most clearly articulates anxieties about these paradoxes, and about social hierarchies in general, showing us sons who refuse to obey their fathers, daughters who run off with the wrong men, wives who commit adultery and slaves who are far cleverer than their lustful, know-it-all or niggardly masters. These plays suggest a complex combination of guilt, fear, pride, cruelty and envy in the Roman master’s view of his slave.
The attitude of the plays towards women is similarly complicated. Women in Plautus come in three main categories: the desirable, money-grubbing whore, the beautiful chaste princess (wife material), and the interfering old mother. Trouble arises because young men tend to get the first two categories confused, and find themselves raping the princesses and trying to marry the whores, to the rage of their domineering old fathers – until the wily slaves get it all sorted out for them.
In Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, Freud compares jokes with dreams. ‘Joke-work’, like ‘dream-work’, uses techniques of displacement and condensation to transform and disguise the fears and desires that our conscious minds do not want to recognise. From a Freudian perspective, the prominence of the ‘clever slave’ in Roman comedy (the servus callidus) might be a symptom of an obvious fear on the part of slave-owners, of their slaves plotting against them, to cheat them out of their money or position of honour in the household. The plays also use the mediating figure of the slave to deal with the fear of sons rebelling against the paterfamilias. The slave often sides with the son against the father, and the rebellious slave may sometimes stand in for the even more threatening figure of the rebellious son. The patriarchal system, which allows for little or no autonomy on the part of the lower members of the household (sons, daughters, wives and slaves), is unstable, since any one of these parties may choose to stand up against the master; and it puts a peculiar kind of pressure on the master’s own imaginative world.
For two thousand years the comedies of Plautus and Terence were seen as an essential element in the classical canon. Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors is based on Plautus’ Menaechmi; Molière’s Miser is a version of Plautus’ Aulularia. Perhaps an even more fundamental influence on later European literature was Terence’s dramatic technique of mixing together two or more Greek plays to create a complex or ‘double’ plot, which had an important impact on the multiple plots of Elizabethan drama and the modern novel.
Roman comedy was not an obscure genre for any literate person between the 16th and the 19th century: it was part of every schoolboy’s education. Plautus’ long-assumed suitability as a school text is one reason so much of it is still extant: 21 plays, compared to only 11 by Aristophanes. Roman comedy does, of course, emerge from a particular historical moment. But enjoyment of it does not require any specific knowledge of history or politics. Somebody who reads Plautus without knowing anything about Rome’s wars with Carthage will not feel that he or she is missing the jokes. It is important from this perspective that all our extant Roman comedies are comoediae palliatae – comedies in Greek costume – as opposed to comoediae togatae, comedies in which the actors wore the Roman toga. The works of Plautus and Terence are set in a fantasy-land version of Greece, marked as an ‘elsewhere’ by the costumes and the Greek names; it is usually said to be Athens, but it could be anywhere. The Mediterranean of Shakespeare’s comedies provides a similar backdrop of unspecific exoticism. Moreover, these plays are all more or less U-rated: sex is discussed in very decorous terms, and there are no jokes about farting or shit. They are good clean family entertainment.
But in the 20th century, Terence and Plautus were dropped from the syllabuses of many schools and universities. As an undergraduate at Oxford studying classics in the early 1990s, I was never asked to read any Roman comedy, and my tutors never made any mention of the genre. The Greek Old Comedy of Aristophanes, on the other hand, was a hot topic. It is not hard to see why Roman comedy should have fallen so dramatically from favour in the course of the last hundred years or so. Ancient slavery was not, of course, identical with domestic service in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries. But one can see how the experience of living with servants could have made it easy to imagine what it was like for a Roman to cohabit with his slaves – people in the 19th century could continue to laugh at the servus callidus. But P.G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves marks the last hurrah of the comic clever servant, who can arrange and prevent love affairs for his foolish young master. In the later decades of the 20th century, for almost the first time in the Western tradition, most wealthy or middle-class people began to live without any domestic servants. These days, the slaves who provide our clothes and entertainment live outside our homes, often half a world away.
Historical study begins where identification ends. The fall of the genre’s fortunes in the popular imagination coincides with a new wave of scholarly interest in Roman comedy in general, and in Plautus in particular. The modern discussion began with Eduard Fraenkel’s monumental study, the paradoxically-titled Plautinisches im Plautus (1922). This book has now, at long last, been translated into (clear, if somewhat Germanic) English, as Plautine Elements in Plautus. The translators, Tomas Drevikovsky and Frances Muecke, have included translations of all quotations from Latin and Greek, as well as an index rerum, an index locorum, and an up-to-date bibliography of Plautine studies.
At the time Fraenkel was writing, the study of Greek New Comedy had recently been transformed by some of the most exciting discoveries in the history of classical scholarship. A papyrus codex was found in Egypt in 1905 which included large sections from several plays by one of the great lost authors of antiquity, Menander, the foremost writer of Greek New Comedy. The Old Comedy of Aristophanes was full of surrealist utopian fantasies, obscenity, slapstick and direct political satire. The plays of Menander, by contrast, included few political references, and apparently no ad hominem attacks. There are no choruses of animals or clouds, no gallivanting gods, no dirty jokes. In fact, you could say that there are no jokes of any kind. The plots revolve around a small set of stock elements: exposed children (who never die, and always turn out to be from good families); fathers, who try in vain to control their children’s love lives; beautiful courtesans whose looks ensnare lively and supposedly likeable young men; ‘parasites’, the young men’s hangers-on; wily slaves; fate, against which we struggle in vain; and moral character, which always triumphs.
Roman literature is said to have begun with Livius Andronicus, who translated Greek tragedy into Latin. His Achilles, performed in 240 BC (immediately after Rome’s victory in the first Punic War), marked the beginning of Roman theatre. Plautus is the first Roman author whose work survives, and he too, in some sense, produced translations, from Menander and the other Greek comedians. The dependence of Roman literature on Greek models became a cliché. Horace famously declared that Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit (‘Captured Greece captured her fierce conqueror’). Rome won on the battlefield, but acknowledged the cultural and literary superiority of Athens. The humble nod to the Greek masters is in many cases a kind of back-handed boasting: Roman authors trumpet their own status by acknowledging their dependence on Hellenic models. Moreover, the Greekness of some Roman authors is often mixed with elements that are very obviously Roman. Plautus, for example, throws in plenty of anachronistic references to Roman customs, which destroy any illusion of realism about his Greek settings. The Prologue to the Menaechmi includes a characteristic nod to the Roman audience: ‘“It all takes place in Athens, folks,” is what they say,/So that way everything will seem more Greek to you./But I reveal the real locations when I speak to you’ (the translation is Erich Segal’s, in the Oxford World’s Classics selection of Four Comedies by Plautus, which provides a splendid introduction to the author for those without Latin).
Fraenkel’s book might be expected to focus on the Roman or Italian elements in Plautus – the things he did not steal from Menander. Fraenkel does include some discussion of vernacular traditions, and argues strongly, for example, that one of the most important and influential features of the plays of Plautus (not present in Greek comedy), the cantica or songs with which he breaks up the dramatic action, probably grew from early Roman tragedy, rather than directly from Greek models. But in general, Fraenkel’s interest is less in Romanitas than in a much more limited quality, ‘Plautinity’. As a defence of the originality of Roman literature in general, and Plautus in particular, this is a deeply paradoxical book. Fraenkel’s central claim is that Plautus’ talent as a writer – oddly, since he wrote only plays – is defined by his ‘absolute inability to invent even the minutest fragment of dramatic action’. Plautus’ additions to his sources are all tangential doodles, which may make the plays far funnier than their originals, but add nothing to either character development or plot.
Greek mythology in Plautus tends, as Fraenkel suggests, to be applied in bizarrely inappropriate contexts, as if to show up the difference between the lofty world of archaic Greece and the mundane domesticity of modern life. In Rudens (The Rope), one character remarks: ‘This horse will make an attack not on the citadel, but on the cash-box.’ We are in the comic, novelistic world of sex and money; those who try to act like heroes (like the ‘Braggart Soldier’ in Plautus’ play of that name) are usually figures of fun. Moreover, Fraenkel suggests that the addition of mythology often serves to emphasise Plautus’ lack of interest in his own plots. Without the frills and japes of his own bizarre comparisons and outlandish jokes, Plautus finds New Comedy pretty boring.
From the perspective of contemporary Latin studies, Fraenkel’s total lack of interest in social history or cultural studies may look like a defect. His approach contrasts sharply with, for example, the exuberant and stimulating – if frequently unreadable – recent study (with facing translation) of Plautus’ Asinaria by John Henderson. Henderson explores, or dances around, Plautus’ representation of power relationships between sons, fathers, women and slaves. For Henderson, Plautus is both hilariously funny (‘it’s all a gas’: ridicula res est) and a biting social satirist, who understands the whole Roman ‘economy of pleasure’, and undermines the notion that the Roman father of the family could be anything other than a donkey. He takes nothing seriously, including his own comic tropes. Henderson is more amused than I am by all the jokes about whipping and humiliation. But he is aware that jokes are never just jokes; there is always a social subtext.
By contrast, Fraenkel enjoys Plautus’ jokes, but has almost nothing to say about their social or cultural implications. Nor does he show much interest in Plautus’ historical context. Instead, he explains Plautine poetics entirely in terms of Plautus’ individual literary talent. For instance, he argues that Plautus ‘pushed the slave into the foreground’ in contrast to New Comedy; but he does not attempt any kind of political or social analysis of this new interest, suggesting instead that the figure of the slave offered attractive opportunities for Plautus’ favourite style of ‘buffoonery’. Some later scholars (such as Christopher Stace and Jean-Christian Dumont) have suggested that the slave already played a more important role in New Comedy than Fraenkel realised, partly on the basis of more passages of Menander that were discovered and published after Fraenkel’s death.
Fraenkel does not write for the general reader, and even specialists may well feel overwhelmed by the mass of detail in the early chapters of Plautine Elements. You never get just one example when twenty will do. But for those who can struggle through the trees, the wood is a particularly interesting one. Fraenkel makes a cohesive and still convincing case for the idea that Plautus’ poetic vision is all about giving a voice to the inanimate and the voiceless. He demonstrates, with innumerable examples, that Plautus constantly resorts to motifs of personification and transformation: parts of the body and household objects are treated as if they were alive. In the Asinaria, for example, a slave says: ‘I do not want one of us slaves,/my mate the door, to get a beating’ (the translation is Henderson’s). Fraenkel reminds us, although he makes no explicit comment on the fact, that a large amount of the humour in Plautus hinges on the notion of the cowardly slave, who wants to avoid a beating.
Fraenkel’s mass of evidence suggests that Plautine comedy systematically creates a grey area where we might think there could be no middle ground: between people and non-people. The humour may be seen as self-justificatory: if Plautus can imagine that slaves are just like doors, then there’s no harm in beating them up. But it may also seem symptomatic of a fear on the part of the slave-owning classes, that at least part of their property may be animate after all. If slaves have eyes, hands, organs and dimensions like their masters, then they also have a clear motive for revenge.
It is also worth noting that the slaves in Plautus never actually get beaten, although they talk about it all the time. Segal once argued that Plautine comedy has close affinities with the Roman festival of the Saturnalia, when slaves were, for once, allowed to eat with their masters, and seem to have had much greater freedom of speech and action – at least for the duration of the festival. Comedy, too, depicts a magic world, in which the normal hierarchies are temporarily suspended – only to be reinforced, with a vengeance, at the end of the play or holiday time. From this perspective, the ‘carnivalesque’ license of slaves in Roman comedy can be seen as reinforcing a normative social hierarchy. The plays which show us clever slaves escaping punishment act as a reminder that in the real world the opposite is the case: slaves are stupid, and when they act up, they get beaten – or crucified. On the other hand, some readers see a more uneasy reminder in these plays that slaves may not be so different from their owners. Physical violence is upsetting as well as funny, for an audience that identified with the slave as well as with his master.
Terence, who lived a generation later than Plautus, might be expected to offer a more sympathetic portrayal of the comic slave. His mother was, we are told, a slave, and the poet was brought to Rome from Carthage as a child. He was raised in the household of a rich Roman aristocrat called Terentius Lucanus, and then set free. This would explain his name, Terentius Afer: Terence the African. He became a comic poet, and produced six plays in the space of six years (166-160 BC). He then died young – supposedly in a shipwreck, while trying to transport a collection of Menander’s plays to Rome. The story of the death is too good to be likely, but the slavery may well have been real; after all, a pretty high proportion of Rome’s population were either slaves or freedmen. He may even have been black, or at least dark-skinned; we do not know.
But Terence’s comedies will disappoint anybody looking for a direct indictment of Roman slavery from inside the mouth of the horse (or the ass). There is far less business about slaves, whipping and rebellion in Terence than in Plautus, and less frolicking, irrelevant donkey-play in general. The anachronisms, the metatheatrical doodling, the songs, the snooty clever slaves and stupid masters are all toned down in Terence, who is much less interested than Plautus in trying to make us laugh.
The result is a new and intense focus on sexual relationships. These plays offer a fascinating and puzzling glimpse into Roman attitudes towards women as both objects and victims of male sexual desire. Instead of the servus callidus, the smart-alec slave, we get a new stereotype: the bona meretrix, the hooker with a heart of gold. The female characters in Terence – including prostitutes and even mothers and mothers-in-law – are almost all nice, admirable, thoughtful, victimised people. The men almost invariably behave abominably: they get drunk, squabble about money and girls, try (and fail) to trick one another, and rape women without thinking twice. But the plays always invite us to see things from a masculine point of view, and we are always asked, at the end, to applaud the marriage of yet another rich young rapist to yet another innocent, well-born, fertile girl. The plays are surprisingly brutal in their analysis of the institution of marriage.
Terence’s second play, The Mother-in-Law, was apparently a flop in the theatre on two separate occasions (165 and 160 BC), because the audience was more interested in seeing the rival performances of acrobats and gladiators than in sitting through a sharp dissection of Roman sexual mores. The play provides an interesting variant on the usual theme. Pamphilus, our hero, has already been married for seven months. It was an arranged marriage, and Pamphilus remained besotted with his mistress, Bacchis, for the first few months after the wedding – so much so that he did not even sleep with his bride, and planned to send her back to her family untouched. But as the play opens, Pamphilus has just found that his feelings for his wife have changed. He is no longer attracted to his mistress, and decides he will keep his wife after all. The only problem is that she has been hidden away in the country by her mother. The big secret is that the wife is having a baby, who must, so Pamphilus believes, be another man’s child; such a blot on his honour can hardly be allowed to live. In fact, after various twists and turns, we learn that the child is the son of Pamphilus after all. Drunk on his way to visit Bacchis one night, he raped a girl – who now turns out to have been his own bride-to-be. A happy ending, of a kind: ‘All’s well that ends well. Just what two/ Young gentlemen of Verona might any day do,’ as Frederick Clayton comments in a brilliant modern epilogue to the play.
As with Shakespeare’s bed tricks, it’s hard to know how much we are supposed to worry about the rapes in Terence. On the one hand, they are a useful plot device. The victim can remain relatively respectable and sympathetic in the eyes of the audience; the girl may still make a good wife. On the other, the wife in The Mother-in-Law is never seen on stage – so there is a limit to how much a theatre audience can care about what happened to her. Still, it is hard not to suspect that these plots play with anxiety as well as with self-satisfaction. Pamphilus never lets his father find out the whole story about the rape, and comments: ‘I think it’s best if this doesn’t turn out the way things do in comedies, where everyone finds out about everything.’
The truth is, of course, that this is a comedy, and the audience, at least, does know ‘everything’. But perhaps we, too, are better off not knowing, or not thinking too hard about what we know. Male promiscuity may threaten every marriage, and make every baby liable to be exposed or killed. The play points directly to an obvious double standard: Pamphilus’ infidelities – which will presumably continue – are more or less compatible with his role as a husband, whereas his wife may only be raped, and by her own spouse. And as in Romeo and Juliet, fidelity to one true love always means the betrayal of another, earlier love: Bacchis is abandoned when Pamphilus falls in love with his wife. Marriage may be the enemy of romance; but as members of society, we are still asked to clap for it.
It is tempting to see Roman comedy (and Greek New Comedy) as the ancient equivalent of the modern feel-good romantic comedy. But these are Meg Ryan dramas without Meg Ryan. The female characters have no voice, and sometimes, as in The Mother-in-Law, the supposed heroine is not even a character in the play. A closer analogue might be found in films centred on non-Anglo-American cultures, which analyse the tensions between modern and traditional sexual norms: Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet, Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding or (perhaps the most Terentian, and most upsetting) Dover Koshashvili’s Late Marriage, a Georgian-Israeli movie about a man who finally reconciles himself to the abandonment of his beloved mistress and her child, in order to marry the woman his father has chosen. After all, as Pamphilus remarks, ‘I do love her. But family must come first./ Falsehood to family, of all sins, is the worst’ (the translation is Clayton’s). ‘Family’ means here, as in Terence, enslavement to a pair of savage masters: fathers and babies.
Terence was known in antiquity for the ‘purity’ of his language. Schoolmasters in the 19th century often justified teaching these unedifying tales of sexual infidelity and filial impiety on the grounds of their beautiful language. A letter to the Times in 1847, quoted by Peter Brown in his introduction to his new Oxford translation of Terence, complains that ‘the cry of injury to morality is mere twaddle, and it would be a lamentable event if an old and useful stimulant to the study of one of the purest Latin authors were destroyed by such maudlin nonsense.’ Brown’s own version is serviceable English prose, which might well come to life in production. Brown also supplies useful notes, a bibliography and fine individual introductions to each play. But if I had to choose a recent translation of Terence, I would favour Clayton’s, in amazingly lively and readable rhyming couplets (it also has a good introduction by Matthew Leigh, but no notes or full bibliography). In Clayton’s version, the Don Juan-ish rhymes sometimes call the shots and the language is inevitably not much like modern spoken English. But at least he does not let you forget that Terence was a poet, a clear-minded, writerly writer. Sometimes Clayton’s Terence actually seems funny, even in our enlightened day and age.
Inevitably, neither of these good translations is all that much like the Latin of Terence, and readers should choose for themselves. Here is a sample, from Terence’s last play, The Brothers, in which a kill-joy, moralistic old man called Demea comes into conflict with his cakes-and-ale brother, Micio, over the sexual antics of one of Demea’s sons. But the roles reverse in the final act. Here is Brown’s translation of Demea’s concluding speech:
No one has ever done his sums so well in the account book of his life that events, time and experience don’t always bring him something new, something to learn from. The result is that you don’t know what you thought you knew, and experience teaches you to reject what you thought most important for yourself. That’s what has happened to me now: that harsh life that I have lived so far I now abandon when I have almost run its course. Why do I do that? Events themselves have taught me that nothing is better for a man than to be obliging and kind.
This is a respectable, plain version, which tells you what the Latin is about. But Clayton does more. He reminds us that we can find in Terence an ancestor for English comic verse, ranging from Ralph Roister Doister through Pope to Bernard Shaw and Ogden Nash. Clayton’s Demea sounds like a strangely laid-back, Byronic version of Prospero at the end of the Tempest:
His life’s account-books no man ever drew up
So well but time, chance, change brings something new up,
Some lesson. Your known laws become unknown;
Things prized, when put to fresh proof, you disown.
This is my fate. The hard life that I’ve led
Till now I leave, my span of life nigh sped.
And why? Because I’ve found, on fact’s own showing
The best thing’s to be soft and easy-going.
Demea’s choice – to see everything as fun and games, and let morality go hang – is one way to read or watch Roman comedy. Perhaps, in the end, it’s all just a laugh.


Introduction To Teaching Strategies
The following teaching and learning techniques fall at various points on a scale of completely directive to completely nondirective. Directive instruction is teacher-oriented and didactic, whereas nondirective instruction is student-oriented and facilitative. These are the two main categories of teaching styles, and most methods involve some combination of the two, the distribution of which is up to the educator’s discretion.
Active Learning: An interactive (as opposed to passive) approach wherein the student is allowed to generate, rather than receive, information. In an active learning environment, the teacher assumes the role of facilitator. Examples include spontaneous group dialogue, cold calling, think-pair-share, and reciprocal peer questioning.
Assessment and Feedback: By using assessment strategies that draw students into the assessment process, it is more likely that they learn more of the content that you want them to learn while getting the added benefits of learning skills that will be useful to them in the future. By deliberately using different Functions of Assessments at specific times during the learning process students, will have a clearer vision of what is expected of them and generally will be more positive about their course experiences.
Blended Learning: A blended learning approach combines face-to-face classroom methods with computer-mediated activities to form an integrated instructional approach. In the past, digital materials have served a supplementary role, helping to support face-to-face instruction. For example, a blended approach to a traditional, face-to-face course might mean that the class meets once per week instead of the usual three-session format. Learning activities that otherwise would have taken place during classroom time can be moved online. This is the idea behind flipped classrooms.
Brainstorming: In order to generate creative ideas, learners are asked to withhold judgment or criticism and produce a very large number of ways to do something, such as resolve a problem. For example, learners may be asked to think of as many they can for eliminating world hunger. Once a large number of ideas have been generated, they are subjected to inspection regarding their feasibility.
Calibrated Peer Review: A web-based management tool that enables discipline-based writing with peer review in classes of any size. Students learn how to evaluate their peers’ documents by reviewing three carefully crafted sample texts, which include an exemplar and common student errors and misconceptions. Pre-written assignments by other instructors can be used or adapted to fit your needs. Citation credit is attributed to faculty authors whose writing assignments are modified.
Campus-Based: Campus-based learning uses the campus buildings and grounds as teaching tools. Projects can provide hands-on, real-world experiences that link to service-learning and civic engagement programs, and can be accomplished without a field trip budget or transportation.
Case Study- Based: An examination of a real or simulated problem, which is structured so that learning can take place or be reinforced. Also, a detailed analysis made of some specific, usually compelling event or series of related events so that learners will better understand its nature and what might be done about it. For example, learners in a technology lab might investigate the wear and tear of skate boarding on public works. Another class might look at cases of digital technologies and privacy.
Centers of Interest and Displays: Collections and displays of materials are used to interest learners in themes or topics. For example, children may bring to school and display family belongings that reflect their ethnic heritage. The intention may be to interest the class in the notion of culture. Or, the teacher might arrange a display of different devices used in measurement to prompt interest in that topic.
Classroom Response Systems: Sometimes known as audience polling technology (or even just “clickers”), classroom response systems promise numerous benefits in classes, including improved student engagement, enhanced formative feedback for instructors, easy quizzing tools, even a means to take attendance. Instructors can employ the systems to gather individual responses from students or to gather anonymous feedback. Reports are typically exported to Excel for upload to the instructor’s grade book.
Cognitive: In contrast to the more direct method of learning-by-doing, cognitive apprenticeship encourages students to learn by observing before trying out a task themselves in order to reduce demands on the mental faculties. The four-step training regimen runs as follows: 1) acquiring information by observing a model’s actions, hearing their descriptions, and discerning their consequences; 2) emulating a model’s performance; 3) deliberately practicing in order to achieve automaticity of technique, thereby reducing the momentary demands on the cognitive processes; and 4) acquiring the self-regulation necessary to adapt their performance to changes in internal and external conditions.
Collaborative: Students work in small groups to complete a specific task or work together over time to complete various assignments. The most productive collaborations involve a fair division of labor and relevant and complex projects that cannot be completed by an individual alone. Interdependence is required.
Colloquia: A guest or guests are invited to class for the purpose of being interviewed in order to find out about the persons or activities in which they are involved. Thus, a guest musician might serve as a stimulus for arousing interest in music and musical performance.
Competitive: An individualistic method that encourages scaled performance. In the sense of game-based learning, students compete with each other one to-one or team-to-team to determine which individual or group is superior at a given task such as “spelldowns,” anagrams, technology trivia, Odyssey of the Mind, or project competition.
ConcepTests: Conceptual multiple-choice questions that focus on one key concept of an instructor’s learning goals for a lesson. When coupled with student interaction through peer instruction, ConcepTests represent a rapid method of formative assessment of student understanding.
Contract: Written agreements entered into by students and teachers which describe academic work to be accomplished at a particular level over a particular period of time such as a week or month.
Controversial Issues: An issues-based, teacher-directed method that focuses on controversies. Students are directed through a process that assists them in understanding how to deal with controversial and sensitive issues and clarifies these issues in a group context. Involves critical thinking and discourse analysis.
Cooperative: Involves structuring classes around small groups that work together in such a way that each group member’s success is dependent on the group’s success. There are different kinds of groups for different situations, but they all balance some key elements that distinguish cooperative learning from competitive or individualistic learning.
Culture Jamming: A method used to empower students to “speak back” to mass advertisements and media images that enforce stereotypes and select representations of individuals or groups. Empowers students to mock or “jam” images of popular culture.
Debates (formal and informal): Similar to discussion but more structured. Traditionally involves choosing a topic that has a strong argument for and against it, and splitting the class / group with one side presenting the case for and the other presenting the case against. Debates can be very thought provoking and are great for developing students’ communication skills, but they are time consuming and staff skill is essential to facilitate the process.
Debriefing: A method used to provide an environment or platform for the expression of feelings and the transfer of knowledge following an experience. Debriefing may come at the hands of a tragic event or may be used more generally following an intentionally educational experience. Debriefing relies on the skills of the facilitator to reframe an experience or event to appropriately channel emotions and knowledge toward understanding and transformation.
Demonstration: A teaching method based predominantly on the modeling of knowledge and skills. A form of presentation whereby the teacher or learners show how something works or operates, or how something is done. For example, a teacher could demonstrate how to use a thesaurus, how to operate a power drill, how to scan an image, or what happens when oil is spilled on water as when an oil tanker leaks. Following that, students practice under teacher supervision. Finally, independent practice is done to the point of proficiency.
Discussion: A group assembles to communicate with one another through speaking and listening about a topic or event of mutual interest. For example, a group of learners convenes to discuss what it has learned about global warming. Teachers can hold class-wide discussions or divide students into groups.
Drill and Practice: A form of independent study whereby, after the teacher explains a task, learners practice it. After students are shown how to use Ohm’s Law, they are asked to make calculations of current, resistance and voltage.
Experiential: Experiential learning is a process through which students develop knowledge, skills, and values from direct experiences outside a traditional academic setting. Experiential learning encompasses a variety of activities including internships, service learning, undergraduate research, study abroad, and other creative and professional work experiences. Well-planned, supervised, and assessed experiential learning programs can stimulate academic inquiry by promoting interdisciplinary learning, civic engagement, career development, cultural awareness, leadership, and other professional and intellectual skills.
Field observation, fieldwork, field trip: Observations made or work carried on in a natural setting. Students visit the local museum of natural history to see displays about dinosaurs, or they begin and operate a small business to learn about production and marketing.
The Gallery Walk: A discussion technique for active engagement. Students get out of their chairs and actively synthesize important concepts in consensus building, writing, and public speaking. Teams rotate around the classroom, composing answers to questions as well as reflecting upon the answers given by other groups. Questions are posted on charts or just pieces of paper located in different parts of the classroom. Each chart or “station” has its own question that relates to an important class concept. The technique closes with an oral presentation or “report out” in which each group synthesizes comments to a particular question.
Gaming: Competitive activity based on course content. Moderate competition enhances performance. Often used for content reinforcement and skill practice. Can also be used to strengthen critical thinking in games where strategies must be developed to solve problems. In order to create a truly educational game, the instructor needs to make sure that learning the material is essential to scoring and winning.
Graphic Organizers: Clarifying relationships with diagrams or graphs; clarifying processes with flow charts. To be used in lectures or as assignments.
Individualized/Customized: Any of a number of teaching maneuvers whereby teaching and learning are tailored to meet a learner’s unique characteristics. Based on a student’s “proximal zone of development.”
Immersive Environments: Students are placed within a setting or situation in which they exclude all else from their experiences. If they are immersed in a language, they speak, hear, write, and read only that language. If they are immersed in a work setting and assigned a role there, they become that role and their communications and actions comply with that role.
Inquiry-Based: Also called discovery-based learning, a method used when students are encouraged to derive their own understanding or meaning for something. For example, students are asked to find out what insulation acts as the best barrier for cold or hot environments.
Interactive: Interactive learning is a more hands-on, real-world process of relaying information in classrooms. Passive learning relies on listening to teachers lecture or rote memorization of information, figures, or equations. But with interactive learning, students are invited to participate in the conversation, through technology (online reading and math programs, for instance) or through role-playing group exercises in class.
The Jigsaw Technique: In a jigsaw, the class is divided into several teams, with each team preparing separate but related assignments. When all team members are prepared, the class is re-divided into mixed groups, with one member from each team in each group. Each person in the group teaches the rest of the group what he/she knows, and the group then tackles an assignment together that pulls all of the pieces together to form the full picture, hence the name jigsaw.
Just-in-Time: Just-in-Time Teaching focuses on improving student learning through the use of brief web-based questions (JiTT exercises) delivered before a class meeting. Students’ responses to JiTT exercises are reviewed by the instructor a few hours before class and are used to develop classroom activities addressing learning gaps revealed in the JiTT responses. JiTT exercises allow instructors to quickly gather information about student understanding of course concepts immediately prior to a class meeting and tailor activities to meet students’ actual learning needs.
Learning-by-Observing: From a cognitive perspective, the dramatic effects of learning-by-observing can be explained in the following way: by allowing the student to focus her attention on a model’s behavior instead of attending to the cognitive processes and motor execution needed to do a new—possibly difficult— task, she becomes better able to absorb and handle the instruction she receives. There seems to be a degree of objectivity achieved by watching someone else perform a task that cannot be achieved— or at least maintained— while performing the task yourself.
Learning-by-Teaching: Researches have found that “students will work harder, reason better, and ultimately understand more by learning to teach someone else—even a virtual “teachable agent”—than they will when learning for themselves.” In an ingenious program at the University of Pennsylvania, a “cascading mentoring program” engages college undergraduates to teach computer science to high school students, who in turn instruct middle school students on the topic.
Lecture-Based: Active lectures blend 10-15 minute presentation segments with interactive experiences such as asking provocative questions and class or small group discussions. Using visual aids such as graphic organizers, video clips, or a few PowerPoint slides to emphasize main points and an engaging voice improve results.
Literature Review: Students read and reflect on articles in the professional journals in order to become familiar with the current research.
Mastery-Based: As a class, students are presented with information to be learned at a predetermined level of mastery. The class is then tested and individuals who do not obtain high enough scores are retaught and retested. Those who passed undertake enrichment study while classmates catch up.
Memorizing: Also called rote learning, memorizing is a learning technique based on repetition and retention. This is the most widely tested form of learning.
Metacognitive: Metacognition is a critically important yet often overlooked component of learning. Effective learning involves planning and goal-setting, monitoring one’s progress, and adapting as needed. All of these activities are metacognitive in nature. By teaching students these skills – all of which can be learned – we can improve student learning. There are three critical steps to teaching metacognition: Teaching students that their ability to learn is mutable; teaching planning and goal-setting; and giving students ample opportunities to practice monitoring their learning and adapting as necessary.
Mobile (M-): Mobile learning, or “m-learning,” offers modern ways to support learning process through mobile devices, such as handheld and tablet computers, MP3 players, smartphones and mobile phones. It presents unique attributes compared to conventional e-learning: personal, portable, collaborative, interactive, contextual and situated, it emphasizes “just-in-time-learning” as instruction can be delivered anywhere and at anytime through it. Moreover, it is an aid to formal and informal learning and thus holds enormous potential to transform the delivery of education and training.
Multimedia: Integrating varying formats such as lecture, text, graphics, audio, video, Web resources, projection devices, and interactive devices in a lesson. Increases motivation, alertness, and can improve the quality of student responses. Simultaneous presentation using multiple formats allows students to learn using multiple senses.
Object-Based: In the arts and sciences, for example, using objects from museums and campus collections to enhance your lectures and seminars.
Peer-Assisted: A student-to-student support network for both academic and personal development. Advanced students are trained to help beginning students, meeting regularly in small groups to help them improve their understanding of the subject matter, work through common problems, and further develop their learning strategies.
Peer-to-Peer: Peer-to-Peer teaching is a method of instruction that involves students teaching other students. Students learn more and demonstrate mastery when they are able to comprehensively teach a subject. Vice versa, when a student is struggling, having someone who is on the same age level as them helps to create bridges in the learning gaps. A peer tutor can form examples and relate to a student on an entirely different level than an adult educator.
Podcasting: Audio: Using mp3 compression to make audio files small enough to be broadcast, downloaded, or emailed by instructors and students. Files may include lectures or verbal feedback regarding assignments. Enhanced: Combining images, such as PowerPoint, and audio, such as instructor voice over, which are compressed and viewable on a computer or photo/video iPod. Video: Digital video, such as classroom lectures or interviews with experts, which are compressed and viewable on a computer or video iPod.
Portfolio: Collecting, organizing, reflecting upon, and publishing a variety of student work including papers, presentations, videos, and images.
Presentation: Individuals or groups of learners are given or choose topics. For example, each may be asked to find out about one planet in our solar system, or about solar powered vehicles. What they learn is shared with other class members by way of oral or written presentations.
Problem-Based: An instructional strategy wherein the learning is centered on a problem that the students have to solve. It differs from traditional instruction in that the problem is given to the students before instruction, and is generally associated with collaborative learning because students are often put into groups where they work on the problem together.
Programmed and automated instruction: A form of individualized instruction whereby information is learned in small, separate units either by way of reading programmed texts or using computer-based programs.
Project-Based: Students work through a series of activities and problems culminating in the completion of something tangible (e.g. artifact, media, performance). A form of individualization whereby learners choose and work on projects and activities that facilitate and support the development of skills and knowledge. Often, learners not only choose topics but also the means of their conduct and production.
Protocols: Learners study an original record or records of some important event and then try to understand the event or its consequences. They might watch a film depicting actual instances of discrimination and then consider its causes and effects.
Recitation: Students are given information to study independently. They then recite what they have learned when questioned by the teacher. For example, students read about what causes pollution, and the teacher, through questioning, determines the extent and nature of their knowledge and understanding.
Research-led: Wherein students learn about others’ research and conduct their own. Includes developing research skills and methods.
Role Playing: A technique wherein students act out a situation (e.g. a public meeting to discuss the planning of a new supermarket). Role plays are good for developing opinions and encouraging students to look at a situation through a new perspective. Great for practicing communication skills, and provides an opportunity to assess learning.
Scaffolding: A teaching method that enables a student to solve a problem, carry out a task, or achieve a goal through a gradual shedding of outside assistance. It enlists the instructor as an “activator” whose role is to facilitate the student’s incremental mastery of a concept. “Fading” is the process of gradually removing the scaffolding that was put into place for the student until he internalizes the information and becomes a self-regulated, independent learner.
Self-Directed/Independent: In self-directed learning (SDL), the individual takes the initiative and the responsibility for what occurs in his or her education. Individuals select, manage, and assess their own learning activities, which can be pursued at any time, in any place, through any means, at any age. In schools, teachers can work toward SDL any stage at a time. Teaching emphasizes SDL skills, processes, and systems rather than content coverage and tests. For the individual, SDL involves initiating personal challenge activities and developing the personal qualities to pursue them successfully.
Service: A flexible pedagogy that can make use of varied service opportunities, be used in a variety of classroom settings, and support numerous learning outcomes. Essential elements of effective service-learning practice include well-defined learning goals, meaningful service activities, and critical reflection activities which support both service and learning goals.
As defined by the Campus Compact National Center for Community Colleges, “Service-learning is an experiential teaching method that combines community service with academic instruction as it focuses on critical, reflective thinking, and civic responsibility. Service-learning programs involve students in organized community service that addresses local needs, while developing their academic skills, sense of civic responsibility and commitment to the community.”
Simulation: Learners engage with something intended to give the appearance or have the effect of something else. Thus, students may engage in a simulation of the United Nations General Assembly in order to have a “first-hand experience” of how it works and what its delegates do.
Socratic Questioning: Named for the early Greek philosopher/teacher Socrates, a Socratic approach to teaching is one in which the instructor poses thoughtful questions to help students learn and to promote critical thinking skills. One way of following the Socratic method recommends that teachers respond to all answers to questions with a further question (that calls upon the respondent to develop his/her thinking in a fuller and deeper way); seek to understand–where possible–the ultimate foundations for what is said or believed and follow the implications of those foundations through further questions; treat all assertions as a connecting point to further thoughts; treat all thoughts as in need of development; and stimulate students — through your questions — to pursue connections.
Storytelling: Storytelling can be a powerful tool in the classroom. It usually begins with the teacher playing the role of storyteller, or by inviting a professional storyteller or guest speaker into the classroom. Students are then given the opportunity to tell stories to the rest of the class in a structured fashion. By listening to another person tell a story, students develop listening, concentration, and vocabulary skills and may become more motivated to read; by telling stories themselves students develop oral language, writing, and critical thinking skills.
Synectics: The use of specific techniques to foster creativity in students. For example, the students may be asked to develop metaphors to describe mobility across different terrains.
Task-Based: Usually used to teach language, task-based learning involves an activity in which students use language to achieve a specific outcome. The activity reflects real life, and learners focus on meaning. They are free to use any language they want. Playing a game, solving a problem, or sharing information or experiences can all be considered relevant and authentic tasks. In TBL an activity in which students are given a list of words to use cannot be considered as a genuine task. Nor can a normal role play if it does not contain a problem-solving element or where students are not given a goal to reach. In many role plays students simply act out their restricted role. For instance, a role play where students have to act out roles as company directors but must come to an agreement or find the right solution within the given time limit can be considered a genuine task in TBL.
Values Clarification: Teachers lead students through a series of moral and ethical dilemmas, such as birth control or clear-cutting forestry practices, to assist them in clarifying their values and moral choices.
Web-Based: Web based learning is often called online learning or e-learning because it includes online course content. Discussion forums via email, videoconferencing, and live lectures (videostreaming) are all possible through the web. Web based courses may also provide static pages such as printed course materials. One of the values of using the web to access course materials is that web pages may contain hyperlinks to other parts of the web, thus enabling access to a vast amount of web based information. A “virtual” learning environment (VLE) or managed learning environment (MLE) is an all-in-one teaching and learning software package. A VLE typically combines functions such as discussion boards, chat rooms, online assessment, tracking of students’ use of the web, and course administration. VLEs act as any other learning environment in that they distribute information to learners. VLEs can, for example, enable learners to collaborate on projects and share information. However, the focus of web based courses must always be on the learner—technology is not the issue, nor necessarily the answer.
Whole Language: In the simplest terms, the “whole language approach” is a method of teaching children to read by recognizing words as whole pieces of language. Proponents of the whole language philosophy believe that language should not be broken down into letters and combinations of letters and “decoded.” Instead, they believe that language is a complete system of making meaning, with words functioning in relation to each other in context. It has drawn criticism by those who advocate “back to basics” pedagogy or reading instruction because whole language is based on a limited body of scientific research.


Once upon a time, there was a grownup, a child, and a very good book.
Goodnight cow jumping over the moon
Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown is a beloved children’s bedtime story. Young children instantly relate to the struggle of the little bunny trying to get to sleep. Such stories are memorable because they move children and allow them to make personal connections that inspire them to think more deeply, to feel more wholeheartedly, and to become more curious listeners.
Many of us can remember from our own experience the precious time spent sharing and talking about stories. We remember relating to the friendship between a little girl and a teddy bear named Corduroy in the book of the same name by Don Freeman. We also related to the friendship between a spider and her pig friend, Wilbur, in E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web.
We connected to the characters, their situations, or the settings in which the stories took place. Little did we know that when we were making such connections we were learning to think and act like good readers. Because reading aloud provides children with a model of confident and expert reading, many parents and teachers make it a vital part of their teaching practice.
Helping children understand what they read
This article praises the power of reading aloud and goes a step further to praise the power of thinking out loud while reading to children. It’s an easy way to highlight the strategies used by thoughtful readers.
Katherine Paterson, author of Bridge to Terabithia, once told a seventh-grader, “A book is a cooperative venture. The writer can write a story down, but the book will never be complete until a reader, of whatever age, takes that book and brings to it his own story.” Developing into this kind of reader requires children to become conscious of the multiple comprehension strategies that allow them to deeply understand and engage with the material.
This article focuses on three specific comprehension strategies:
- Connecting books to children’s own life experience
- Connecting the books children are reading to other literature they have read
- Connecting what children are reading to universal concepts
The first three sections of this article present current research and practices related to reading aloud. The last section shows how to apply this research to your work with children. We will discuss the important benefits of reading aloud; how to choose good books to read aloud; how to model or teach comprehension strategies as you read aloud; and examples of how to use these comprehension strategies with two sets of books.
The benefits of reading aloud
Reading aloud is the foundation for literacy development. It is the single most important activity for reading success (Bredekamp, Copple, & Neuman, 2000). It provides children with a demonstration of phrased, fluent reading (Fountas & Pinnell, 1996). It reveals the rewards of reading, and develops the listener’s interest in books and desire to be a reader (Mooney, 1990).
Listening to others read develops key understanding and skills, such as an appreciation for how a story is written and familiarity with book conventions, such as “once upon a time” and “happily ever after” (Bredekamp et al., 2000). Reading aloud demonstrates the relationship between the printed word and meaning children understand that print tells a story or conveys information and invites the listener into a conversation with the author.
Children can listen on a higher language level than they can read, so reading aloud makes complex ideas more accessible and exposes children to vocabulary and language patterns that are not part of everyday speech. This, in turn, helps them understand the structure of books when they read independently (Fountas & Pinnell, 1996). It exposes less able readers to the same rich and engaging books that fluent readers read on their own, and entices them to become better readers. Students of any age benefit from hearing an experienced reading of a wonderful book.
Choosing good books
Children need to be exposed to a wide range of stories and books. They need to see themselves as well as other people, cultures, communities, and issues in the books we read to them. They need to see how characters in books handle the same fears, interests, and concerns that they experience (Barton & Booth, 1990). Selecting a wide range of culturally diverse books will help all children find and make connections to their own life experiences, other books they have read, and universal concepts. (Dyson & Genishi, 1994).
Children use real life to help them understand books, and books help children understand real life. Choose books that invite children to respond with enthusiasm and understanding. Look for books with rich language, meaningful plots, compelling characters, and engaging illustrations (Gambrell & Almasi, 1996).
Keep two simple questions in mind: Is it a good story? Is it worth sharing with my student? Other ideas to consider when selecting good books include:
- Is the book worthy of a reader’s and listener’s time?
- Does the story sound good to the ear when read aloud?
- Will it appeal to your audience?
- Will children find the book relevant to their lives and culture?
- Will the book spark conversation?
- Will the book motivate deeper topical understanding?
- Does the book inspire children to find or listen to another book on the same topic? By the same author? Written in the same genre?
- Is the story memorable?
- Will children want to hear the story again?
"Think aloud" to model how to make connections
By modeling how fluent readers think about the text and problem solve as they read, we make the invisible act of reading visible. Modeling encourages children to develop the “habits of mind” proficient readers employ.
Helping children find and make connections to stories and books requires them to relate the unfamiliar text to their relevant prior knowledge. There are several comprehension strategies that help children become knowledgeable readers. Three are:
- Connecting the book to their own life experience
- Connecting the book to other literature they have read
- Connecting what they are reading to universal concepts
- (Keene & Zimmermann, 1997)
Helping children discover these connections requires planning and modeling. Parents and teachers can encourage and support thinking, listening, and discussion, and model “think-alouds,” which reveal the inner conversation readers have with the text as they read (Harvey & Goudvis, 2000). Parents and teachers can point out connections between prior experiences and the story, similarities between books, and any relationship between the books and a larger concept.
Here are some examples of “think-alouds”:
- To make connections between the book and your own life, think aloud as you share. When you read the beginning of A River Dream by Allen Say, for example, you can comment, “This book reminds me of the time my father took me fishing. Have you ever been fishing?”
- To make connections between related books with the same author or similar settings, characters, and concepts, say “Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters by John Steptoe is an African tale that is similar to the tale of Cinderella. Both stories are about sisters one kind and the other spiteful. Do you know any stories about nice and mean sisters or brothers? Let’s continue reading to find out other ways the stories are similar.”
- To connect a book to a larger world or universal concept, you could say to your student, “Stellaluna by Janell Cannon helps me understand that we are all the same in many ways, but it’s our differences that make us special.”
While fluent readers make these types of connections with ease, many readers do not. Children need to be shown this type of thinking and then asked to join in and participate in book conversations. This active involvement gives you, the teacher, a glimpse into each reader’s thinking.
Putting it all together
We found that many children’s books are based on classic or universal concepts that come up again and again: understanding ourselves, exploring relationships with families and friends, and investigating other communities, people, and ideas. These concepts help children better understand the social fabric that makes up our world.
One way to begin training parents in how to use “think alouds” is to bring a selection of books with a universal theme, like friendship or family traditions, and have parents read them aloud to one another. Prompt parents to think about the comprehension strategies they are using and to make the same connections they want children to make.
The following are two collections of books that lend themselves especially well to “think alouds.”
Read aloud collection 1: We can be anything we want to be
This sample set of books communicates the idea that we can be anything we want. As children develop their sense of self, they often doubt their own abilities. These stories allow children to share such doubts and they model how children can reach their goals.
- Concept: We can be anything we want to be.
- Anchor book: Amazing Grace by Mary Hoffman
- Companion book: The Wednesday Surprise by Eve Bunting
- Companion book: City Green by DyAnne DiSalvo-Ryan
- Age range: All
Amazing Grace opens the conversation. Begin by asking an open-ended question to help the listener make a connection between the book and his or her own life experience. For example, “Grace loves to pretend to be characters from stories. When you pretend, who do you like to be?”
The story then reveals that Grace wants to play Peter in her class’s production of Peter Pan, but the other kids tell her she cannot Peter’s neither African American nor a girl. Model thinking out loud with a connection such as, “This reminds me of the time I was told I couldn’t play soccer because I couldn’t run fast enough.” This helps draw the listener into the connection.
Ask the listener to share his own experiences, and to predict what Grace might do next. Like many children, Grace turns to her family. Nana, Grace’s grandmother, takes her to see an African American ballerina performing Juliet from Romeo and Juliet. While this reference may be lost on some children, they will relate to the line from the story, “I can be anything I want?”
Children will be eager to predict the ending of the story at the tryouts for the play, the class agrees that Grace is best and will relate to the last line of the book, “If Grace put her mind to it, she can do anything she wants.”
In The Wednesday Surprise, Anna and Grandma work every Wednesday night on a surprise for Dad’s birthday. At the beginning of the story, ask your student to talk about hir or her experiences of attending surprise parties, being watched by a babysitter, having a grandparent who lives nearby, or simply reading books with someone including with you.
As the story continues, model book-to-book connections. For example, “This story is about the relationship between a grandmother and her granddaughter. There were also a grandmother and granddaughter in Amazing Grace. Do you think these two stories will be alike? Let’s keep reading to find out.”
Encourage your student to think about what reading every Wednesday night might have to do with the surprise. The story reveals that Anna is teaching her grandmother how to read. Although Dad thinks he has received all his presents, Grandma gives him the best one of all she reads aloud the stories that Anna has taught her.
Draw out the book-to-book connection: “When I read that Anna’s grandmother wanted to be a reader, I think that the story is about how we can be anything we want to be. This reminds me of the story, Amazing Grace. Grace also believed she could be anything she wanted to be. Also, like that story, this one shows the relationship between a grandmother and a grandchild.” Then follow i[ with an open-ended question to your student, “How is Anna’s relationship with her grandmother different than Grace’s?”
City Green is the last book in this set. Like the others, it is well written and supports the universal concept of self-determination.
When a young girl and her elderly friend create a community garden, an empty lot in an urban neighborhood is transformed into a wonderful place filled with flowers and vegetables. While many children may not have had experiences with community gardens, they may connect to the city scene and the idea of wanting the place you live to be beautiful.
By this time, your student might be eager to share her thoughts on book-to-book connections. All three stories depict a grandparent figure and a young girl. All three show how the two work together to get something done. In both Amazing Grace and City Green, the characters did not believe in something, but had a change of heart.
Connections between books and universal concepts are made during the reading of each story, and deepen after the last story. You might model how all three stories support the idea that we can be anything we want. “Grace wanted to be Peter Pan. Anna’s grandmother wanted to be a reader. What did Marcy want to be in City Green? What would you like to be? Who will help you become what you want to be?”
Read aloud collection 2: Being a newcomer
This collection allows children to share their own stories of being new to a situation and to gain an awareness of the experiences of other newcomers. In addition, these stories allow you to discuss ideas about diversity and acceptance with your student.
- Concept: Being a newcomer is filled with challenges and memories.
- Anchor book: Painted Words/Spoken Memories by Aliki
- Companion book: Going Home by Eve Bunting
- Companion book: The Memory Coat by Elvira Woodruff
- Companion book: My Freedom Trip by Frances Park and Ginger Park
- Age range: Second grade and up
Painted Words/Spoken Memories is the anchor book for this theme. It is a picture book that shows two aspects of the immigrant experience, both from a child’s perspective. The first story, “Painted Words,” follows Marianthe or Mari, who is new to the United States, and her mother on the dreaded first day of school.
Some children have personal stories of being new to this country; others have stories of being new to a classroom, school, or neighborhood. These experiences will help relate what you read to the theme. Your conversations with your student may include topics such as moving to a new home, making new friends, or learning a new language.
In the “Spoken Memories” section of the book, Mari shares her life story through art. Encourage your student to share parts of his life story by modeling how to do so. “My mother used to tell me stories about what it was like to leave her home in Jamaica. Has your family always lived in this area or did they move here from some place else?” Try to be sensitive if the child is not comfortable sharing. Your student will see herself as a storyteller and immediately relate to this aspect of the book.
Like “Painted Words”, Going Home is about a family leaving one country to live in another. Ask your student to make this connection between the two books. This book also presents the idea that parents may call one place home, and their children, another. When Carlos and his family go to his parents’ village for Christmas, he realizes the sacrifices his parents have made so their children may have better lives.
Pause to listen to your student’s thoughts about work, family values, and so on. Reread the lines from “Spoken Memories”: “People were leaving our poor village. They were going to a new land, hoping for a better life.” This line will emphasize the connection between the two books.
Compared to the first two, the remaining books in this collection may be more abstract (for some children). The Memory Coat begins at the turn of the century in the characters’ native country and ends in the United States. The character, Grisha, who has lost his parents, will not give up the tattered coat his mother made him before her death.
Unless your student has a personal experience with immigration, it will be the coat that he or she relates to. Your student will likely make a connection between a sentimental or favorite item he or she could not part with and the character’s need to hang onto the coat.
My Freedom Trip is the last companion book in this collection. Unlike the other books, the characters in this book do not immigrate to the United States. They flee North Korea for a better life in South Korea.
Your student may want to compare and contrast this story with the others for a richer understanding. Explore the idea that many people leave their countries or communities for a better life, and a better life does not necessarily have to take place in the United States. You can also ask, “What are the things that make life better?” Through this rich discussion, you can help your student make connections between the books and the main concept of the collection being a newcomer is filled with challenges and memories.
Developing comprehension strategies through reading aloud requires planning and setting up an environment of thinking, listening, and discussion. You will soon learn how to follow your student’s lead: modeling connections, asking questions, encouraging discussion, and using literature to prompt personal storytelling.
Become comfortable with slight diversions. Through conversations and diversions, children make meaning and share connections that are relevant to them. Reading aloud to children gives them the opportunity to try on the language and experience of others. It helps them make connections with their lives, and informs their view of themselves and others. Thinking aloud helps children learn how to use comprehension strategies that are important when reading independently.
Sample read aloud collections to try
Family traditions (Age range: all)
- Chicken Sunday by Patricia Polacco
- Dumpling Soup by Jama Kim Rattigan
- Owl Moon by Jane Yolen
Friendship (Age range: all)
- Chester’s Way by Kevin Henkes
- Henry Hikes to Fitchburg by D. B. Johnson
- Matthew and Tilly by Rebecca C. Jones
- Henry and Amy (Right-Way-Round and Upside-Down by Stephen Michael King
- Ira Sleeps Over by Bernard Waber
Immigration (Age range: second grade and up)
- Painted Words/Spoken Memories by Aliki
- Going Home by Eve Bunting
- How Many Days to America? A Thanksgiving Story by Eve Bunting
- My Freedom Trip by Frances Park and Ginger Park
- The Memory Coat by Elvira Woodruff
The wonders of literacy (Age range: second grade and up)
- More Than Anything Else by Marie Bradby
- Papa’s Stories by Dolores Johnson
- Amber on the Mountain by Robert Johnston
- Tomás and the Library Lady by Pat Mora
- Thank You, Mr. Falker by Patricia Polacco
Recommended by research
Reading comprehension instruction has been recommended as a practice with solid research evidence of effectiveness for individuals with learning disabilities by the Council for Exceptional Children — the Division for Learning Disabilities (DLD) and the Division for Research (DR). To learn more, please read A Focus on Reading Comprehension Strategy Instruction .*
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