INSTRUCTIONAL CHOICES TO HEIGHTEN INDONESIAN STUDENTS' MOTIVATION AND ENGAGEMENT IN READING ENGLISH CANONICAL TEXTS
This paper focuses on how to motivate my struggling students for whom English is a second language when they read canonical texts written in English. Students in English departments are required to read English canonical texts, but most of them find this task very challenging. One strategy teachers can use to motivate students to read is to pair the English canonical texts with young adult texts. Important in these instructional choices are the pre-reading, during-reading, and after-reading activities. Pre-reading activities are intended to prepare readers to enter the story world During-reading activities are important to make students understand the stories better. Some of the duringactivities include using role plays and teaching media to increase students' understanding of the characters and the plots in the books. In the post-reading activities, students can write journals or quotes they find interesting from the book. Giving students more varieties in book choices and activities can, hopefully, make them independent good readers.
Easing the Pain of the Classics
Few words strike more fear in the hearts and minds of high school students than the English teacher's announcement, "We will be reading a classic." Truth be told, as an English teacher, I dreaded The Scarlet Letter and Silas Marner as much as the students, not because I didn't recognize these works as fine and deserving literature, but because I knew that I would be pulling metaphorical teeth trying to get my students to read them. As a school librarian and keeper of the school's laptops, I observe the constant use of Sparknotes with empathy for the struggling readers. As Don Gallo points out, "The classics are not about teenage concerns! They are about adult issues. Moreover, they were written for educated adults who had the leisure and time to read them. They were incidentally, written to be enjoyed--not dissected, not analyzed, and certainly not tested." (Gallo, p. 34) But what do educators do? We discuss, quiz, and test the books to death, as the students' eyes glaze over and they recall just enough to pass the test. Yet the classics are with us and will certainly remain with us for some time. No one can argue that they teach a certain discipline in reading, which helps to prepare high school students for the more rigorous reading they will face in college. Students will expand their vocabulary and gain cultural literacy by recognizing the relevancy of quotes such as "It was the best of times; it was the worst of times" from Tale of Two Cities. Finally, educators and administrators feel obligated to keep the classics on the syllabus of honors and Advanced Placement (AP) English classes. So how do we, as librarians, soften that blow? How can we ease the pain? How can we help to make a connection between a one-hundred-year-old novel and a sixteen-year-old student? One solution is the pairing of a classic with a young adult (YA) novel. Recently, a plethora of quality YA novels complementing classic novels have been published. These fall into five general categories: * Novels with an alternate or modern setting; * Novels with an alternate narrator or point of view; * Novels serving as prequels or sequels to classics; * Time-travel novels, in which a character finds him or her self in a classic setting; and * Companion novels that serve to enrich the lessons of the classic. Lord of the Hies by William Golding is a staple of most high school curricula. It tells the story of teenage boys suddenly in a world without adults. Similarly, in Gone by Michael Grant, everyone over the age of fifteen suddenly and inexplicably disappears. Set in a modern beach town in California, the first act of rebellion is fifth graders breaking into the candy machine. Still, as the main character Sam observes, "This school was dangerous now. Scared people did scary things sometimes, even kids.... Fear could be dangerous. Fear could get people hurt. And there was nothing but fear running crazy through the school." (Grant, p. 11). Like Ralph in Lord of the Hies, the protagonist Sam is a sensible and resourceful young man, thrown into a position of responsibility and facing opposition from the Jack-like bully, referred to as Caine and his sadistic Roger-like henchman, Drake. He is witness to the power struggles and brutality illustrated in Lord of the Hies. Like Ralph, he must remain the voice of calm reason amid the rampant cruelty of his youthful companions. Ringside 1925: Views from the Scopes Monkey Trial by Jen Bryant takes the perspective of the residents of Dayton, Tennessee, with particular focus on the students of Rhea County High School as the trials portrayed in the play Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee begin. Written in the free verse so favored by today's teens, alternating narrators tell the story of the teacher who dared to break the brand new Butler Act, a Tennessee law making it illegal to teach evolution in the science class. …
Educational innovation in Musical Language Course: responses and the overcoming of limitations
This article presents an innovative methodological proposal for the development of auditory education in the course of the Language of Music. Based on this proposal, we analyze an educational community’s response to the innovations implemented, and we identify the limitations recognized throughout the learning and teaching process, as well as the strategies developed to overcome them. To this end, we applied a qualitative methodology with the classroom-based research method. The compilation of data was carried out through participant observation, captured in the journals of the professor and researcher, interviews and analysis of documents. The research results demonstrate that patience, responsibility and perseverance in their work on behalf of the professors have been key to overcoming the limitations identified and in promoting that students enjoy and learn their class contents in meaningful ways. Recibido 05/02/2018 Aceptado: 09/03/2018