I can’t wait for students to start registering for the next semester because I have developed this really hardcore literature course and I’m worried that not enough people will want to take it. We have this departmental culture that is based on the idea that students don’t like literature, that literature is too hard for them, and that they don’t want to take anything but language courses. A course in the XVIIIth-century Spanish Drama sounds hard, and it will be hard. I made no effort to make it sound sexy. There are no hobbits, goblins, sci-fi elements, or anything of the kind.
The course will be even harder than it sounds. A ton of reading, a lot of writing, and I want them to produce a real research paper at the end. This is not even a 400-level course but I was writing research papers in my 300-level courses, so I don’t see why our students can’t. And I know that I can get them there if I’m given half a chance. I’m uniquely qualified to teach XVIIIth century, I really am. I’ve done XVIIIth century Spain until it was coming out of my ears, and this is very rare because almost no departments in North America offer anything worthwhile on it.
Of course, there is the issue of language. The language of these readings is hard but, look, people are teaching Shakespeare everywhere and students deal. And Shakespeare’s language is murderously hard even for English-speakers. I have incorporated many strategies into the course to help students get the language, so it’s all doable. I just need enough people to register so that the course doesn’t get cancelled.
As somebody who mastered two foreign languages to the point where I write research articles in them and nobody ever corrects my language any longer, I know for a fact that as important it is to have a solid base of grammar, a point comes where you need to stop doing grammar exercises and start to apply your language skills to actual reading, speaking, and writing. The best way to figure out grammar is by observing usage and interiorizing it.
In my own learning of Spanish, I took a single language course and went straight to hard-core graduate-level literature courses from it. It was incredibly hard but it worked. When I tell people this story, they tend to dismiss it as a fluke but I don’t think it is. I was very lucky to begin my career in Hispanic Studies at a department that did not believe in offering endless language courses and tweaking language mistakes for years and years. Nobody doubted that we were ready to do literature courses after Intermediate Spanish, and as a result we were ready.
There will be no peace for me until I see how many people register.
Clarissa's Blog 
When I was in university, I took two classes of Russian grammar and then a 19th century Russian literature course. (Russian was not my major.) It was quite do-able, with a good dictionary. I do remember Russian used to have just dozens or words for different kinds of horse drawn vehicles. Unfortunately, I didn’t keep it up. It probably would be useful now, as there are now a lot of Russian immigrants in my part of the world.
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And that’s Russian, which is super hard. In the meanwhile, we are teaching Advanced Spanish Conversation no native speakers because we are too terrified of student evaluations.
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A couple of years ago, through the generosity of EU taxpayers, I spent a few days on a visit to a supposed linguistics department in the capital of a WEuropean country (speaking a Germanic language, which wasn’t German).
I was shocked that there wasn’t a single even vaguely non-western language on the curriculum (not even Arabic or Turkish both with sizeable speaking populations in the city). They had even removed Russian. The explanation was that their funding was dependent on grades and enrollment anything even vaguely non-western was too tough for the students who either avoided or did poorly in the classes. A methodology guest lecture I attended was at a laughably basic level.
I also think that ESL practices (some of which make sense in an ESL context) have infected foreign language teaching…. almost everywhere so that language learning is reduced to advancement though micro-levels of increasing difficulty with intolerably bland content and virtually no real world (or academic) application.
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Will you change your strategy in the future if not enough people register or do you believe that it needs to be done the right way or not at all?
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Right now I’m not there to advise students to take this course and reassure them about it. So low enrollment might me due this, at least in part. I will keep trying because I’m not ready to let this go. Another huge danger here is that if we move towards teaching language and nothing else there is no argument we can make to defend the need to have actual professors and not minimum-wage native speakers teaching a bunch of language courses. This is not something I’m imagining, this is an argument that has already been made by the administration.
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I would think that most people learn a language in order to use it. Sure, some take a language course to be able to converse and are not very interested in literature. Many people want to be able to read excellent drama, poetry, prose in the original language
Make sure that your drama department knows about the course. There could be a few Spanish – capable students that haven’t enrolled in standard language courses but would be excited to take a seldom-taught (in US universities) drama reading course.
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Does anyone have some suggestions how to teach someone who hasn’t had a high school education? I want to teach him using newspaper articles, so that he can analyse them and give a personal response. He is a construction worker living in Zimbabwe.
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Newspaper articles are fine. What are you teaching him?
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He says he wants to start with Form 1 (year eight) and just learn what high schoolers in Zim would have learned. I’m more aware of the Aus curriculum, really, which has to do with understanding social and political meanings in texts.
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Clarissa, it sounds like a wonderful class.
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You are a teacher after my own heart. I think that kicking students’ butt a little by giving them a challenging curriculum is the way to show them respect and trust in their ability. Babying students doesn’t do anyone any favors.
My son had been saying how math was stupid and boring until we accelerated him this year; he’s now challenged for the first time in years and loves it!
Good luck with enrollment, fingers crossed!
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Reblogged this on Cool lady blog and commented:
You will enjoy this blog about literature
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