Classes I'll Be Teaching

It seems that my class schedule is settled. I’m teaching five modules this semester:

• 19th Century British Poetry (Romantics)
• British & American Essays
• Essay Writing
• Intermediate English Listening & Conversation
• Research Methodology
  

Of course, I am especially looking forward to the first two, which are literature subjects. I’ve been working many hours already in preparing for them. For the poetry course I’m covering all the great Romantics: William Blake, William Worsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Alfred Tennyson (the latter is technically a Victorian poet). Since my class is the first poetry module in the program (second year, first semester), I’ll be focusing on the major poetic devices as well, such as Form, Imagery, Symbolism, Rhythm & Rhyme, Narrator and Persona, Irony, Parody and Intertext, etc.

I think that the British and American Essays module is also going to be an exciting one. We will be reading some of the great essays written in English, both old and recent. Such classics as George Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant”, Virginia Woolf’s “The Death of a Moth” and “Letter from Birmingham Jail” by Martin Luther King, Jr. will be read alongside modern reads, like Ellen Goodman’s “Company Man”, Susan Sontag’s “A Woman’s Beauty: Putting Down or Power Source?” and the funny Dave Barry’s “Road Warrior”. I’ve selected 14 main essays (one per week), plus an additional eight essays for comparative reading; in all, 22 essays.

I’m also interested in the Essay Writing course. Last semester I taught Basic Composition, which is the springboard for this Essay Writing module. I’m keen to see how the students progress in their writing ability. The Research Methodology is also going to be an interesting course to teach. I’m basically going to tutor the students on writing a proper academic article, starting with finding a topic, practical research, the format of an article and the details of citing sources. While only an hour a week, this is going to be an intense hands-on module. Remaining is the Intermediate Listening & Conversation module. I taught this language skills module last semester and feel quite comfortable with it; however, we’ve decided to try out a new textbook this semester. I think this new textbook is much more focussed on Listening and Speaking. The previous textbook was diluted from these objective because it also spent time on the other two language skills, reading & writing, which is better covered in other modules.

So this week is all about preparing for the classes starting next week.