Writing

As per my experience, writing is neglected in most cases either by the student or by the teacher. Teachers place it as a homework activity or just make corrections without properly explaining the reason behind it. Every day, I give a particular topic to every class to write at least 10 sentences on. Some actively take part in it while some take it casually. Students who take it casually are the ones who are afraid to write due to several reasons like they don't know the sentence formations, don't have any idea about the topic, feel embarrassed if their mistake is pointed out and many more. After experiencing this type of situation, a few thing came to my mind which the learners and teachers should follow in order to make the students write effectively.

Things learners should do-

1) They need to know the difference between formal and informal writing.

2) Must know that writing a personal letter or diary is not the same as writing an essay or a review of any story or a movie.

3) Should know whether they are writing to learn how to pronounce or to express their opinions or simply to practise the language.

4) After reading an original text, they can write a summary giving their point of view.

Things teachers should do-

1) Should explain the differences of formal and informal writings and make the writing purposeful.

2) Should always encourage them and teach them to cooperate with others in the discussion and share their ideas about the text or the poem.

3) Should act as an audience and teach others to do so in order to motivate the speaker when they speak out about their writing in front of the class.

Use of Literature in the classroom

While teaching literature to the students, I just realised something i.e. why is there a need to teach literature to the students? As I was a student of Literature, many people used to comment that there is no use of studying literature and it is just for passing time (reading novels and story books during their past time). Whenever I talk about some novel or a story with my students, many take interest in the discussion while some get bored. Even they are not at all interested in studying literature. Then I interacted with the students asking to share their views regarding teaching or the use of literature in a class. Many were of the view that they(stories, novels) are just for the sake of entertainment and poems were of no use for them in higher studies while some others gave very interesting opinions and shared their ideas about why do they loved literature and which novels or story books had they read. Following are some of the views of the students as well as my explanations to their answers.

Reasons for using Literature in the classroom

1) Literature educates a person as a whole. A teacher encourages learners to develop attitude towards them when they teach them to examine the values in any literary text.

2) Literature expands awareness of language when the learners are asked to give examples of language occurring in any literary text.

3) Literature motivates a person or an individual. When a student understands a piece of highly respected literature, he/she has a sense of accomplishment as literature holds a valuable place in many countries.

4) There are texts which help to share feelings and opinions which is effective for students. Thus we can say that literature encourages interaction among students or individuals.