(1929)READING AND MEANING: TEACHING NARRATION ANDINTERPRETATION IN A MULTILINGUAL CONTEXT. ANINTERUNIVERSITY PROJECT

摘要

This presentation describes an interuniversity literature-teaching project aimed at improving theadvanced and specialist reading skills required of students taking a modern-language degree with aliterature component. The project, to be carried out from September 2011 to December 2013, hasbeen awarded a Teaching-Quality Improvement Grant (Millora de Qualitat Docent) by the CatalanGovernment’s University Grants and Research Agency, AGAUR.Students taking a degree in a modern foreign language, in which literature is very often a fundamentalcomponent, face a series of obstacles. Beyond the obvious difficulty of the language itself there areother factors such as an urgent need to discern the basic elements of study required for the effectiveanalysis and comprehension of literature. Many early-stage students, perhaps even the majority, aresimply not equipped to read or discuss literature at anything other than the purely superficial level ofplot development, and this, in turn, is felt in the reading and study of literary texts by more advancedstudents at higher levels. The aim of literature syllabuses, on the other hand, is to address issues thatare far deeper than the purely plot-based (questions such as sources, style, characterisation, thematicconcerns, gender and genre concerns, historical context, etc.) and this discrepancy—between theobjectives of specific course programmes and students’ prior understanding of what the study ofliterature involves—can create considerable confusion among students and not infrequently leads to asense of disorientation and disillusion.Bearing in mind this scenario, our project aims to develop student’s skills as what we term‘professional readers’;this involves enabling them to read beyond the purely narrative level and toperceive the manner in which the creative construct of a given literary work is established in acomplex series of ways, a clear understanding of which is essential to the effective study of literature.By systematically developing our students’ understanding of this critical aspect of reading literature,we aim to facilitate the ability to read, assess and discuss literature in a more fully engaged andsensitive manner, to transcend a common tendency amongst undergraduate students to limit literaryassessment to the purely plot-based and to equip students with a ‘professional’ vision of howliterature works. From this basis, though this exceeds the objectives of our current proposal, it ishoped that other still more advanced forms of assessing literature would then become moretransparent and accessible through having successfully connected with this aspect of critical readingand having seen the way in which the study of literature involves the professional reader in activeenquiry with the narrator’s presentation of the plot.Our presentation will give fuller details of the rationale underpinning this project, as well as outliningthe general approach and methodologies that we intend to put into practice. Finally, inasmuch as thisis feasible at this stage, we will suggest what outcomes we are hoping to achieve and will detail theeventual activities that we will be hoping to successfully undertake, such as publications and adedicated conference.