EEE Week 6 Assignment

          As to choosing an appropriate literature for high school students, the most famous one in our class is “To a Daughter Leaving Home.” Even though the other poems have some good reasons to be taught in high school, there must be better and stronger reasons because half of the class selected the poem as the most proper literature for high school students. Many students posted the essay regarding the reasons why they chose the poem on their blogs. Two main reasons could be found on three different blogs. According to three bloggers, “To a Daughter Leaving Home” is suitable for high school students since it may cause students to feel sympathy and it has easy yet challenging vocabularies for students.    

All of the three bloggers believe that students would be easily able to relate the poem to their real life. Hyewon Choi says that some opportunities to remind of their childhood will be given to students when they read the poem (2014.10.12). In addition, Hyeonkyeom Cho points out that because they are at the stage where they should be ready to leave their parents like the girl in the poem, high school students would feel sympathy with the poem (2014.10.11). Eunji Kim also adds that students can reflect themselves. She writes, “[By] reading this poem, they can reflect what they had done to their parents” (Kim, 2014.10.14). All their points considered, using “To a Daughter Leaving Home” can be an effective way of teaching high school students because it will arouse students’ sympathy, which is associated with internal motivation.

The other common reason why the bloggers think the poem is appropriate for high school students is that the vocabulary of the poem is neither too hard nor too easy. Both Choi and Kim mentions that the poem is proper for high school students because there are some simple words and repeated structures with useful expressions. Choi also says, “According to the input hypothesis, it is good to teach +1 difficult level than student’s level” (2014. 10.12). She puts emphasis on the importance of the appropriate level for learners by mentioning the input hypothesis. Cho writes, “The level of vocabulary is not that difficult and there are many literary devices that students have to learn such as symbolism and metaphor” (Cho, 2014.10.11). Given this, by reading and learning the poem students will be able to learn the vocabulary at an appropriate level.    

In short, all these three bloggers believe that “To a Daughter Leaving Home” will be the best literature for high school students for two reasons. First, students can relate the poem to their real life. Second, the poem has an appropriate level of vocabulary.

References

Cho, Hyeonkyeom (2014.10.11) “Poem recommendation - To a daughter leaving home” [Web Log Post] Retrieved from http://lovelycho.blogspot.kr/

Choi, Hyewon (2014.10.12) “EEE Week5 Assignment” [Web Log Post] Retrieved from http://eeehyewon.blogspot.kr/

Kim, Eunji (2014.10.14) “To a Daughter Leaving Home : good to teach to high school students.” [Web Log Post] Retrieved from http://kimd2828.blogspot.kr/

   

EEE Week 5 Assignment

When it comes to teaching, one of the most important things is a teaching material, which is the thing that you need for a class or a particular activity. It would be always hard for teachers to choose appropriate materials for their teaching. The most famous and typical material that many teachers use in class might be literature, such as poems, novels, essays, etc. Especially for language teachers, using literature would be an effective way to teach a target language, for learners would be able to naturally acquire language while learning about the stories. Therefore, among many pieces of literature, choosing some that will be effective, instructive, and helpful for students would be challenge for teachers. I believe that a suitable piece of literature should be relevant to students so that they can be interested, and it also needs to be challenging enough to have students not only learn language but also reflect other things beyond the stories. All things considered the poem, "To a Daughter Leaving Home", would be the most suitable for high school teachers.

First of all, since "To a Daughter Leaving Home" relates to many students’ real life experiences, they would be easily motivated to read the poem. According to Keller, a famous pedagogist, motivation plays a key role in teaching and learning. In other words, there is no use in good strategies or environment of learning if a learner is not motivated to learn. Keller says that one of the indispensable things for motivation is “relevance.” As the theme of the poem is teaching a daughter riding a bike and seeing her leave home, and the dad’s emotional changes, it would be familiar for most students. Once the students realize the material is related to their life, they would be interested and motivated. Therefore, choosing a poem, "To a Daughter Leaving Home," which has a familiar and interesting content, would be a great idea when teaching high school students.

In addition, "To a Daughter Leaving Home" has challenging and many practical vocabularies that are used in a real world. When language teachers teach learners a target language, most are concerned about vocabulary. One of the teachers’ roles is to make sure that vocabularies students would be learned should not be too easy nor too difficult, which means it should be challenging. In the poem, "To a Daughter Leaving Home," some words such as “taught,” “in surprise,” and “screaming with laughter” are easy enough to understand context of the poem, at the same time there are some challenging vocabs such as “lope,” “wobble,” and “sprint.” One of the reasons why the vocabs in the poem are useful is it has many practical words. These words, such as “loping along beside you,” “you pulled ahead down the path,” “kept waiting,” and “you grew smaller,” are not only for the literature but also for the real world. If teachers explain that the vocabularies are useful and practical, students would be able to practice the words in the context of the real life.

In conclusion, many pedagogues put emphasis on an “authentic task”, which means learning should relate to learners’ real life. To give the authentic tasks is one of the important roles teachers should play. Therefore, teachers should be sensitive to choosing the materials they will use. "Like To a Daughter Leaving Home," it should be interesting and relating to learners, and it should have many challenging yet practical vocabularies in it. If so, learners must be motivated and be able to learn and apply it to their real life.