Tag Archives: IB English

What about style and technique? What about the author’s craft?

Blau’s The Literature Workshop should be required reading in every English teacher’s undergraduate program. He provides such great insight with extensive rationales for his workshops. In the reading thus far, there have been many connections to the need for (and “pleasures” of) encountering and working through difficulty. Blau’s work definitely speaks to the differences between expert and novice learners and thinkers, and he speaks to the importance of practice. It seems that the greatest difference between expert and novices learners comes down to the issue of experience—expert learners have more practice and experience than novice learners. Thus, it is important for us to provide our students with plenty of practice.  Blau also repeatedly stresses the importance of modeling for our students. Additionally, he stresses the importance of recursive readings. (Although, I would like to know how he stresses/handles recursive readings of full novels.) I feel that Blau presents great reasoning and workshops to illustrate, among other things, the intentionally fallacy and the importance of evidentiary reasoning. I am really enjoying The Literature Workshop, and I feel that Blau has articulated many things that I have thought about the teaching of literature. I look forward to incorporating Blau’s workshops and activities in my classes!

Along with all the praise for Blau’s work, though, I do have some questions. My biggest question at this point is what about style and technique?? What about the author’s craft? Blau refers to Scholes when he says that we should help “students see how [literature] speaks to them as human beings rather than as test takers and technical analysts” (102). Agreed. Blau continues (referring to and quoting Scholes) by saying that “[b]y asking students as they read to look for and analyze such elements as irony, theme, symbol, tone, and so on, […] we erect a screen or alternate text ‘that stands between the literature students read and their own humanity’.” Hmmm… I think Blau’s (and Scholes’) point is valid, but I’m not sure that I completely agree. Isn’t examining and analyzing the author’s craft—their use of the language, their tone, their use of symbolism, etc—part of analysis? Isn’t it another way to approach the text? Granted, we don’t want our students solely reading a work on the look-out for literary devices. But can’t an exploration and consideration of technique lead to further understanding? I’m guessing that Blau isn’t a fan of the IB English program. Two big questions of IB English, as I explain it to my students, are: How does the work make you FEEL? (What is the effect of the work?—We’re not talking touchy/feely feel here.) and HOW does the work make you feel? (How is that effect achieved?) (They are also working with the greater “So What” question, too.) So, my IB students definitely explore (“dissect”?) literary works. But I don’t believe that this means that they aren’t seeing and discussing “how it speaks to them as human beings” because they do so at great length in class and in their writing!