Letters from Olga Sudlenkova and Lydia Bondarenko

Dear Editors,

I’d like to make a small suggestion about the contents of Footpath . There’s no need to enumerate the numerous facets which make each of its issues very informative and useful. My aim is, firstly, to argue with those who consider that teaching vocabulary while working with the books from the Fund list is a waste of time. The matter is that our students’ language competence leaves much to be desired and, unfortunately, it shows no tendency for improvement. You can’t expect students to speak on any book unless they master a certain amount of vocabulary. Yet every part is necessary which means that a certain amount of time at the lesson should be allotted to this sort of work. After all, among the few of them want and can do it on their own. Some coercion on the teacher’s participants of the Perm Seminar there are many teachers, whose primary professional task is to teach English language. And it is very good that while using the books for language study they expose the students to literature and thus, at least, metaphorically speaking, lead the horse to the water.

But not being literature scholars they may face some difficulties in choosing the appropriate angles for discussion, though, I am sure, there some who do it very skillfully. This consideration entails the following suggestion. Let’s introduce a what may be called something like Methods Corner (or whatever) where authors will share their experience of discussing exclusively literary topics. And let these contributions be very short, like, say, a list of topics for a final discussion or essay on a particular book, enumeration of artistic peculiarities of a novel , etc.

Olga Sudlenkova

Minsk State Linguistic University

(Readers might like to send in short pieces [e.g. not more than 3 essay topics] which could be of help when teaching literature. We do not want lesson plans, but specific advice based on their own experience.)

Dear Editors,

Our teachers personally like all the books introduced in the project, but when it comes to choosing for the students, it turns out that some books are in great demand while the others are rejected. That is very sad, because all of them have their merits and are very interesting to discuss.

One problem is that the discussion of the book does not always go the way you plan it to. I do not mean it is wrong or unusual, but sometimes, disappointing. When we were discussing Waterland by Graham Swift with the fourth-year students, they were quite enthusiastic about the personal lives of the characters and their relations, but rather passive, even reluctant to consider the representation of history in the book.

While reading and discussing Atonement by Ian McEwan, the attention of the students was focused on the relationships and feelings of the characters, mysteries-solving and there was not much interest in the presentation of historical events in Dunkirk. There are plenty more examples.

The question is, should we follow the trend and let the students simply enjoy the content or should the teacher still push the discussion in another dimension to encompass maybe not-so-exciting but important and serious literary and thematic issues?

Lydia Bondarenko

Crimean Federal University