1.1. THEME OF UNIT : (IN)Equality.
1.2. RATIONALE FOR UNIT :
1.3. TARGET AUDIENCE :
18 post-graduate students, male and female, from multicultural backgrounds.
2.1.1.Materials Citations:
Passages from ‘The Frontier in American History’ by F.J.Turner, and ‘The
Golden Door’ -( Refer TEXT A ) .
Print and Electronic sources.
Language Skills:
Skimming,Scanning, Global reading for specific information
Content Skills and Critical thinking skills:
Defining the concept of ‘American Dream’;
Relating it to issues of Immigration and the Frontier;
Summarising the reasons for immigration .
Key Vocabulary:
Words connected with immigration.
Motivation:
Using the learners’ multicultural background, establish the importance of talking about the theme of immigration.
Presentation:
Present the two sources cited above to students
Comprehension Check:
Through oral discussion, collect various definitions of ‘The American Dream’ and put it on OHP.Discuss how these ideas could be organised into a coherent piece of writing.
Practice:
As homework, students are asked to
2.2.1. Materials Citations:
a) An excerpt from John Steinbeck’s novel’The Grapes of Wrath’ (Refer TEXT B)
b)The clipping from the film based on the novel, depicting the same scene.
Language Skills:
Intensive reading, oral discussion and writing skills.
Content Skills & Critical Thinking skills:
a) Exploiting the lateral thinking abilities of the students, make them aware of the ambivalent experience of hope and pain associated with any form of uprooting and displacement.
b)Comparing and contrasting visual and print as two media.
c)Discussing the politics of using the dialect in the excerpt.
2.2.3. Method of Presentation
Motivation:
Discussing the content and form of the learners’ answers to the homework.
Asking them to narrate or visualise the problems of displacement , based on their personal experience or family memory.
Presentation:
Students read the text; then, the teacher builds up their mental pictures of the experience depicted in the excerpt through discussion; next, the students watch the film clipping; the teacher discusses the two experiences and puts up learner responses on the OHP.
Practice:
Using the notes students have made with the help of the OHP, they are asked to write a description comparing and contrasting the two texts - film and literary piece.
2.3.1. Materials Citations:
Print, Audio, Video and Multi-media materials on Martin Luther King.
(Refer Text: C )
Language Skills:
Listening, Close reading and writing skills.
Content Skills & Critical thinking:
Reference skills, Oral presentation skills, Summarising, Analysing the
rhetorical structure and effect of King’s speech.
Motivation:
Students make presentations on King’s life and work using the reference material they have collected from various sources, to cotextualise the speech.
Presentation:
a)Students listen to the audio tape of King’s speech and offer their responses to it.
b)They read the text of the speech and analyse its discourse structure and substance.
c)The teacher draws the various strands of the text through oral questions and discusses strategies of composing an answer which includes all the major points of the text.
Practice:
Using the notes they are encouraged to take during class discussions, students are asked to write a 250-word answer to the question "What is King’s concept of ‘TheAmerican Dream’ ?"’
2.4.1. Materials Citations:
Print: Kate Chopin’s short story ‘Desiree’s Baby’ in the Heath Anthology of American Literature.(Refer Text: D)
2. 4. 2. Skills
Language Skills:
Close reading, Discussion and Writing skills
Content Skills & Critical Thinking Skills:
Lateral thinking ; Note-taking from discussions; ability to connect literary nad non-literary discourses for building up an argument and extending it.
Motivation:
Teacher offers feedback on students’ answers about King’s notion of ‘The American Dream’. This serves as a backdrop for reading the story which deals with questions of racial inequalities.
Presentation:
Students read this three-page story in class. The teacher discusses the social implications of the story through a series of inferential and evaluative questions which forces the students to read and re-read the text
closely. Then, the teacher invites students to make connections between the main thrust of the story and King’s speech. She collects their answers and puts them up on the OHP.
Practice:
Write a 250-word answer connecting the issue of racial and gender inequality raised in the story to the King text.
2.5.1Material Citations:
Print : Case Studies
a)’ Race and Pay in Baseball’ pp9-10 in EQUALITIES by Douglas Rae.
(Refer TEXT E )
b)’A Teenager and Her Family’ ,in GENDER AND POWER by R.W.Connell.
(Refer TEXT F )
2.5.2 Skills
Linguistic:
Reading, Oral Production and Writing.
Content and Critical Thinking Skills:
Analysing the case studies to generalise some larger issues raised in the texts and making links with the overall theme of racial and gender inequalities.
Motivation :
The teacher offers feedback on student answers to the question on the story and King’s text.The discussion on the thematic aspect of their writing forms the warm-up for this session’s teaching.
Presentation:
Students read the descriptive case studies. Teacher sets up a discussion to relate how all these issues are intricately interconnected.
Practice:
Using the discussion notes , students write out an analytical piece on the factors leading to inequality as outlined in the two case studies.
2.6.1 Materials Citation:
Print texts from
Linguistic:
Skimming, Scanning, Global reading, Cohesion and Coherence devices and writing.
Content and Critical thinking skills:
Summarising, building up an argument and presenting a point of view in writing.
Motivation:
Teacher feedback on the previous day’s homework constitutes the warm-up for this last unit.
Presentation:
Students are divided into three groups and asked to read through one of the three texts listed above . They are required to make presentations summarising the salient points of their text after a discussion in their groups.
The teacher puts up the main points from their presentations on the OHP in tabular columns. Or, the students could make posters for this purpose.
Practice:
The teacher draws together the various strands of the sessions into a conceptual whole through oral discussions and illustrates the interconnectedness among the apparently diverse issues.
She also discusses the various and complex linguistic and discoursal aspects which the students need to keep in mind when they are writing a discursive essay on such a theme. All these points summed up in the form of a checklist which the students can use while they are revising their writing.