123232 AR Literature Course (interactive) (2014S)

This interactive course will provide future teachers of English at an Austrian AHS/BHS with a wide range of literary texts (poems, short stories and a play), which will be shown to offer valuable materials for teaching at various levels of the (Austrian) EFL classroom. The corpus of texts proposed includes sonnets by Shakespeare, a poem by John Donne, short stories from various epochs and cultural backgrounds and Shakespeare’s romantic tragedy “Romeo and Juliet“ plus its film versions. These texts will be explored as to their didactic potential, and, particularly, in view of their relevance for addressing topics considered seminal by the CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages), which supplies the obligatory thematic framework of the new Austrian “Zentralmatura“. Moreover, the literary works discussed will also be considered with regard to their potential benefit for proposing a topic for a “Vorwissenschaftliche Arbeit“ (pre-academic paper). The short stories offered for critical discussion include works by Joyce, Aldous Huxley, T.C. Boyle, Helen Simpson, Hanif Kureishi, Roddy Doyle and contemporary writers of popular fiction (including "chick-lit").