Whew--we had to have Friday classes on Saturday today, so that we can make the required 15 meetings for the day. So yesterday I taught the first year Intro to American culture and literature class and then today as well. Actually, I so enjoy the class and the students that I was very happy to see them today (but I do feel sorry for them, too...).
Anyway, one nice thing that happened today was when I put William Carlos Williams' poem "The Red Wheelbarrow" on the screen and asked the students to raise their hands for bonus points to identify assonance or consonance or any interesting features of the pattern. At first I thought, "Oh, what have I done--they're all too shy--no one will raise their hand!" And as I was stalling for time while deciding whether and when to give up and just lecture them about those matters, a really shy and bright student sitting near the front, Sae, raised her hand and said, "the i sound in beside and white is the same." And when I asked her what that is, she said "Assonance." Wow! Her example freed up others, and by the end of it at least ten had raised their hands and pointed out consonance (r sounds repeating) and assonance (glazed and rain) and pattern (each stanza has four words, each stanza is three words in one line and one in the second, each second line has two syllables, the two syllables usually go high-low, and so on, and finally one brave bright eyed girl (Ayaka) said that there are no capital letters in the poem! I was so relieved and pleased with them! To be sure, there are about 110 students in the class... but I do think they probably most of them liked doing things that way more than my usual non-stop lecturing. So I will try to do things like that more often! Anyway, it was a nice Saturday (even though I gave them the test without enough time at the end of class...) See you next Saturday!
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Jefferson Peters (JP)
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December 2023
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