[Best Practices Note: This is the key document to help students understand the expectations of Class Discussion. In an online class, I post it in Content, have students read it the first day/week of class and post a prompt abut it in Discussion for them to talk with one another about what it means.}

 

HOW TO DISCUSS LITERATURE?

Adapted from work by Jim Harnish, North Seattle Community College, 1995

 

In this class, one of the main ways we will learn is by using a “book seminar” model for class discussion. With that in mind, you may be wondering:

  • What is a book seminar?
  • How do I prepare for one?
  • What and how do we learn in a seminar?

 

A seminar brings together an interested group of learners who have done some preparation, including having read, thought about and written about a particularly good book, story or poem. This solitary preparation should include marking the text for interesting passages, reviewing those sections, organizing one's thoughts on paper and producing significant questions that need to be explored. This provides the basis for Class Discussion.

 

In Discussion, the group is responsible for exploring the text and probing the ideas people have brought from their individual reading of the text. It is a time to "mine" the text, to work it over as a group, to think aloud about it, and to test some ideas against the group. For example, the following might be posted in a Discussion topic message:  "I don't know if this is valid but it seems that the author is saying…." Or: "Here on page 15 at the bottom of the page there is this passage [quote from text]. This seems to be an important passage. It is worth looking at closely…." Or: "This part connects interestingly with this other part."

 

Class Discussion is not an arena for performance to show you've read the text or a reporting session simply to repeat what others have said. Class Discussion is a special time for a unique intellectual activity. The exchange of ideas is focused on a source (a book, short story, poem) and is aimed primarily at getting more deeply into the source.

 

A good way to keep focused on the text at hand is to respond to the following three questions:

  1. WHAT DOES THE TEXT SAY? – Point to the exact page and paragraph so everyone can read along.

 

  1. WHAT DOES THE TEXT MEAN? – Explain or interpret the passage in your own words.

 

  1. WHY IS THIS POINT IMPORTANT? – Agree or disagree, or compare it to other ideas or experiences.

 

Make sure you keep these three questions distinct, because each question forces the group to discuss the text in different ways. The first one asks for the facts. The second searches for concepts or interpretations behind the exact words or inferences between the lines. The third seeks an evaluation or hypothesis – your own analysis, reaction, or evaluation.

 

Sometimes Class Discussion will be focused, based on a prompt that I post. Sometimes it will be free-flowing. Sometimes it will be searching, questioning, going deeper to understand ideas from a book, from others or from within yourself. Sometimes the group will come to some conclusions. Sometimes it will seem like a series of disconnected activities, like a popcorn popper, with ideas jumping around the table without clear connections. In either case, the seminar is a place to discover new ideas, to re-look at old ideas, or to develop insightful connections among ideas.

 

The teacher's role in Class Discussion is, at best, to be a model of an experienced learner, not to be the focus of attention, or the authority who will tell you what you should learn. Don't let me give a lecture in Class Discussion! Everyone must take responsibility for co-leading and sharing ideas. Here are some tips:

 

  • Address an idea or argument by connecting it to what someone else has said.
  • Summarize the point you are responding to. Then provide your own idea.
  • The best question to ask is not "how am I doing," but rather "how is our class discussion going?"

 

Leaving the discussion with more questions than you came with, or being somewhat confused and overwhelmed with new ideas, is a sign that things are working. You will come to realize in seminar that a great book is not something you read once and then feel satisfied you have learned all you can learn from it. Rather, a great book is one that stimulates continuing intellectual curiosity and which demands from you a rereading and a continuing discussion of it – maybe for the rest of your life.