UNIVERSITATEA TEFAN CEL MARE - SUCEAVA

FACULTATEA DE LITERE I TIINE ALE COMUNICRII

LUCRARE METODICO-TIINIFIC
PENTRU OBINEREAGRADULUI DIDACTIC I

COORDONATOR TIINIFIC,
LECTOR. UNIV. DR. GABRIELA RANGU

CANDIDAT,
PROF. HURJUI VIOREL
COALA GIMNAZIAL SATU-MARE SUCEAVA

SUCEAVA 2013

32

The game of playfulness and

pastiche in the postmodernist world

32

Summary
Motivation....4
1st chapter

The concept of play and its meaning ..5

2nd chapter

The colors of postmodernism nowadays.. ..15

3rd Chapter

The stage of Canadian literature and Margaret Atwoods part on it19

4th chapter

Pastiche
Presentation..24
Pastiche in Atwoods: The handmaids tale.29
5th chapter

David Lodge and the world:

Seeing the world through the windows of the Ivory tower. 32
Pastiche in Campus Novel and not only....34
6th Chapter

Language play or the way we play with words.41

The way I plays with words..46
7th chapter

Teaching through play..49

8th chapter

Humanism a place where creativity flourishes and mind is breaking free....54

9th chapter

My personal view about teaching humanistically: ideas about posture, materials and
content..67
10th chapter
The importance of teaching literature..76
We live through play (conclusions)..80
Appendix

Lesson plans81
Bibliography...113

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Motivation
I have chosen this subject because I was told that I like to play. Being a
professional, I quickly realized that I can use this advantage in my classes, as an English
teacher. By doing that, Ive noticed a great attitude change at my students. They became
more eager to participate at my classes, more willing to play and to learn through play.
Year by year I have tried new techniques and activities. After judging well on the
perspectives, I realized that this approach, of teaching through play, really makes the
students eager to engage to get involved in more formal activities by creating a strong
bond between the teacher and the student. What I want to say is that the English class, as a
whole, filled itself with a lot of positive energy. The bond between students and teacher is a
special one, and if I am permitted to say, it can assure the success of all the lessons in a
school year if it is built accordingly. This is one of the main research points in my thesis.
I had the opportunity to teach in many schools. By applying the play as a too, in
order to teach, I had to overcome constraints regarding the difficulties of planning the
activities and other type of constraints. Studying Anglo-Saxon and American
methodologies, Ive discovered hundreds of books that dealt with the subject of play, each
of them with its pluses and minuses. My intention is to sum up all the things I was
interested about and to put them down on the paper, in order to create for me and, why not,
for others a unity in all the ideas regarding play.
This thesis wants itself as a journey through many realms. First of all, I would like
to travel into the kingdom of literature, studying two great masters that I consider indeed
Gurus in playing with words, both of them alive and representing modern type of
writers, who keep up brilliantly with the growing demands of the postmodern readers: The
British writer David Lodge and the Canadian writer, Margaret Atwood. A certain
dimension of play and also a characteristic of children development is the one that has
connections with imitation. Thats why I want to describe the pastiche concept and to find
this used in the representative novels belonging to the already mentioned authors.
A second stop in my journey is humanism, because, from my perspective, teaching
through play is a humanistic way of teaching on account of the degree of freedom that is
usually given to the student. My desire is to present, in few lines, some information
connected with the teaching of literature mainly following an ethical principle, which I
think, can really change some behaviors of the students from our classes.
Last, but not least, I want exemplify through a few lesson plans the theoretical
approaches of play.

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1st chapter
The conceptof play and its meaning in the contemporary society.

We can, as a simple exercise, have a look around. We may take a walk in the park,
we may go to the stadium, we may enter in an internet caf or we may just watch children
on the side-walks. The discovery is not-necessary surprising and for some is just something
that they take for granted. All around us there is play.
Play is so much a part of our lives as human beings that we often fail to reflect on
the range of our play activities and on what those activities mean to us.(Joe L. Frost,
2011, page 2)
I will not try here to develop an exquisite research on play. Things like that have
been done seriously by researchers that devoted their all lives to study the relationships
between play and how it influences the emotional development of children. My purpose
will evolve around a wish to underline the proper importance of play in the first years of
school and not only. Play is considered by many as an important part from the school
education. But is it really appreciated? Im focusing my thoughts on the authentic practice
right now, because Ive seen practically how deep I can influence the childrens attention
and motivation by playing with them. The years of practice as a teachers have been years
of applied research. This kind of endeavor wasnt necessary scientific, butnon-intentional.
What I wanted so much after every class that I held was to stir my students motivation,
attention and creativity. I perceived this fact: the higher the percentage of playing in a
class, the more they emotionally connected with all the notions that were sent to them
through the teaching channel of communication. This is all true, but up to a point. It
depended of course on many factors: of how well I could create a proper playing and
teaching environment, of how imaginative was my pretense, of how original were my
teaching materials and of course, how great I could plan my lessons for my students not
to get bored or distressed.
By reading about play, about new ways of teaching and about new methods to
introduce into my classes Ive found a statement belonging to Joe L. Frost:
The remarkable endurance of play and games across centuries, generations,
cultures and countries is quite a story. Both natural and man-made playgrounds change
with

geography,

time, and necessity. Technology, culture and interest change

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childrens toy choices, but

their games, laws and seasons for playing them endure in

modified fashion.
(Joe L. Frost, A history of childrens play and play environments, 2010, page 61)
The same author in collaboration with Sue C. Wortham and Stuart Reifel presents in a
prodigious book, Play and the children development, in the first chapter, a history of the
childrens play. He says like that: To acknowledge the complexity of play we will see how
the history of play () has changed over time (Joe L. Frost, Play and children
development, 2011, page 4). This is my opinion to, so before shaping a personal view
about the structure of play, I will present some perspectives that assemble the thoughts
about the importance of playing until nowadays:
In the cult of Artemis, girls who used to serve for the goddess underwent puberty
initiation rites that involved dancing or other types of activities. The philosophical
discourse of the ancient Greeks explored the meaning of play as part of their attempt to
understand human expression and thought. Plato referred to playing as a medium to perfect
the knowledge that will be uses later in life (Frost, 2011, page 5). The way they tried to
understand the human condition was through three routes: Argon, mimesis and chaos.
Argos or conflict represented one way to consider play. The ancient gods were
understood to play with humans on earth; to provide challenges Ancient Greeks created
sport versions of the real conflicts - thus play was the main tool for a competitor in such a
competition. The deep understanding of the relationship between goods and people evolves
round the concept of play. The roots of this relation stay firmly connected with the idea that
life itself, with its uncertainties, is a kind of play with rules, that leads eventually to
satisfactions that cannot be truly explained because there are connected with emotional
addiction of playing it all over again in un uninterrupted circle.
Mimesis included any number of representational forms that stemmed from actions
designed to mimic the gods, possibly by doing what the gods were imagined, such as
dancing, orchestrating human actions (theatre) or religious rites (rituals). So, by all means
we can say that adults were trying to mimic gods and children were trying to mimic their
parents. Considering the fact that the innocence of children, in many religious confessions
is connected with the purity of Gods, we can observe here too, a circle that rotates itself
indefinitely.
Chaos believing that the divine order can emerge from randomness, this involved
a trust in chance hence the Games of chances are a third form of play that continues to
this day. (gambling, flipping coins or drawing straws)(Frost, 2011, page 5). It is worth

32

mentioning that the play actions of children outside of ritual activities were not recorded.
Some scientists say that randomness is a chance that the universe itself had , because
without it, it was impossible for all our existence to be.
The Enlightenment and the Romantic period came with a different focus, on
rational thought rather than a focus on religion and belief. Everything became an aspect of
reflection. The play of children is separated from the adult play. Play is a type of activity
with specific play objectives that were thought to shape the mind and spirit. John Locke,
the 17th century philosopher speculated that each human being is born as an intellectual
blank state, or tabula rasa. He stated that human thoughts result from the experiences we
have, and so, what we know is what we learn.
Locke saw play as a necessary part of childhood, stating that children are players by
nature. He was among the first to specify that playing with toys, carefully supervised by
adults,was desirable for children. Kants primary concern was with how we know things.
In his view, for adult human beings, the imagination or free play of the mind is the context
in which knowledge and reason operate. We imagine the things we want; thereby we create
our need for knowledge. Kant also attributed to play the basis for arts and morality.
However, he never linked the idea of play to activities, because, in his view, play goes on
in the head. In the 18th century Schiller identified play as a key part of who we are as
human beings. He wrote specifically about play as an expenditure of exuberant energies.
He said that the human being consumes a lot of energy to meet our physical needs. Any
energy we may have left over is dedicated to play. More important to Schiller were the
aspects of play that took the form of symbolic or dramatic activity and were most
frequently expressed through arts (Frost, 2011, page 7/8). This is very important because
Schiller equalizes, in my opinion, the power of imagination with the notion of play
implying that play has divine capabilities; through play we create art, art is a kind of
play.
Friedrich Froeber (1746-1826) was a student of the innovative Swiss educator
Pestalozzi. He showed how children learn naturally from their encounters with real things,
so-called object lessons. He combined all his predecessors principles to formulate a playbased curriculum. He translated beliefs about play into educational practices by means of
play objects that would be manipulated in ways that supposedly lead to educational
insights.
Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) revisited Schillers notion of play as a surplus energy
and converted into a psychological version of Darwins idea about adaptation. In his

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modified theory, surplus energy fuels instincts that assist natural selection.(Frost, 2011,
page 8).
The 19th century began with a set of inspirational beliefs about play, highlighting
the importance of play as a source of human creativity and higher thought. At the start of
the 20th century there were disagreements about plays particular role in development and
education. Maria Montessori (1870-1952) presented a strong point of view. Play was not
central in her view of education. First, the teacher of the childrens house prepared a
planned environment, where children freely choose their involvement with Montessoris
materials. Second, the planned environment in a Montessori school was rich with miniature
or child-size materials. Those objects were designed to help the children master real-work
skills, with objects crafted to their size. Objects in miniature can be seen nowadays in
every childs room. Their presence there is now seen as something necessary that is
connected with offering the children all what is required to start imitating the adults world.
Now, concerning the view about play nowadays, we open our debate on play with a
reason extracted from a book appeared in 2010 at Open University press, McGraw and
Hill. The book is called: The excellence of play There, the editor, Janet Moyles
introduces a statement mentioned by a practitioner in a reception class in England. She
says like this: There is still a lack of understanding and knowledge of how children learn
and play: the lack of space, freedom and provision impedes childrens natural
development (Moyales, 2010, page 24). What strikes me isthe similitude of this truth that
may be found in other practitioners mouths, right here, inside the Romanian educational
system. We all sustain the idea that play is, with no means to deny, in the center of the
educational didacticism used in the kindergarten and for the primary school but at a closer
look we find that the early educators develop, as primary objectives, capabilities connected
with literacy and numeracy in, what I would

call,

a formal non-evolved school

environment. As a matter of fact, we cannot complain, because, at a close scrutiny, we find

that the parents have a similar idea of offering so much attention to Romanian and
Mathematics and of descending the other parts of the curriculum on the second shelf in the
order of importance. It is self-evident that teaching is perceived by parents, policy makers
and practitioners to be a formal activity and has been over a century (idem, page 25).
Thats why the first classes tend to be too formal for the needs of young children.so
many boys start the system as failures (idem, Moyales 2010). The one and only way to
solve this dilemma is to think at a playful pedagogy and to embrace a whole different
range of deeper learning and teaching practices if we are to serve twenty-first century

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young children (idem, page 25). To put it in a nutshell, this is what this paper wants to
offer a fresh perspective of the word play applicable also to some literary grounds, but
mainly to give a helping hand to those who want other means to use during classes, not
only to impose fear in order to achieve and to instruct.
Grappling with the concept of play can be analogized to trying to seize bubbles,
for every

time there appears to some thing to hold on to, its ephemeral nature

disallows it being grasped. (Moyales, page 27).

All things considered, its our task to seize some of those bubbles.
The point at issue here is the way play is viewed, considered and described. An
attempt was made by Mary D. Sheridan, in her 2010 book, Play in early childhood
(Routledge edition).The book is at its third edition, so we have in front of us a book revised
and updated for a contemporary audience and fully evidence-based. The book explains
how childrens play develops and how they develop as they play. Inside of the first chapter
we find great lines about the definition of play, the functions of play, and the types of play
and, of course some pages dedicated to the readers own thinking time.Before the first
edition of the book was first written, that is in 1977, the knowledge regarding the needs of
the child werent so advanced. They could, at that time, refer only to the nature of the child
development. The authors observations in the third edition offered an insight into the
development of real children in real situations - allowing the reader to enrich their
knowledge and validate their own experiences (Sheridan, 2010, page 10).
As far as I can see, there is a great deal of information that has been said about play.
Why that? In Sheridans point of view, there is a great deal of evidence based on the value
of play for children development (idem). Thats why play is recognized in article 31 of the
United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. My feeling is that although there
are many books about teaching through play, although the people, the instructors, consider
themselves able to teach through play, still, there is an enormous difference between theory
and practice. We take, as educators, for granted certain things about children development.
What happens exactly? This is a small example. We tend to focus on the child that is able
to do a role play. We dont know what to do if a child doesnt engage in a game like that.
What is there to be done as a next step? Should the next step be: trying to encourage him
to engage in role play or should I provide different play opportunities that may help in the
development of his representational abilities? (Sheridan, 2010, page 11).
Sheridans idea about the play is defined by a sense of freedom, choice and
control.Usually the boundaries are set and regulated by children themselves. As skilled

32

educators, we need to provide for the best environment we can in order for the child to
have the possibility to choose form a wide range of possibilities. We have to transform
ourselves from evaluators into coaches. In an ideal educational system, the means of
evaluation are less important than thechilds path of development. We have to control from
the distance the limits of the childrens games. They need to sense that they are free. A
sense of freedom in the classroom is a necessity nowadays. There is a road that is opened
in the way teaching is organized in kindergarten, with educators that try to send the
toddlers to evolve around the so called learning centers. But the shift changes when the
students are enrolled in the famous grade 0. There arent learning centers anymore, or, if
there are, the formalization of activities overtakes everything.
Play is seen as a complex notion. We can see play as a behavior, a process and an
approach to the task. Play, work and drudgery are all engagements. What differentiates
play from the other actions is that the effort from the child a pleasurable physical and
mental one is done to obtain emotional satisfaction. (Sheridan, 2010, page 14). This raises
another problem. If this emotional satisfaction is transferred somehow to the gown-up that
needs to continue playing in a multitude of different ways: through the games of football,
using a Play-station, so on and so forth. We shall continue with this problem later.
Dictionary definitions present the word play as being frivolous, fun or lighthearted (idem.)
1.Play

source(http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/play_1)

verb

[I]

(ENJOY)
(A1 When you play, especially as a child, you spend time doing an enjoyable and/or
entertaining activity.)
But often the seriousness of some games contradicts this definition. Therefore, as
long the activity is regarded as play, there are some characteristics which are unchangeable
that we have to observe: - first, there is voluntary participation, after that there is a form of
enjoyment; there is a sort of intrinsic motivation, a pretense and a focus on process over
product. (Sheridan, 2010, page 14).
If we want to understand play, we need to find out what out how players see it and
some dont necessary see it like something fun (idem). Activities that take place on the
floor and outside, rather than inside, are seen like play by children. To put it briefly, the
environment has a tremendous importance on the way children judge the nature of the
activities. Open environments, which have irregular structures, are sources of potential
freedom. All the things which contradict the way the adults do, for example their postures

32

in an official meeting, sitting in a mannered way on a park in the park or the right angles
of the desks in a classroom environment,

can be seen as a source of freedom. The

opposite settings are synonymous with control. Play can be seen as an action of
exploration. Before using a piece of environment, a child has to explore it, to see what bits
can be used or not, what an object does; therefore, much of the activities we can notice in
young infants and not only belong to exploration. (Sheridan, 2010, page 16). So, our
influence on the play may include location and the availability of materials. In her book,
Sheridan says that children communicate the desire to play using a series of signals. Im
convinced that this kind of invitations starting with the simple ones: Hey, lets play ball!
but continuing with the most complex ones are used at all ages, even in adolescence or
with the grown-ups, in the moment when the ego of the child kicks in.
WhyPeople Play: The Psychology of Human Relationships is a 1964 bestselling
book by psychiatrist Eric Berne. Since its publication it has sold more than five million
copies. The book describes both functional and dysfunctional social interactions.
In the first half of the book, Berne introduces transactional analysis as a way of
interpreting social interactions. He describes three roles or ego states, known as the
Parent, the Adult, and the Child, and postulates that many negative behaviors can be
traced to switching or confusion of these roles.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Games_People_Play_%28book%29)
In Bernes vision, there is a need for social intercourse, because, as he states, there
is a strong need of emotion to be handled over to the infants, because emotion depravation
can have a fatal outcome. He derives the conclusion that there is a stimulus hunger,
which presents itself as a type of hunger that influences the body with the most favored
forms of stimuli(page 3). A similar phenomenon is the on presented in the life of the
adults. Berne calls the phenomenon sensory deprivation which, if it is lacking, is seen
capable of give rise to temporal mental disturbances.
So, as a small conclusion, stimulus hanger has the same relationship to the
survival of the human organism as a human hunger (Berne, 1964, page 4) Using a special
colloquialism this idea can be retold in a different way (idem): If you are not stroked,
your spinal cord will shrivel up.As far as I can see, as a child and after that, as an adult,
the human being will continue to push aside the intimacy with the mother, in the same time
striving for its attainmentwhile the ego is that of a child,.As a parenthesis, what strikes
me is the primary connection that we all make when referring to an infant. We connect the
infant with the idea of play. So, if during its life, the human being strives for the state of

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living the infancy once again, it means that the condition of play is presented all along the
path of life, until death. (when the ego of the child kicks in). Play is something absolutely
necessary because is connected with socialization, with the possibility that it has, to offer
permanently a stimulus. The children who do not play do not develop themselves
properly. The children who do not develop themselves do not play. To save autistic
children we have to play with them, so playing can be seen a sort of therapeutic way to
make our children healthier and happier - more eager to live and to be competitive in life.
We must not overlook the fact that Bernes book is called Games people play, so
the question is obvious: What can be understood from the word game? But we will
answer to that later. This infantile Stimulus hunger transforms itself through what Berne
says into a recognition hunger (idem pag 4)attained by Stroking which may be used as
a general term for intimate physical contact. In practice it may take various forms, says
Berne. Some literally stroke an infant; others hug or pat it, while some people pinch it
playfully. These all have their analogues in conversation so that it seems that one might
predict how an individual would handle a baby by listening to him talk. (idem)
Stroking is and has to be a part of the interaction that takes place between the
teacher and its students.
From a psychological point of view, an individual programs time. One of the
aspects of time programming is the social programming Each individual becomes more
and more independent in his quest for recognition and it is this difference which makes
the base for different types of social intercourse.As people become better acquainted,
more and more incidents begin to occur. A careful scrutiny reveals that they tend to
follow a definite pattern. These regulations remain latent, but if an illegal move is made
a symbolic, verbal or legal cry of Foul appears. It should be pointed out that, from
Bernes perspective:Games are sequences of interactions based on individual social
programming. Family life and married life as well as life in organizations of various kinds
may be called GAMES.What I mean here is to say that games are social transactions that
follow

patterns

which

are

almost

identical

in

the

structures

and

in

the

development.Although it seems a little farfetched, this pattern, from my perspective,

explains very well the basic structure of the play that takes place between infants.
These games are not necessary fun. They may be very serious. The essential
characteristic of human play is not that the emotions are spurious, but that are regulated,
Berne says in his book. (Berne, 1964, page 6). Social sanctions are serious only if the rules
are broken. Theres no escaping the fact that this definition in very much applicable inside

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the educational environment, inside the process that we call play. There are numerous
similitudes between the meaning of the game presented by Berne, although his
significations have a social and psychological origin.
The second half of the book catalogues a series of "mind games in which people
interact through a patterned and predictable series of <transactions> which are
superficially plausible (that is, they may appear normal to bystanders or even to the people
involved), but which actually conceal motivations, include private significance to the
parties

involved,

and

lead

to

well-defined

predictable

outcome,

usually

counterproductive. The book uses casual, often humorous phrases such as <See What You
Made Me Do>, <Why Don't You Yes But,> and <Ain't It Awful> as a way of briefly
describing each game. In reality, the <winner> of a mind game is the person that returns
to the Adult ego-state first. (www.wikipedia.org)
One example of these games is the one named "Now I've got you, you son of a
bitch," in which A is dealing with B, and A discovers B has made a minor mistake, and
holds up a much larger and more serious issue until the mistake is fixed, basically holding
the entire issue hostage to the minor mistake. The example is where a plumber makes a
mistake on a $300 job by underestimating the price of a $3 part as $1. The customer won't
pay the entire $300 unless and until the plumber absorbs the $2 error instead of just paying
the bill of $302. (idem)
All things considered, what Berne says about the definition of the game is really
important: A game is an ongoing series of complementary ulterior transactions
progressing to a well-defined predictable outcome. Descriptively, it is a recurring set of
transactions, often repetitious, superficially plausible, with a concealed motivation; or,
more colloquially, a series of moves with a snare, or gimmick (Berne, 1964, page 19).
Games are clearly differentiated from the other sets of human interactions by their two
chef characteristics: (1) their ulterior quality and their payoff (idem). Their ending is more
than sensational, is dramatic. Every game () is basically dishonest, and the
outcome has a dramatic, as distinct from merely exciting quality
Now let us consider that some people think that the game has a pleasurable
outcome and the children desire to focus on the process, not to the product. Connecting
the ideas, my feeling is that the children and not only they tend to concentrate on the
development of the action but they always have an outcome in mind when they play any
kind of game. I believe that every game is an interactional process between the subject in
question and: the environment, the instructors or the other peers, but has always a goal

32

inside to be accomplished, a mystery to be solved or a treasure to be found. Sometimes, the

purpose of the game is the game itself, because mentally it produces pleasure and we know
that pleasure is addictive.
In a book called The Pleasure Instinct, published in New Jersey and also in Canada
at the same time, the author Gene Wallenstein, tries to discuss about the reason the pleasure
instinct drives us in doing many apparent absolutely normal things for example why we
crave adventure, want chocolate, seek sex or like music. Pleasure, like fear and fire, is a
natural force that humans have sought to harness and control since their beginnings
(Wallenstein, 2002, page 2, mobi edition). The pleasure instinct is an awesome force that
has the ability to drive us to extraordinary lengths (idem). This raises another problem. Is
there a connection between the word play seen as an action, the predictable outcome of
the game, that pay off and of course the reason why people continue to enjoy playing,
even when they are grown-ups? The participants in the play process act in a way or
another driven by the strong power of pleasure. The moment when we seek deeply inside
the pay-off that follows after every game, we discover, under all the coverings, pure and
real pleasure. And there is another aspect of the problem. When children play, they see,
they touch, they sense, they smell. And from here, we can discuss the very importance of
the environment where children play. If the environment is too tight, old, filled with
disinterestedness, the development of the childs brain is affected. Even since they are little
babies infants seek out the best kinds of sensory experiences for promoting normal brain
development in their early years of life (idem, page 4.). These experiences continue up to
the adults twenties. Why? To survive, the synapse between two cells must be activated
consistently. Those synapses that are activated the most (idem, page 17) have advantages
over less active synapses. In short, this is the way our brain wires itself and suffers the
phenomenon called pruning. To cut the story short, outside, in an open air environment,
for example, the senses are all almost to 100% or less, in this way ensuring a normal brain
development. During play, the child walks on the path of socialization. In a classroom
where the teachers talking time is over exceeding and where there are no group or pair
activities, the wiring of the brain is affected. When they play, they learn increasingly
complicated knowledge regarding survival inside a social community. The children must
be adroit at reading the social cues of the group; predicting the consequences of their own
behavior and that of others and all these can be accomplished by playing, inside a
socially/classroom established game or on a playground in the school-yard. We can say the

32

conclusion that play has to be an absolutely necessary brick inside the construction called:
the lesson.

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2nd chapter
The colors of postmodernism nowadays

Citizens who lived in the Middle Ages or in tribal societies could pretty much live
undisturbed, without ever knowing along their lives a different culture with the exception
of their own. If they encounter an individual or a society that was different, then the
strategy was to conquer it military, economically and sexually, in a word, to convert it and
to change it or to kill it.(Powell, 2007, page 11). Today it is very difficult to get through the
day without facing different realities. You turn the TV, or any other electronic device and
you may listen to a group music singing a blend of Irish love songs, Indian raga, heavymetal (idem), or you go out wearing a Hawaiian shirt in order to eat a pizza and to drink a
coke. All the worlds cultures, rituals, races, databanks, myths and musical motifs are
intermixing like a smorgasbord in an earthquake (idem, page 13). The explosion of the
communication technologies has fragmented the world cultures in small ones, and, of
course there has to be explorers to chart this new Postmodern world.
Postmodernism is a literary period that emerged in the fifties, as a reaction to the
values and the dogmas of the previous literary movement called modernism. These periods
cannot be separated into discrete units as centuries or presidential terms. Theres no
escaping the fact that postmodernism is a reaction. (Literary movements for students,
Gale, 2009, page 615)
The Dictionary of Literary and Thematic Terms, appeared in U.S.A. at Facts on File
in 2006 presents succinctly the definition of the word postmodernism Where modernist
literature was characterized by its commitment to the value of a unified, coherent work of
art employing symbol and myth, exhibiting alienation from ordinary life, postmodernism
celebrates incoherence, discontinuity, parody, popular culture end the principle of
metafiction.

(Dictionary, Quinn,

page

330) According

to

Frederic

Jameson,

postmodernism rejects what he calls the depth model and its binary oppositions:
essence vs. appearance, latent vs. manifest content, authenticity vs. inauthenticity, signifier
vs. signifies. (Jameson, The Deconstruction of Expression, page 1078). Though, there is
no outside the text (Derrida) and there are no origins or fixed references. (T.R. Quigley).
In the history of postmodernism, the critics have identified two phases:

32

Its earliest, starting after the second world war and characterized by a tone of play
a delight in language and the intellectual puzzle reflected in works like Vladimir
NabokovsPale Fire (1962) and the poetry of the New York school (Dictionary, Quinn,
page 331). When referring to these unstable moments in time, we cannot overview the war
for independence in Algeria or the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. At the same time, in
1967 more exactly, Derrida presents himself his first paper, Of Grammatology. After due
consideration, I think that the principles of deconstructions are the central core of
postmodernism. Deconstruction sees the western values and not only as a kind of puzzle.
He takes the elements of the western thought and he shifts those elements in settings never
before possible. First, he takes into consideration the opposition between the speech and
language. The philosophies claimed that speech is a natural form of language and has, by
all means a position of primacy. (idem, page 621). He doesnt say that writing is not
secondary, he argues on the position that speech is a recording of a script, so he raises in
discussion what he calls centering. He shows that any text, no matter what kind, can be
read in different ways, and to put it briefly, the meaning of any text is never stable. In his
book, Derrida talks also about the binary oppositions that can be found in western culture.
Taking some disparate elements of a concept and rearranging those elements in a different
way means for me a kind of play.
Let us consider the fact that in this period Kurt Vonnegut published his novels,
Ishmael Reed wrote his poetry, the Marxist critics Fredric Jameson and Terry Eagleton
presented their theories. The second phrase is signaled by Gabriel Garcia Marquezs One
Hundred Years of Solitude where techniques such as magic realism provided a bridge
between experimentalism and the traditional realistic novel (idem).
In a speech at Independence Hall in Philadelphia on July 4, 1994, the former
president of Czechoslovakia Vclav Havel presented, among other references, an
expressive, I would say quite masterly definition of postmodernism: << This state of
mind or of the human world is called postmodernism. For me, a symbol of that state is a
Bedouin mounted on a camel and clad in traditional robes under which he is wearing jeans,
with a transistor radio in his hands and an ad for Coca-Cola on the camels back>>
(Literary movements for students, Gale, 2009, page 616)
Postmodernism is self-conscious, experimental and ironic. When children play, they
tend to experiment all the time. Their play territory is filled with pretense. They explore
unknown or known territories all the time but strangely, they have the same open
environment in front of them, and all these happen because there is a permanent movement

32

between the scenes (real or pretended) and the characters(old or new). That happens
because the goal of the game has to be attended (in many cases pleasure) and the brain
hasto keep wiring itself.
Source:

http://www.students.sbc.edu/wise06/Home.htm

Carl Andres rectangular pile of bricks, Equivalent VIII (1996) can be admired by
anyone at the Tate gallery in London. It is a typical postmodernism object. I think many
people would ask themselves What is the point of this? /Why is it displayed in a
museum? (A short introduction to postmodernism, Oxford university press/2003, page
12).Is this really art or is just a heap of bricks pretending to be art? Of course, viewing
this from a strange point of view, typical for the postmodernist movement, where
everything has a catch and nothing is what seems to be, the institution of the gallery is
what makes is a work of art. Of course, this minimalist piece is a reaction to all the art
forms in the museum, it is an apparatus built to demonstrate our linear judgments
concerning old modernist art-judging principles.
A typical thought about postmodernism tells that its theories lead to nowhere. The
incredulity toward metanarratives evolves into a new incredulity toward all theorizing as
such, so there is a growing awareness that there is something irrational about theory itself.
All these conclusions are mentioned in a web article written by Robert Miller.
(http://home.vicnet.net.au/~exist/pdf/2001_December.pdf). For the author, postmodernism
is a state of quandary wherein we lose our grip on reality, ie, on whatever has been
represented hitherto as being reality by this or that theory. If theory slips, reality slips.
(page 2) So this would appear to be the postmodernist view; we must theorize although
the theorizing lacks legitimacy and can get nowhere. (page 3). If there is a futility in

32

everything, what is the solution then? Robert Miller presents two ways of getting out of the
whirlpool. One of them has connections or can be resembled with playing; the first one
in particular.
But let us consider for a few moments the way the innocent toddlers start playing.
At first, there is all about exploration. Little babies take a feather in their little hands, they
grasp it, they see it with their small eyes, they analyze it and they try to find it a meaning.
They throw the feather upwards and they watch it falling with the eyes sparkling with
happiness. They enjoy every moment, everything is connected with that feather, and there
is an entire world in it. They dont use it; they get out from the moment of life where
everything is used, where everything has a purpose. They see the world in that feather.
They contemplate it. They play with it.
Robert Millers first escaping possibility is silence. He says that first you have to
take a step inward. This inward step back is a detaching from the thought process. In this
detached observation, or passive contemplation, one is no longer simply thinking or
theorizing. Rather, one is rooted outside the thought process, outside the self-discourse or
the text of reality with which you usually engage (idem, page 4). This kind of
contemplation is similar, from my perspective, with the one presented in a previous
paragraph. It is a kind of contemplation that is identical to the love that a Buddhist monk
feels for every living creature that lives on the face of the earth. Its about admiring the
world through the eyes of a baby. Its only a feeling of loving the universe in a grain of
sand (see Blake).
The second aesthetic turn is to return to the text in order to <play> freely with
them for our aesthetic purpose. (idem) These two steps have to develop themselves in this
proper distribution in order to achieve a transformation.

32

3rd Chapter
Canadian literature and the involvement of Margaret Atwood in creating it.

First and foremost, Id like to start with the reason that Ive chosen a protagonist of
the Canadian literature in order to sustain the idea that play can be one of the main driving
forces in the world of literature. Firstly, Ill say that Atwood stroke my inner conscience
with the idea of play. Being a theoretician of the novel, she sends all around ideas
regarding the usefulness of every word, every idea or theme that she uses onwards her
writing. What Margret Atwood managed inside the territory of Canadian literature can be
easily resembled with the literary works (and not only) of George Calinescu inside our
Romanian cultural space. For Atwood, writing without a purpose, without the words
bearing a noble goal has no meaning. She says somewhere she would crash with her feet
any literary production that has a flat essence. As I see it, she explores strange worlds
where imaginary realms intersect with real ones. The social significations have layers that
can be unveiled after a careful scrutiny on the wide biographical/national context. She uses
autobiographical mirrors which she flaps over and over to color them in new and engaging
ways. She acts as a child inside a room where the floor is filled with memories, personal,
collective, individual or universal. It would be an oversight no neglect the wit and humor
of Atwood storytelling, no matter how serious the subject matter is(Companion to
Margaret Atwood, 2006, page 4). Reighard Nischik draws attention to techniques of irony
and humor as she traces Atwood development as a social and political critic (idem, page
22)
Because of her history of colonization, immigration and federation, the literature
productions belonging to Canadian literature in English must be carefully defined.
(Hammill, 2007, page 31). There is a lot of literature pieces written in French too, and in
the languages of Aboriginal groups. These also can be included in what we can call:
Canadian literature.
The first important period when started an inaugural phase of self-determination in
Canadian history and literature can be found in the earlier colonial era, when France and
Britain fought for dominance over territories which would become Canada. The second

32

phase can be traced in the 19th century when Canada was controlled by Britain and
received tides of emigration from Europe. Writers in these two periods were largely
dependent on European aesthetic conventions although some began to experiment with
form and genre in their attempts to engage with North American subject matter.
Confederation, in 1867, marks the start of a new phrase of self-determination in Canadian
history and literature, while in 1951, Massey report into the arts in Canada, which launched
the era of cultural nationalism, may be taken as the next landmark. (Hammill, 2007, page
32). During the second half of the twentieth century, Canadian literary tree blossomed, the
literary productions being extremely prolific and diverse. (idem)
Atwood was born in 1939 in Otawa and grew up in suburban Toronto. As a child
she spends her summer at the family cottage in the wilderness of modern Quebec, where
her father, a forest entomologist, conducted research. For Americans, the fact that she
didnt spend one full year at school until she was 11 wasnt surprising, but for Canadians
was. She says ironically that this was the way Canada was depicted in the glossy
magazines. She fought all along to change this wild west view about her natal country
right from the beginning of her career. She began to write while she was in high school,
contributing poetry, short stories and cartoons to the university newspaper. The love for
literature was due mainly to her parents who were great readers and who, even if they
didnt encouraged her to become a writer they gave her all the necessary support and they
never pressed her to get married.As an undergraduate at the University of Toronto,
Atwood was influenced by one of her teachers, Northorp Frye, who introduced her to the
poetry of William Blake. Impressed with Blakes use of mythological imagery, Atwood
wrote her first volume of poetry, Double Persephone, which was published in 1961. The
following year Atwood completed her A.M. degree at Radcliffe College, Harvard
University. She returned to Toronto in 1963, where she began collaborating with artist
Charles Patcher, who designed and illustrated several volumes of her poetry. In 1964
Atwood moved to Vancouver, where she taught English for a year at the University of
British Columbia and completed her first novel, The Edible Woman.(Thomson-Gale 2004, Feminism in literature, vol5, page 93)
After a year of teaching literature at Sir George Williams University in Montreal,
Atwood moved to Alberta to teach creative writing at the University of Alberta. Her poetry
collection:The circle game (1966) won the Governor Generals Award, Canadas highest
honor. Atwood public visibility increased significantly with the publication of the poetry
collection Power Politics in 1971. Seeking an escape from increasing media attention,

32

Atwood left her teaching position at the University of Toronto to move to a farm in Ontario
with her husband. In 1986 she again received the Governor General Award for the novel
The Handmaids Tale.
These are some scattered information about the prodigious career of an
internationally acclaimed novelist, poet, short story writer essayist, critic and author of
childrens books - Margaret Atwood. (see photo) (idem, page 93)

Source: http://maykan.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/b007tjpb_640_360.jpg
There is something that delineates Atwood from other writers from the literary
establishment. She can be in the same time ironic and in the same time she can have a high
degree of seriousness. She gives the impression that she mocks the reader, in a good way,
showing a kind of writing that at the first glance may be simple, but that in the same time
hides numerous hidden messages. The combination of high seriousness and witty ironic
vision () is the hallmark of Atwood literary production (Companion to Margaret
Atwood, 2006, page 2). There are two leitmotifs that can be unfolded after you read her
works. One of them is the way she interconnects with the nature, with elements of the
environment. One could say that the shade of the wilderness that covers most of her work
is due to the moments when she, as a child, was travelling after her father who used to
collect things from nature because he was engaged in an entomological research. I could
see her literary imagery filled with dark, bleak entities, walking around in a realm where
the roots of the trees were piercing the earth in a savage and eternal way. In Cats eyes

32

there is a persistence of the image of home, which passes through different stages, from
the house where the sleep takes place in the open air, in the sleeping bags to a house
made from red bricks where the sleep takes place at the beginning on the floor. Eleonora
Rao argues that <home> is an extension of the nation and national identity and related to
concepts of belonging and homelessness, dislocation and alienation(Companion to
Margaret Atwood, 2006, page 4). The men belong to the dark side of the moon race in
the way they are depicted. Their character is unraveled page by page and at the end we see
that the inner core is rotten in an unexpected way (see Crake). The women are researchers
of their inner core. Their wish to survive gives them the strength to adapt in a way that they
accept any kind of modification of their personality because arriving at the finish line is
their stronger wish (Handmaid tale, The blind assassin, Oryx). The characters truth in
her novels is seen by the critics as a <shifting construct, or a series of tricks with
mirrors> (idem, page 7).Atwood deconstructs dualities as male/female as she researches
for <a third way of being outside of the either/or alternatives which her system resists>
(idem, page 7).
There are, of course other and other traits of Atwoods work, but these two only
make up what the critics named: her Canadiannes. This is her first leitmotif. Being
surprised that the writers from her own country are ashamed of revealing their origin,
Atwood struggled from the moment she began writing to build an identity for her country
and to change the way the judgments were expressed about the countrys culture. Atwood
remembers about her school days:
We had no Canadian poetry in high school and not much of anything else
Canadian. In the
Ancient

first four years we studied the Greeks and Romans and

Egyptians and the Kings of England, and in the fifth we got Canada

in a dull blue book

that

as mostly about wheat. Once a year a frail old man

[Wilson MacDonald] would turn up and read a poem about a crow; afterward he
would sell his own books autographing them in his thin spidery handwriting.
That was Canadian poetry.
Travels Back, page 31
She had to delineate the cultural traits of Canada and he had to prevent the world
readers to see Canada as a part of North America In this respect, she had to appeal not only
to the criticism from her country, but to the criticism from around the world. She is
considered by the literary world as a mythographer of the Canadian imagination (idem,
page 5).

32

When I did discover Canadian writing it was a tremendously exciting thing

because it meant that the people in the country were writing and not only that, they
were publishing books, then so could I. So then I read a lot of stuff, and I was lucky
enough to know somebody who had an extensive library of Canadian poetry which
I read from the beginning to end, so by the time I was about 21 I had certainly
found my tradition
(note: That someone who had an extensive library of Canadian poetry was Northrop Fryre)
(Companion to Margaret Atwood, 2006, page 14)
She travelled a lot in order to advertise her literary work but not only for that. Her
work as an environmentalist and a promoter of the social equality and of human or of
women right is widely known. Ill wind up by saying that she is, in the same time an
international imaginative writer which can be considered her second leitmotif.

32

4th chapter
Pastiche

The concept of pastiche/ a short presentation

Recent years have been devoted by masters of theory and art to the investigation of
a new genre, noticeable, for years, as puzzling and preeminent and in the same time, as
being a main feature of postmodernism
Today, highly engaging manifestations of the genre minor can be found in
architecture, painting and mixed media installations; in film, literature and performance
modes ranging from the operating to rock event; and supposedly trivial discourses such as
advertising. These are some words from the cover of an exceptionally well-written book,
Pastiche, Cultural memory in Art, Film and literature, written by Ingeborg Hoesterey, and
published in Indiana, USA, by Indiana University press, in 2001. She presents in this
unique research a view on the line of history where she puts the pastiche phenomenon and
analyses theway its meaning evolved and where and in what forms can it be identified into
the artistic practice.
In the introduction of this book there are some dictionary entries that try to
comprise in a whole the multiple meanings of the concept. We will present some of the
most important significations here, in order to establish the way in which pastiche can be
judged from different perspectives. That because we will use the identified features later, in
our research:
Pasticcio A medley of various ingredients, a hotchpotch, a jumble; pastiche to
copy or imitate the style of. Oxford English dictionary (1989)
Pastiche from It. Pasticcio a literary, artistic or musical work that closely and
usually imitates the style of a previous work - Websters Third New Dictionary,
Unabridged
Pastiche pt, art fake Metzler Literaturlexikon
One of the most significant features or practices in postmodernism today is
pastiche. FREDRIC JAMESON (1983)
Pastiche - chopped liver Garrison Keillor (1997) (Ingeborg, 2001, page ix)

32

From the start of her book, we can observe the existence of the twin concepts,
pasticcio and pastiche. Although there are twin concepts, along the decades there was a
slight difference between the two in the sense that pasticcio referred mainly to the art of
painting, in comparison to pastiche that encompassed lots of meanings.
Although we live now in a period where theory is the academic daily bread, it is
surprising that the term pastiche continues to be considered something minor that doesnt
deserve attention. We can add here that the sense of the term is, in general, a negative one.
A passage that has become standard and that caused an empty fieldof theory about the
subject, where only minimalizing judgments grow,is the one mentioned by the prominent
American critic Frederic Jameson. He names the pastiche as blank parody (Ingeborg,
2001, page x). It should me mentioned that the framework of Marxist aestheticism is
dominant in the critics theoretical position. At the other pole there is an opinion that
belongs to the philosopher and the art critic C. Danto. When asked this question: Is it Art,
Is it Good? And Who says so?, Danto supplied this answer: All these days has very little
to do with aesthetic responses; it has more to do with intellectual responses. For Danto,
something qualifies today as a wok of art when it can make a meaningful contribution to
social and artistic conversations (idem, the same page). The upshot is that pastiche,
especially in a postmodernist environment, is considered a medium through which the
author conveys the final meaning. Only this meaning is important. The production and
reception of contemporary visual arts (the ones influenced by pastiche) are embedded in
a larger theoretical form of postmodernisms (Ingeborg, 2001, page xi). Metamorphoses of
the multifaceted genre mineur can be found today in architecture, in commercial art, in
popular music ranging from. to MTV idiom. What it all boils down to is that
postmodernism pastiche is about cultural memory and the merging of horizons past
and present Artists have just been re-examining traditions that modernism eclipsed in the
pursuit of the Shock of the New (idem, the same page). Another point we need to
consider is the historical evolution of the meaning. There is only sporadic scholarship
related with this word. The authorship of the meaning is clouded in a fog of
attributions (idem, page 1). As far it can be seen, it is clear that the term pasticcio is an
older term. Literally, pasticcio derived from the Common Romance pasta, denoted in
early modern Italian a pt of various ingredients, a hodgepodge of meat, vegetables, eggs
and a variety of other possible additions (Battaglia, 1984, page 791). In the wake of
Renaissance, the art scene grabbed paticcio as a metaphor to describe a scene of painting
of questionable quality. (Ingeborg, 2001, page 2). Hoestereys book says that the growing

32

demand for Renaissance art in Rome and Florence in the sixteen century led to a lively
market, which encouraged many average painters to produce covert imitations of High
Renaissance masters (idem). These artists would skillfully combine elements from several
originals into a product of their own making. () This process of amalgamating stylistic
features in a work of fine art was not entirely new (idem). Roman artists had been doing it
too, copying classical, often Greek elements into something new with an ancient identity.
The sixteen century practice of creative yet fraudulent practice may also have flourished in
the context of a certain academic discourse, called The selection theory based on a
legend about a Helena figure made by the ancient Greek painter Zeuxis, which allegedly
combined most perfect features of several different maidens (idem). (see image)

http://thestudyabroadblog.blogspot.ro/2010/01/zaga-academia.html
The assessment of the contemporary art historian suggests the climate of a growing art
appreciation that stimulated the production of pasticcio (), tending toward copy rather
than eclectically blended pasticcio (); brilliantly executed copies () meet with a
different reception. Most of the pastiches were executed in the medium of painting,
although sculpture was not excluded.
By the mid-seventeenth century, (), the Italian scene could look back on a
hundred years of pasticcio production. (Ingeborg, 2001, page 4). It is generally assumed
that the Italian concept travelled to France, where it becomes known as pastiche. There,
the term even enters in the dictionaries, for example this entry, from the dictionary:
Histoire de la langue Franaise, compiled by Ferdinant Brunnot:

32

Quand aux pastiches, ce sont des Tableaux, qui ne sont ni des originaux, ni des
Copies,mais des contrefaons. Leur nom vient de litalien pastici, qui veut dire
Ptez: parce que

de mme que les choses diffrentes qui assaisonnait un Pt

se rduisent a un seul Got; ainsi les faussets qui composent un Pastiche, ne

tenant qu faire unvrit.
1667 is the date when numerous reputable dictionaries, including Le Grand Robert (1985),
included the first time the entry of the word pastiche. The definition, neither original
nor copy established the genre as we know it today (Ingeborg, 2001, page 6). The
meaning of the term then establishes itself as a kind of truth, une verit. This truth walks
away from the old signification, creating itself a kind of unity of the elements. Another
entry from 1765dipicts the pasticcio like that:
but they are made in the sensibility and manner of another painter, with such
artistry that

the most clever have sometimes been deceived

(idem).

This definition focuses on pastiche both as an ingenious, acknowledged copy of

masterwork and as a counterfeit picture.
In his Elments du the littrature of 1787, Marmontel considers the literary pastiche
une imitation affecte de la manire et du style dun crivan. He points later to a more
positive assessment of pastiche: A rare talent is one who is high above the pettiness of that
exercise one calls pastiche, may be able to assimilate to the greatness of a writer, to
penetrate his soul and his genius, be it as an homage or because he wants to write in the
masters genre (Ingeborg, 2001, page 7). Meanwhile, the fluctuation in the semantics
between negative and positive poles was in full swing in the European music community.
(idem, page 8) Twenty-century musicological discourse by artists and critics tended to use
the term pastiche do denote the self-conscious emulation on the part of a major modern
composer of an earlier one or an earlier style. (idem)
Marcel Prousts Pastiches et mlanges yields an important redefinition of the status
of the genre relevant for criticism today. For Proust, pastiche is about reading, about
coming to grips of a writer with the works of revered authors. (idem, page 9). This
meaning constitutes itself an evolved one, leading to the intertextual play that is
literature (idem). What is literature, in fact? An authors text influenced by another
authors text and son on and so forth. A continuous imitation/reaction to what was before
and an ingenious expectation of what will be after. Despite Prousts excogitated view, the
typical understanding of pastiche by literary scholars still adheres to an imitation

32

paradigm. Ill wind up by saying that the slippery quality associated with the pastiche
genre is in part due to the structural profile that was there from the outset: imitation of a
masterwork and the pt of components (the Greek-Latin cento). (Ingeborg, 2001, page
9) Vagueness continues to be part of the genres history because () of so many cultural
perceptions and conceptual traditions. (idem)
A glossary of multiple meanings that live on the contested territory of pastiche: (idem,
page 10)
Adaptation means the modification of artistic material transposed from one genre
to another
Appropriation refers the advent of the citational stye (in painting) more exactly
to the act of borrowing
Bricolage the bricoleur works with what is on hand, and this tinkering can
produce brilliant results.
Capriccio manifests itself as a flight of fantasy and sudden whim that surprises a
conventional setting.
Cento patchwork texts that were produced in antiquity representing borrowings
from famous authors and intended as parodies
Collage In a collage, the physical identity of the different motifs is preserved in
the overall diversity.
Contrefaon adaptation and rewriting of Romance-language Medieval epics into
Middle High German songs;
Fake modern forgeries which are perfect copies for the art market and that lack
the impurity of pastiche fakes.
Farrago a confused mixture, a hodgepodge.
Faux (e.g., Faux Faulkner, faux Baroque) meaning false, untrue it is used
especially in high-style advertising
Imitation a dialogue with the classical tradition conducted by imitating the
author in question
Montage a single image created from parts that are a representational sign without
trace of its composite nature. (space montage: several different plots strands happen
simultaneously in different places )
Palimpsest a term to embrace all works derived from earlier works.

32

Parody a work of literature or another art that imitates an existent piece which is
well known to its readers, viewers or listeners with satirical, critical or polemical intention.
Characteristic features of the work are retained but are imitated with contrastive intention
Plagiarism copyig the language and ideas of another author and presenting them
as ones original work.
Recycling the not necessary creative reuse of traditions, motifs and ways of
seeing.
Refiguration the past form is converted into a sign of the present, while the
present is historicized through its containment within a formal element taken from the past.
Simulacrum - substituting sign of the real for the real itself.
Travesty satire, often comical, which uses earlier, original material but changes
the stylistic level drastically / presupposes a polemical relationship of the later author to the
canonical work engaged.(Ingeborg, 2001, page 10-15).

Pastiche in Atwoods: The handmaids tale.

The Handmaids tale is in the purest sense of word, a dystopia. It depicts the
imaginary world of Gilead, a theocracy built following the laws of so called Christian
environment established on the actual territory of the United States. The main character,
Offred, tells the story while living it, in this way altering the perception of the reader to the
accuracy of the facts which are narrated while it can be sensed that she is transforming
herself. We also refer to the real meaning of the truth because of the used point of view. We
speak here mainly about a first person narrator who tells what she can see and think with
little traces of omniscient narrator. We can see the new society through Offred mind eyes;
therefore we have a limited point of view.
As the type of the novel, we can sincerely say that there are deep roots of the
science fiction rules of writing inside the Handmaids tale. We dont perceive other
worlds, time alterations or different races, but we have the chance of seeing a possible
future human civilization with unexpected settings, a different set of manners and a new
society with strong connections with William Goldings perspectives upon the fate of
humanity.

32

Together with Offred, the main characters of the novel are: the Commander, an old
man, maybe being very close to decrepitude, Serena Joy who was an evangelist and now
she enjoys the advantages of being a Wife in totalitarian society. In the scene appears
Offglen, a fellow of Offfred and a partner of the daily shopping, Nick, who, as a driver,
establishes a path between the inside and the outside world and Moira, who plays against
the regime, in this way establishing herself as an outcast. While Nick is in a sort of way a
flat character, Moira doesnt accept the rules of the new world, sees that there is no point
in fighting the game directly and tries to evade, to conceal herself inside the hate that she
feels and to give a punch whenever she can. Therefore, we can definitely say that she is a
rather round character.
Luke is the former husband of Offred. It is as an icon for her because she has the
energy to continue to struggle because of the memories of him and their daughter gives her
strength to endure and to live, to truly live, not to accept what happens with her.
Professor Pieixoto is a person that discovers Offred tapes. He acts as a layer, altering the
perception of the reader and in this way building the impression that not all the truth was
said or that all what was said was not the truth.
The development of the text reminds us of Samuel Richardson style of writing, the
epistolary novel, so we may find here a sort of pastiche. The development of the events is
rather chronological and logical, of course, being filled with intrusive flashbacks that come
into our view as being filled with important meanings to the main character. Although there
are dialogues, the pace of the novel is a steady one with little dialogue that doesnt speed
up the action.
There is a free indirect speech used all along the novel, but the style is one
belonging to a narrator that wants to have everything in control. Giving impression that we
speak about a detached narrator with a humble tone, sometimes this becomes excited,
ironic, mostly in carnal love scenes, playful, satirical, serious but almost never resentful.
We can find humor and irony all along the novel.
Other examples of pastiche can be found in the occurrences of the passages from
the Bible that explain all the practices that need to have a historical and traditional flavor.
The Bibile is seen throughout the space of the novel as a justification, but itself is locked
and controlled by men, who have the power to understand and interpret, so we can clearly
see here a pastiche that hides itself, a mutiny against the existence of the single truth. All
these things are an apology to the values of postmodernism and an exemplary appreciation
of Derridas theory about the non-existence of a single truth. The forms of the words are

32

changed, which is something ordinary for dystopias leading us to believe that the world
can change if we change the Names first. (e.g. Prayavaganza).

In

contrast

to

the

officially build up ceremonies where the tone is formal and the words have like a purgatory
effect, the obscenities about Aunt Lydia at the Red Centre are seen like a demonstration
that, once the Word itself it set free, it can move mountains. There is a sort of play of
words that takes place between the two worlds, one that is represented by the eye and the
red one, where OffX live. The odds are much in favor of Offred because she plays
scrabble, she masters the Word successfully and in this way she moves the chances in her
favor. Offred retells herself in her story, recreating the person she used to be and reclaiming
herself from Gilead.
Offred is aware that the stories that are told at the Red center have low value of
truth. She realizes that misquotation: from each, says the slogan, according to her ability;
to each according to his needs Recited from what the Handmaids believe is St. Paul three
times a day proves ironic, because, of course, is from Marx. What I mean is that a pastiche
can be identified in this satirical reuse of the quotation.
(http://englishwithmorgan.weebly.com/uploads/7/2/6/5/7265563/storytelling.docx.)

32

5th chapter
David Lodge and the world: Seeing the world through the windows of the Ivory
tower.

Ive chosen to speak about David Lodge because of many reasons. First of all, there
is a strong dose of amusement and hilarity in his works, and, as we all know, playing can
be very joyous sometimes. Besides this, he is, as Atwood, a critic, an establisher of laws,
more exactly. His writing effort leads to the emergence of a new literary genre. His highly
appreciated criticism books prove that he knows the insides of this incredible masonry
which is the world literature. Another point that can be mentioned is the way he intervenes
in the text. He writes his work in a realistic manner, but because of the fact that introduces
in the text a lot of external sources that can be connected to various modes of interpreting
it, he connects his final meanings of his novels to a postmodernist range of vision.
David Lodge, born on 28 January 1935 is an English author and literary critic
widely known all over the world. His best works cover the second half of the 20 th century,
the period when great social and political turmoil. He is best known for his novels that
satirize the academic life, especially for so called Campus Trilogy, made up from:
Changing places: A tale of two campuses (1975), Small World: An Academic romance
(1984), and Nice Work (1988). He is known a co-founder of a new genre in literature
called campus novel together with his colleague, university teacher and literary author
Malcolm Brabury Lots of people from all over the world enjoy reading his novels because
of the comical element that is presented in them altogether with a great deal of parody and
satire. We can find definitions of the campus novel in certain dictionaries, like The
Routledge History of Literature in English:
In Britain, the academic as novelist tends towards comedy []. The setting is often
a

university or college, the characters often academic or writers. The problems,

however

remain the standards concern of love and money, religion (especially in

Lodge, who is arguably the most significant Catholic novelist of his generation), and
success or failure.

Where, in early writing, success was seen in social terms, here de

scope is often reduced to

academic success, with the result that there is a profoundly

comic questioning of the whole

ethos of success, failure, career and private life

extending well beyond the English

university system. Both writers (David Lodge and

Malcolm Bradbury) use their experience

of travel and other cultures to examine the

32

ambivalence of the attitudes of the newly

educated mass readership which has benefit

from the worldwide expansion in education and social awareness. Both are also highly
aware literary critics, particularly strong on

modernism and modern critical theory

(Carter and McRae, 2001, page 513).

(article: Comic features in some of David Lodges novels, Veronica aurov, 2005,
www.wikipedia.com )
Being born in a Roman Catholic family and attending the Catholic
St.Josephs

Academy in Blackhearth influenced his early work. He earned a

Master of Arts in

1959 with a thesis on The Catholic Novel from the Oxford

movement to the

present day. Lodge was brought up as a Catholic and has

described himself as an

agnostic Catholic. Many of his characters are

Catholic and their Catholicism,

and particularly the relationship between

Catholicism and sexuality is a major

theme in his works. The British

Museum Is Falling Down (1965), and How Far Can

You Go? (1980) both

examine the difficulties faced by orthodox Catholics due to

the

prohibition on artificial contraception. Other novels in which

Catholicism

plays an important part include: Small World, Paradise News (1991)

churchs
and

Therapy (1995).(www.wikipedia.com)
Shortly, his early career starts in 1959, when he and his future wife, Mary Frances
Jacob marry both at the age of 24. His comic and self-deprecation words relating to this
event can be found in his novels, too. It seems extraordinary now. I had no prospects, no
job, little money but it never bothered me. We didnt really want any children at the point
they came along, but we got on with it (Lodge, The Practice of Writing, London: Vintage,
2011, page 29-30http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/donotmigrate/3622739/Bad-reviewsspoil-my-lunch.html/)
In 1959-1960 Lodge worked in London as an English teacher for the British
Council. In 1960, he got a job as a lecturer at the University of Birmingham, where he was
preparing his PhD Thesis on the Oxford movement. At Birmingham, Lodge met the
novelist Malcolm Bradbury, who was to become his closest writer friend. In August
1964 Lodge and his family went out to the U.S. He had received a scholarship from the
Harkness Commonwealth Fellowship, which compels the recipient to travel at least 3
months out of 12in the U.S. with a car provided by the company. It is self-evident for a lot
of people the fact that there wonderings brought for Lodge the necessary inspiration to
write about the world as a big campus

32

From 1967 to 1987 he continued his academic career at the University of

Birmingham, becoming Professor of English Literature in 1967, while writing many more
novels and essays. In 1969, he was an Associate Professor at the University of California,
Berkley, a second American experience important for the development of his work, both
theoretical and fictional. Lodge retired from his post at Birmingham to become a full time
writer. He says of his retirement:
"It was the right time to leave. All my former colleagues say: 'You are well out of it.'
There's a weary disillusion to university life now and that's a shame because, when
I was there, there was excitement, a joie de vivre. Now it has become like a machine,
servicing

large numbers of students, and much less attractive and interesting.

(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/donotmigrate/3622739/Bad-reviews-spoil-mylunch.html)
(www.wikipedia.com)

Pastiche in Campus Novel and not only

In my short research about Lodge I would like to talk mainly about the joyous
features of some of his works, especially about its campus novel. I will mention some
situations where comic language is used or comical situations are created. Then I will
mention some elements that have strong connection with the technique that Lodge uses in
composing his works. Finally I will bring on the stage some information regarding the
pastiche that Lodge uses in his campus novels, but not only.
One of the first novels that David Lodge wrote is: The British Museum in Falling
Down (1965). This is a story of a poor Catholic graduate student working on his thesis in
the Reading Room of the British museum. He is very worried that his wife may be
pregnant again, so he becomes involved in a series of adventures that parody the style of
the authors of the modern novels he is studying.(article: Comic features in some of David
Lodges novels, Veronica aurov, 200, page 5) By all means, the strongest aspect which
makes this novel unique is the use of pastiche in it. The novel reflects the reaction of
ordinary Catholics embodied in the ordinary Catholics couples and their problematic
sexual life troubled with the catholic ban on artificial contraception, the so-called Safe
Method. (idem, page 15)

32

Much to his own regret, Adam Appleby awakes every morning with thoughts of all
the unpleasant and stressful aspects of his life "crouched like harpies round his bed...that
he was 25 years of age, and would soon be 26, that he was a post-graduate student
preparing a thesis which he was unlikely to complete in this the third and final year of his
scholarship, that he later was hugely overdrawn, that he was married with three very
young children, that one of them had manifested an alarming rash the previous evening,
that his name was ridiculous, that his leg hurt...that he had forgotten to reserve any books
at the British Museum for this morning's reading, that his leg hurt, that his wife's period
was

three

days

overdue,

and

that

his

leg

hurt."http://www.amywelborn.com/lodge/lodge.html.
Adam tries to solve his desperate financial situation through the edition of
unpublished writings of Egbert Merrymarsh, a Catholic writer and hopes to get some
materials needed for this work from his descendant Mrs. Rottingdean (what a comical use
of words!). When her daughter tries to seduce him in the exchange for the manuscript that
could easily make his career, Adam discovers a shocking willingness to agree on this but in
the end his love for Barbara, his commitment to the Catholic Church and above all the
great fear of another unwanted pregnancy did not allow him to do it(aurov, 2005, page
16). This event, presented, of course, in exacerbated proportions to create hilarious effects
represents a bridge to the outside world, a connection between the self from the novel and
the others, under a mask of mutual understanding and of a willing to develop a close
affinity with the reader.
What marks this novel as a one of a kind is the style that Lodge utilizes. Many of
the texts represent parodies of the popular modern authors. Practically, the main character
strangely lives too close to the literature space; hence the message may be for those that
live inside the Ivory Tower to step out in order to create a sort of equilibrium.
Adam is burdened so much by his problems that he suffers from hallucinations as a
consequence of the ever-present stressful thoughts. (). For example, this scene at the
beginning of the Chapter Three when Adam is asked to show his Reading Room Ticket
because of the annual check and this leads the nervous breakdown and hallucinations:
`Iwanttorenewmyreadingroomticket,' gabbled A. `Over there.' `But I've just been
over

there. He

renew my

sent me to you. ... `What do you want exactly?' he asked. `I want to

Reading Room

Ticket,' said A patiently. `Do you want to renew it? You

mean you have a

ticket already?' ... `May I see it?' ... `It's out of date,' observed the

man. `That's why I

want

to renew it!' A exclaimed. ... `Could I have my reading ticket

32

now?' said A, after

some minutes had passed.

`Over there.' `But you just said you

were responsible for renewing

annual tickets!' protested A. `Ah, but that was when I

was sitting over

the first man. `We've changed places now. We do that

there,' said

from time to time.'

(aurov, 2005, page 20).
This passage represents, of course a pastiche from Kafka. The character is caught at
a juncture. There is a blurry frontier between livings inside the boundaries of a novel,
where all the laws are changed according to some regulations belonging to the Cheshire
Cat, and the real life, where wives get pregnant if you obey the rules of the Catholic
dogma.
Adam lives the live of the heroes of the books he has studied during the preparation
of his thesis. <So all of us, you see, are really enacting events that have already been
written about in some novel or another. Of course, most people dont realize this - they
fondly imagine that their little lives are uniqueJust as well, too, because when you do
tumble to it, the effect is very disturbing> (idem, page 31). This is a very interesting
perspective. Here we sense the powerlessness of an author who is at the crossroads. Still,
he doesnt know that his muse is where he wouldnt expect it to be - inside the circle where
he lives every day, inside the campus. Barbaras final monologue is homage to Molly
Blooms interior monologue in Ulysses. (). The four passages containing one undivided
sentence is definitely imitating Joyces style. It depends on the reader to identify all the
pastiches which can be found inside of the many passages from the book. There are
passages containing pastiches of the example Graham Greene, Ernest Hemingway, Franz
Kafka, D.H. Lawrence, C.P. Snow or Virginia Woolf (idem, page 22)
Changing Places is the first campus novel with serious undercurrents. The subtitle
is A tale of Two Campuses. The title and all the literary allusions that can be found inside
bring into our mind Charles Dickens A tale of Two cities. It tells the story of the sixmonths academic exchange between fictional universities located in Rummidge (modeled
on The University of Birmingham in England), and Plotinus, in the state of Euphoria
(modeled on Berkeley in California). The title of the novel sends us signals regarding the
plot, but can be also perceived as a reference to two types of practice and criticism of the
literary discourse, traditionalism, on one side and modernism, on the other side (Crihana
Alina, 2003, page 1).

32

The two academics that take part in the exchange are both aged 40, but dont have
anything else in common (or they seem so), because of the different academic systems in
their native countries. At the first glance, we have the possibility to observe that Lodges
travelling routes have brought him enough experience to share with the others the different
perspectives that can be found inside two very different socio-cultural spaces.Lodge uses
his experience of travel and other cultures to examine the ambivalence of the attitudes of
the newly educated mass readership which has benefit from a worldwide expansion in
education and social awareness (Barnolipi journal, vol.II, issue V, February 2013, page
76). The English campus was first mentioned in Kingsley Adams Lucky Jim. This sort of
writing brought into public consciousness a new setting a minor English provincial
university - and a new kind of hero, the iconoclastic young man with good academic
qualification but a market lack of sympathy for the traditional claims and attitudes of high
culture (Raileanu, 2011, page2). Why should the campus world mark such an interest for
the readers from all over the world? Because there is always a curiosity what lies in the
Ivory Tower. Ordinary people have always been interested in the way the professors
behave. Because, from the exterior, everybody thinks that this kind of people are behaving
eccentrically, with fixed modes of behavior and with wrong perceptions about what
happens in the real world and how the ordinary workers manage to get around to
living. Lifting up the veil and showing that inside the tower there are the same sort of
passions and the same foggy Gods its a surprise for the reader from outside the system. It
makes the outsiders believe that they can be super-humans if they would like to bother to
have the will do so.
The English participant, Philip Swallow,is a very conventional and conformist
British academic, and somehow in awe of the American way of life. By contrast, the
American, Morris Zapp, is a top-ranking American professor who only agrees to go to
Rummidge because his wife agrees to postpone long-threatened divorce proceedings on
condition that he moves out of the marital home for six months. David Lodge has stated
that the character of Morris Zapp was inspired by the literary critic Stanley Fish.In the
US, Stanley Fish is one of the big punchers of the academic world, a renowned intellectual
showman and top-dollar prof. In Britain, he will always be better known as Morris Zapp,
one of the most memorable characters of David Lodge's campus novels, especially
Changing Places (1975) and Small World (1984). In the first of these, Zapp, a ruthlessly
professional professor from California, sets out to be the world's greatest Jane Austen
expert (though he rather dislikes her writing). In the second, he becomes even more

32

famous and successful by learning all the party tricks of French literary theory. Charming,
intelligent and unstoppable, fuelled by egomania (though Lodge gives him private
anxieties to make him sympathetic), he is openly disdainful of his muddle-headed, shabbily
dressed British counterparts, who are apparently incapable of publishing the necessary
paradigm-shattering books. Lodge was happy for it to be known that Morris Zapp was
Stanley Fish, and one imagines that Fish would have been happy enough too. For Zapp's
real-life counterpart has always been a sharp publicity seeker, and has prospered as an
intellectual controversialist.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2001/aug/04/classics.highereducation
As the exchange progresses, however, both Swallow and Zapp find that they fit in
surprisingly well to their new environments. They even consider to remaining permanently.
The book ends with the two couples convened in a New York hotel room to decide their
fates.
In Changing Places Lodge employ both third person and first person narratives.
Sometimes the narrative moves easily from the mode of the third person omniscient point
of view to a characters own pungent stream of thought. The third chapter is entirely in
epistolary form; while in the fourth chapter excerpts carry the plot forward. The last
chapter of Changing Places is in dramatic form. The novels most obvious features are the
wit and economy of language, and the rapidity and inventiveness with which the story
proceeds. Lodge plays with modes of narrative in a carnivalesque spirit ().The novel is
full of literary references, alluding to Swift, T.S. Elliot, Nietzsche, Mark Twain and Blake
(Barnolipi journal, page 78).
Small World: An Academic Romance (1984) is a humorous campus novel, a
sequel to Changing places.After pondering about it, the critics say that it is Lodges most
conventionally realistic novel since Out of shelter. But the realism is self-consciously
sustained. There is a wealth of intertextual references, mainly to Victorian fiction, and the
book has the oppositional structure of some of his early novels. This book is firmly rooted
in contemporary history. It suggests a carefully considered return to the conventions of
Victorian realism (idem, page 82).The book begins in April, 1979 at a small academic
conference at the University of Rummidge. It is the first conference that Persse
McGarrigle, an innocent young Irishman academic has attended. He teaches at the fictional
University College, Limerick, after having been mistakenly interviewed because the
administration sent the interview invitation to him instead of someone else with the same
last name. Several important characters are introduced. Of course, some of them are reused

32

from the previous book of the sequel, but some are new. We all know Phillip Swallow or
the American professor Morris Zapp. Now we have the chance to know the retired
Cambridge professor Sybil Maiden and the beautiful Angelica Pabst, with whom
McGrrigle falls immediately in love. Much of the rest of the book is his quest to find and
win her.
After the opening in dismal Rummidge, the story takes off, in very sense and
become global. The story moves forward with rapid movement and quick alternations of
scene that characterize Lodges comic fiction. (Barnolipi, 2013, page 80). From the point
of view of containing pastiche elements, Ingeborg Hoesterey and other critics make
reference to the way the novel pastiches Arthurian romance, the quest, the character Perrse
as Parzival, poetry by T.S. Eliot and other pieced of world literature such as Tassos
Gerusalemme liberate. Hoestrey identify cento pastiche as present in this academic novel
(Pastiche, Ingeborg, 2001, page 102).
Persse/Percival is only one of the several Arthurian motifs in Small World. Zapp
falls, almost fatally, into the clutches of Fluvia Morgana, an Italian Marxist Professor of
cultural studies, who is very rich and sexually insatiable; she is a latter-version of Morgan
le Fay of the Arthurian cycles, mentioned in Aristo as Morgana. Arthur Kingfisher, the
distinguished elderl doyen of literary critics, is important, and easily identified with the
Fisher king, familiar to readers of Eliots The Waste Land. Morgana, Kingfisher and several
other seniors academics are all in pursuit of Small Worlds version of the Holy Grail, the
UNESCO Chair of Literary Criticism, a highly paid and prestigious appointment with no
particular duties. (Barnolipi, 2013, page 81)
Nice work (1988) won the Sunday Express Book of Year Award in 1988 and was
also shortlisted for Booker Prize. In 1989 it was made in four-part BBC television series.
The book describes encounters between Robyn Penrose, a feminist university teacher
specializing in the industrial novel and womens writing, and Vic Wilcox, the manager of
an engineering firm. The relationship that develops between the unlikely pair reveals the
weaknesses in each character. Robins academic position is precarious because of the
budget cuts. Vic has to deal with industrial politics at his firm (www.wikipedia.com).
Nice work is not such an amusing book because she lacks some of the carnivalesque
stylistic procedures met in the other book, but it doesnt lose its sense of humor, although
the problems discussed inside seem more complex. The world from the Ivory Tower is
strongly connected with a world belonging to businesses and production. The plot is indeed
a pastiche of the industrial novel, the critics say that it pastiches North and South by

32

Elizabeth Gaskell. Wanting to offer a different kind of perspective, he blocks the irony and
he scrutinizes the interior lives of the characters. In a nutshell, the novel wants itself a
novel filled with ideas that discuss the effects of the industrialization, for example,
building a bridge between the Tower and the capitalist world from outside

32

6th Chapter
Language play or the way we play with words

November 6, 2012 marks 88 years since the world was first introduced to one of the
most famous characters in childrens literature, Winnie-the-Pooh. When We Were Very
Young, A. A. Milnes first collection of childrens poems was published on this day in
1924, and was written for his three-year-old son, Christopher Robin.
When We Were Very Young became a bestseller, but it wasnt until the publication of
Winnie-the-Pooh in 1926, and The House at Pooh Corner in 1928, that Mr Edward Bear,
as Pooh was first called, rose to fame. Over the years, Milnes books have been translated
into many languages, including Latin (Winnie ille Pu is the only book in Latin to have
made the New York Times Best Seller List), and since publication, they have never been
out of print. The popularity of the Winnie-the-Pooh series is down to the characters, and
the way in which Milne depicts them. The language he uses gives each character its own
personality, its own voice, and its own set of unique traits, which have, I believe, ensured
the lasting legacy of Winnie-the-Pooh.
As Christopher Robins favorite toy, Winnie-the-Pooh is the protagonist of the
series, and the subject of many of Milnes poems. He is charmingly dim-witted, and refers
to himself as a Bear of Very Little Brain, and if the situation allows, a Bear of No Brain
at All. That said, he is aware that the other characters are more intelligent, and often thinks
of

them

in

terms

of

what

they

know

and

(http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2012/11/winnie-the-pooh/).

the

words

There

are

they

use.

numerous

examples along these books where the author plays with language. I will remind us only
the way the word elephant is produced: heffalumb (Crystal, 1998, page 29). What is
language play? Why is it produced?
I will try to sum up some details regarding the way we play with language from a
book very dear to me that David Crystal has written in 1998, Language play. Later on, I
will refer to the language that Lodge and Atwood use in their novels taking into account
the inklings from this brilliant book.
In this exhilarating and often hilarious book, David Crystal examines why we
devote so

much time and energy to language games, how professionals make a

career of them, and

how young children instinctively take to them. Crystal makes

32

a simple argument-that since

playing with language is so natural, a natural

way to learn language is to play with it-while

he discusses puns, crosswords,

lipograms, comic alphabets, rhymes, funny voices taken from

popular

culture,

limericks,

anagrams,

scat

singing,

and

dialect
much

and
more.

(http://books.google.ro/books/about/Language_Play.html?
id=yTgi2Kn5VBIC&redir_esc=y)
The language which is used inside Winnie the pooh books, and later in the cartoon
series, and in all the book sequels takes us into a realm where we all notice that is possible
to play with language, to manipulate it. What we all do? We take some linguistic feature,
for example a word, phrase or sentence and we make it to do what does not normally do.
Playing with language has become a habit of everyone. We dont have to master all the
grammatical rules or to know the techniques of the language deeply. We do it for fun.
When we play with language, we break into pieces all the rules regarding the appropriate
laws that a language needs to function. From a clear-headed perspective, what a language
is used for? Of course, everyone would say that with the help of the language, people
communicate. On the communication channels they sent knowledge; concepts, facts,
opinions or emotions. (Crystal, 1998, page 1)
Why we use language? The Oxford dictionary would say that the reason would be
for an expression of though. Chambers says that language represents an expression of
thoughts and feelings. Crystal mentions something about a meeting between two people
that start a conversation about the moment when their cats meet: something dramatic
happens, a cat-frontation that produces a cat-astrophe. Judging from the standards of
comedy, these hilarious words can be judged in a scale starting from pathetic leading to
brilliant. Its absolutely alluring how the change of lines transforms into a ping-pong
punning. But what kind of knowledge is it conveyed through the mentioned words?Really,
nothing.In this sort of verbal interaction, the rules of the literal discourse have been
suspended. Everyone delights in showing off in a verbal way. All these things being
mentioned, we may say that language play- doesnt lack rules. The most striking are the
special ways of speaking (we make mention here about face expressions) to show that a
utterance is intended as a piece of word-play.(Crystal, 1998, page 4)
Also, the part of the word which is the focus of the pun is pronounced more
carefully - the speaker looks smug. There is a never rule too. A pun cannot be repeated in
a single sentence.

32

The pun seems not to be restricted to particular ages, professions or educational

backgrounds. David Crystal specifies here a pun that has been repeated in different
contexts by people of all ages so the puns seem not to be restricted to particular ages,
professions or educational backgrounds. (idem, page 5): the sight of a chair with a single
arm: armful, out of arms way.
To wind up, everyone has been and will be in some kind of play. People who dont
practice another form of language play always favor another: puzzles, panel games of
poetry. It is part of a normal condition to play or to enjoy others in play. We have as
example the car plates in U.S.A. and not only. Because of the fact that there is an arbitrary
number and letter combination, certain funny plates can send us information regarding the
owner. A doctor may have a plate like this: YRUILL, an ophthalmologist IC2020 (idem,
page 7).
Playing with language is so common, that we may affirm that it is a
communicative breakdown or even pathology when people avoid playing with language
(idem, page 8)
Everyone who uses language play may enter on a scale of propensity: some may
master this way of playing but most of us are amateurs. Who can be named in this way? Of
course, the ones that havent had any formal training in doing that. Their language play is
unregulated and archaic and it is always possible that a piece of their words will fall flat.
With amateurs, everyone is equal, once they have acquired adults levels of fluency. This
ability grows gradually we all have had lots of practice with all the ludic practice that we
all went through in childhood. It is understandable that some people are cleverer than
others when it comes to language play, but it is possible to train ourselves to achieve a very
high level of the skill. (idem, page 9). Crystal names the ones that really like playing with
language, those that have developed an obsession from this, linguists. The professionals are
the ones that have made a way of living from mastering the rules of the language and from
using the language skills to the delight of the others. In this small chapter I will speak
about the amateurs because I think most of us are falling in this category, including
students and even some of the teachers.
When it comes to language play, in order to engage ourselves into it, we can alter
every aspect of the language system: the vocabulary, the grammar, the pronunciation and
the writing system. We can play with the vowels and the consonants in the interest to affect
the pitch or to speed any rhythm of speech or the range of the vocal effect. To put the story
short, a piece of language is effective only if we first recognize the rules of the language

32

for what they are and can sense that are being broken. For instance, playing with spelling
has a memorable effect. The aura of childhood surrounding Winnie-the-Pooh is partly
conveyed by such spellings as: picknicks, piglit, missige, rabbits friends, took aker wood.
There is an affected spelling with the names of some characters/titles like: Count Smorlork
or Pickwick papers.(idem, page 10).
It should be pointed out that making a joke relied on people recognizing a missspelling in a word such as diarrhea is pointless because not many people can spell it. Of
course, few people are aware of the contrasts between American and Canadian accent.
(idem, page 11)
From the point of view of creating puns or any kind of language game, Robert
Graves says that any poet has to master the rules of grammar before he attempts to bend
or break them (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_Graves). This is not necessary the
veracity because we all had the chance of observing a conversation that deviates happily
from the stable linguistic grounds. As for the deviation, it is indispensable for one or two
territories to remain stable. If the linguistic game consumes the sound effects, the grammar
and vocabulary tend to be stable (idem).
Some jokes dont bend any kind of linguistic rules and manage to keep their
funniness. It is understandable that there are jokes that have a linguistic basis, for instance
jokes that play with the grammatical structure of a sentence or with the meaning of words:
Teacher: Where are you from, Julie?
Julie: Wales Miss.
Teacher: What part?
Julie: All of me.
(idem, page 13)
Being created to entertain, a joke will make you laugh, of course. But sometimes,
telling jokes may resemble with the participation at a duel. The children, especially, are
hugely enjoying themselves when they read joke books or swap jokes with each-other.
Many jokes have the same origin. They are being reformulated, and so each teller puts its
mark on the joke he says. No one has the time or patience to check through a pair of joke
books to see just how many items are in common. Joke creation is not a specialist or a
professional matter. The ability to see links is part of a normal process of language
learning. We all practice it widely since childhood (idem).

32

Some jokes work if you can hear them internally. We can mention here jokes that
are based on regional and class dialects:
A New Yorker was being shown Trafalgar Square by an upper-class Englishman,
and was impressed by all the pigeons. Gee!, he exclaimed, Look at all dem
boids! Not boids, said the Englishman snootily, you should call them birds.
Well, replied the American, they sure choips like boids. (idem, page 20)
The representation of dialect speech for comic effect has a long history; it is well
illustrated in many nineteen century novels; the most representative author that used this is
Charles Dickens. Not all the effects transcribed in the pages of such books are genuine
dialect features often the transcriptions merely represent what happens when people
speak quickly for instance, the sound at the end of a word that blends with the sound at
the beginning of the next. Lets consider the case of the Australian: Let stalk! (idem, page
23) The humor relies entirely on the ingenuity of the transcribed words and on the
translation equivalent in standard English. This is reflected in: Gorra layt (Midlands,
England) from Have you got a light? There are translations from one dialect into another:
(from English to Australian:)
Baa, baa black sheep
Have you got any wool
Yes, mate!, Too right!
Three bags full
One for the shearer
And one for the boss
And one for your pullover
To stop you getting cross.
Kel Richards Nursery Rhymes (1992) (idem, page 23)
Because I use them extensively when I teach, I would like to mention what Crystal
says about funny sounds or voices. In a conversational language play, this type of voice
may sound funny or stupid. Such sound voices become a kind of vocal trade-mark
which delights friends and infuriates parents. It may become a habit among the members of
any close-knit group. A university lecturer may open the door and greet a colleague with
the well-known: Whats up, doc? (idem, page 25)
Putting on funny voices represents just one aspect of the general fascination of what
is called phonetic play. Why do we like to make noises? Grabbing attention over a great
distance may be one reason. A frog noise may be useless - it could be done instinctively.

32

Why? There is no escaping he fact that children copy the sounds of guns, horns or passing
vehicles and they do that in a realistic way (idem, page 26). If we want to be rude, we
express a raspberry, or a so called Bronx cheer - made by putting the top of the tongue
between tightly closed lips and forcing air out. If we desperately want something from a
person whom we are intimate, we make cute mock puppy whining. (idem, page 27)
Many people will play with voices borrowed from any source that they think that
their listeners will recognize. Characters from Muppets show or Star Wars are usually
chosen. In this case recognition is everything. There can be an anti-effect if we choose an
unfamiliar voice. Adopting bizarre voices seems to be a highly distinctive way of achieving
social report among the members of a group. It could be a simple way of bonding. Some
people or characters are blessed with funny voices, because theirs sound funny and thats
all there is to it. A comedy star like Peter Sellers has a funny voice. The voices behind
characters like Goofy or Scooby doo made them famous.

Playful practice
I play with words in a different way. Ive discovered the appealing that some songs
or poems have for children as starters at the beginning of the lesson and I use those
extensively. They open my classes in a funny way not to mention that the majority of the
songs I usually play with them demand physical actions, too. There is the well-known
series Super simple song which has millions of views on YouTube. And there are other
songs, which are always, for example:Yellow submarine or I am a music man or others. I
will present in the following rows some lines from the songs that the children love so
much:
One little finger (three times), tap tap tap
Put your finger up, put your finger down, put it on your head, HEAD!
In this moment the children usually shout with me and learn the word because we
all point to that specific body part. We continue doing that and, surprisingly, a large amount
of words is repeated and learned in 10 minutes at the beginning of the class. The numbers
are repeated in the same funny way: I usually demand for the children to hold their fists us
with the tips of the fingers facing the body. When we start singing: 1;2;3;4;5;6;7; they have
to raise a finger up each one at the time. The song has different rhythms, a slow one and a

32

fast one, so the fun is always assured. At the higher classes I use songs in fashion, for
example: Ill never be alone. It is a great song which can be used as an ice-breaker but
also, the future verbal form can prove itself useful to teach that specific form or to open a
debate about: Ways of expressing future.
This sort of activity that I do at the beginning it is one that involves everybody, so
by doing it I create a sense of communion between them. It is very engaging to see that, if
one child it doesnt behave properly, if he or she only mumbles or pretend to sing, the
others quarrel him/her and in this way that child feels that he is pushed from behind. I
personally think and Im accompanied by Guy Cook, in his book, Language play, language
learning, published at Oxford University press in 2000 that we tend to overlook the
importance of the language input that the children receive at a very young age, language
that is not necessary used and analyzed at a morphological or syntacticlevel. Numerous
studies have been made on the language that demands a reaction from the child, especially
linguistically. But even in the moment when the children listen carefully, he develops
language abilities. It is my sincere belief that someone can fully learn a language only by
listening to it every day, by watching TV or listening to the radio. I observed that my
students noticed that. When I ask them: How do you know that?They usually reply
something like: I dont know, I probably heard it from TV or from a song? To sum up, what
I want to say is that I always give me enough time in my classes to offer the children the
possibility to listen to a song or to read a poem or to watch a short sequence from a movie.
This thing usually arouses their curiosity and raises their level of knowledge regarding
different types of music genres or different authors. One song which my students had to
listen was: Bed of roses, by Bon Jovi. Surprisingly, some liked it, and some not.
I believe that the stage from the lesson that is usually called: Presentation of the
new words has a great importance and thats why I devised a system for the children to
learn the phonetic symbols using simple memo techniques that proved themselves useful. I
will speak of some symbols and I will demonstrate that Ive transformed in a hilarious way
their seriousness that is not usually easily accepted by students:
The phonetic sound: [] looks like the D3 vitamin
[]looks like a snake that hisses the Romanian letter
[] looks like an egg beaten on its head
[]looks like a regular e which has just has an accident and
everything that can say its an [ ]

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We have to add that when Mr. [t] meets the snake [], he asked :Ce-i acesta?, and that
point on, the moment of the meeting [] souns like ci. Sometimes the students are asked
to ingurgitate the vitamin (D3), which the students sometimes take together with
calcium pills.
Through a simple amusing way even my students from the first grade and not only
are able to memorize letters belonging to the phonetic alphabet and to develop their
pronunciation accordingly. In time, they will automatize the letters and reading a phonetic
pronunciation will become something very easy for the students to do.
At a kindergarten level I usually associate drawing and singing. I start with a line
and continue with another and another and afterwards I ask the children: Who wants to
guess what Ive just drawn here? If they dont guess from the first time, I offer some
clues: Ithas feathers! (I explain what feathers are), It can swim in the water! After they
guess the word I usually sing the word with them using different songs:
It is a duck (three times), Mac (three times), What a nice duck!
There are many videos on Youtube that can be used as a very nice material to
present new items of vocabulary to the children or to reinforce some type of information.
Movement can be used in order to teach the youngsters how to count. Sometimes I dance
with my students by holding our hands up, by moving hands up and down and stepping
forward or backwards and counting in the same time. The famous song: The wheels of the
bus is a very precious tool to teach different items of vocabulary that refer to actions or to
plural of the nouns. It is a song that makes all the class move and be joyful and participant
to the activities.
Sometimes I use drawing to consolidate the previously learnt knowledge. The
discussion with the children can be lead in a way to have strong connections with the
taught material. For example, at the o grade we all listen or watch a film with: Old
McDonald had a farm. To take advantage of this listening moment, I draw afterwards
some of the animals on the blackboard. It is important to draw the images myself because
the children feel the effort and they try to do this type of effort to, they dont have the
tendency to refuse any type of engagement. Afterwards we can use the realia which exist in
every classroom and which can be very useful when we teach about domestic animals, for
example. We can continue learning about the parts of the body when we have a toy animal
in our arms and we may easily continue our activities by impersonating ourselves in
shepherd or farmers.

32

At the end of an activity there are moments when the students, together with their
teacher, have to consolidate the new elements of vocabulary. While doing this, the students
get used with some of the pronunciation and make invaluable connections with old words
and expressions previously learnt. Usually I use repetition as a method, which proves itself
as an old-fashioned and monotonous type of activity while the students get bored easily.
But if I change the tone and the pitch of my voice, things may change very easily. I start to
impersonate different types of characters - acting for example as a robot who takes over the
teachers personality, or as a ghost that scratches the childrens windows during the dark
nights.

8th chapter
Teaching through play

32

In the first chapter, after studying multiple definitions of play, Ive created a
structure of the concept, taking into account the common aspects of play from the
specialized literature. Children play to develop their brain pruning or to be able to cope
with the requirements of society. The belief that play has to occupy a central position in the
learning process is held by the majority of theorists that deal with the problem of creating
the national curriculum. Ive noticed that the commitment to a national curriculum based
on play as the central core is more rhetoric than reality. This thing happens because there
are some unknown things in the teachers practice; lets say a lack of understanding
between the teachers theories about play and the way they apply the theories in reality. It
is unclear how teachers theories influence their practice. (Theaching through play,
Bennet,Wood&Rogers, 1996, page 31)
In the book Teaching through playIve discovered a concept map that represents
examples of teachers opinions about play that are still valuable as a shared discourse by
many of us. The theories represent six key interconnected areas which show how learning,
the nature of play,the role of the teacher,curriculum organization and planning, the
assessment of childrens learning andthe constraints which mediate theories and practices
are defined and linked. But first of all, there,in fig1.there can be found some benefits of
teaching through play, like there are presented in the book with the same name at the page
32
Key area one: Play and learning
There is a common opinion that play is vital to enhance learning especially in the
first years. The teachers theories all evolve around ideas regarding the closeness of the
childrens interest in play or the conditions that it provides to assure a suitable climate for
learning at a higher quality. When the students learn through play, they feel a sense of
ownership because it is obviously that learning is more relevant if it is self-initiated.
Because of the degree of involvement both physically and mentally, children are more
likely to remember what they have done in play. There are no fears and the children wont
erect barriers because play is natural the children are themselves.

32

Fig.1
Learning develops without

difficulties taking into account that play is

developmentally appropriate - childrenknow intuitively what they need and meet those
needs through play. In formal activities children dont have the opportunities to explore
and experiment, but by playing they have it, so learning is enhances. One important aspect
here is connected with discipline. Usually, children experience less frustration in play,
which reduce discipline. Finally, I may add that children cannot fail in play as there are no
rights and wrongsproblems (idem, page 33).
Key area two: Control, ownership and the role of the teacher
The majorities of the teachers share the view that the most valuable aspect of childinitiated activity is in enabling children to make choices and decisions, to exercise control
over their own learning and, as a result, experience a sense of ownership. The majority
of the teachers believe that there is a strong link between ownership with self-confidence,
motivation and the development of self-esteem and a positive self-concept. In my view,
this happens because the children follow their own ideas and through that they are

32

motivated to learn. Through play children learn how to learn, a precursor to later, moreformal learning. The majority of the teachers believe that the best policy when dealing with
play is non-interventionist one, though not as totally lasses-faire. Teachers are seen to have
three main roles in play: provider, observer and participant. (idem, page 37)
The teacher as a provider creates a stimulating environment and ensures that
theres a balance and variety in all the activities that are on offer. What is there to be
mentioned is the lack of planning regarding the possible learning intentions and outcomes
that some activities may have. Some teachers think that planning is not necessary taking
into account the spontaneous and intrinsic nature of play.
The teacher as an observer is considered to be an important tool for assessment and
diagnosis in early childhood education and not only. It provides <a window> to child
mind and allows the teachers to understand <what is going on inside their heads> (idem,
page 38)
The teacher as a participant
Studies have been made which have linked poor quality play to the lack of adult
involvement. There are different sets of opinions regarding the nature of the involvement
of the teachers in the childrens play. Some say that they need to be collaborative this
requiring to get down on the childs level and to enter in his world. By contrast a didactic
role requires to take control and to put the teacher in a responsible role. A supportive
role refers to valuing childrens ideas, listening to the child, offering freedom and
accepting what they can do. In some teachers vision the educator has to be chameleonlike, constantly changing from one role to another, ensuring of the appropriate use of
materials and keeping the play on the right track, so it is not always a totally lasses-faire,
unstructured activity (idem, page 39)
Key area 3: Play in the curriculum, learning intentions and outcomes
The teachers opinions about play and learning are translated into practice through
the structure of curriculum. This obviously includes planning, organization, the learning
environment and intentions for learning. Although playing games presupposes the freedom
of childrens choices, in reality they are dictated by curriculum organization, by the

32

presentation of activities and by provision of resources. There are three main approaches to
planning for play:
1.the high/scope curriculum the children are allowed to plan, carry out their plans and
then review what they have done at the end of the lesson
2 .the teacher selects a range of activities both work and play and rotates the children
through these during the day. This is usually my sort of planning. Rotating the activities
maintains the feeling of freedom and of surprise in the same time.
3. the children are allowed to choose play activities when they finish their work
The key element in this sort of planning is to go with the flow of unplanned developments.
The teachers usually plan for play in a general way, precisely defined outcomes
being out of the question (idem, page 45). At lower levels, I would add. We need to come
up with rigorously planned activities at higher levels. We cannot afford of walking too
much into the moors of freedom play. There are other things that we can do. We can offer
the children the possibility to choose from a range of activities, giving them the right to
choose from them. If they dont like a poem or song we can always change it. When they
discuss freely, the teachers has to act as a resource or prompter or a mischievous
participant, leading the students on the right path. Our freedom as English teachers comes
from the liberty of doing what we want with the condition of using the language.

Key area 4: Assessing and interpreting childrens learning through play.

Because play is related to childrens need and interests, the teachers often say that it
reveals their social, emotional and intellectual development. There is a broad consensus
that play has a revelatory function and is a good way of showing where the children are
(idem, page 46). Play also reveals the unity of childrens thinking which is not
necessarily subject specific and is more in line with their broad, developmental aims. Thus
the teachers view play as providing contexts for assessment where they can ascertain a
childs developmental stage and their readiness to learn in more formal contexts (idem,
the same page). Teachers say that in their play, children reveal behaviors of their inner
needs and interpreting these behaviors enables teachers to gain a full picture of the whole
child.

32

Key area 5: Constraints

When I say that many teachers adopt a traditional way of teaching when they teach
day by day (with the exception of inspections) I think about the perspective which I had at
the beginning of my teaching career but also I remind myself of the discussions which I
often have with my colleagues. Teachers prefer formal activities because there are some
constraints which they have to overcome in order to teach using play. First would be the
demands from the National Curriculum emphasize formal learning and teacher-directed
activities with clearly defined learning intentions. There is also a need for accountability to
parents and other professionals in order to demonstrate curriculum coverage and provide
evidence of outcomes and the childrens level of attainment. (Theaching through play,
Bennet,Wood&Rogers, 1996, page 50)
The low ratio of adults to children and large classes also militate against a playbased curriculum. The teachers talk about the complexities of combining child-initiated
and teacher-initiated activities in these circumstances. They also mention the problem of
appropriate resources, space and the limitations if the environments, both indoors and
outdoors, in which they work. Another mediating factor that remains important is the
distinction which the teachers make between play and work. Both are continuing to be
valued differently when considering the benefits for childrens learning. (idem, page 51)

32

9th chapter
Humanism a place where creativity flourishes and mind is breaking free.

Humanism is a group of philosophies and ethical perspectives which emphasize the

value and agency of human beings, individually and collectively, and generally prefers
individual thought and evidence (rationalism, empiricism) over established doctrine or
faith (fideism). The term humanism can be ambiguously diverse, and there has been a
persistent confusion between several related uses of the term because different intellectual
movements have identified with it over time. In philosophy and social science, humanism
refers to a perspective that affirms some notion of a "human nature" (contrasted with antihumanism). In modern times, many humanist movements have become strongly aligned
with secularism, with the term Humanism often used as a byword for non-theistic beliefs
about ideas such as meaning and purpose, however early humanists were often religious,
such as Ulrich von Hutten who was a strong supporter of Martin Luther and the
Reformation.(from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanism )
Personally, I think that the term has secularist core, but that the religious
connections are not to be pushed aside, but there are to be used only when the other means
of education dont produce an expected result.
Before the word was associated with secularism, German historian and philologist
Georg Voigt used humanism in 1856 to describe the movement that flourished in the Italian
Renaissance to revive classical learning; this definition won wide acceptance. During the
Renaissance period in Western Europe, humanist movements attempted to demonstrate the
benefit of gaining learning from classical, pre-Christian sources in and of themselves, or
for secular ends such as political science and rhetoric. The word "humanist" derives from
the 15th-century Italian term umanista describing a teacher or scholar of classical Greek
and Latin literature and the ethical philosophy behind it, including the approach to the
humanities.
During the French Revolution, and soon after in Germany (by the Left Hegelians),
humanism began to refer to philosophies and morality centred on human kind, without
attention to any notions of the divine. Religious humanism developed as more liberal
religious organisations evolved in more humanistic directions. Religious humanism

32

integrates humanist ethical philosophy with the rituals and beliefs of some religions,
although religious humanism still centres on human needs, interests, and abilities.
As the ethical movement began using the word in the 1930s, the term "humanism"
became increasingly associated with philosophical naturalism, and with secularism and the
secularisation of society. The first Humanist Manifesto, formalised at the University of
Chicago in 1933, identified secular humanism as an ideology that espouses reason, ethics,
and justice, while specifically rejecting supernatural and religious ideas as a basis of
morality and decision-making. The International Humanist and Ethical Union and other
organizations describe it simply as 'Humanism', capitalized and without qualification.
To my mind, humanism is a term that refers itself to a way of perceiving the world
and the nature of human relationships. This term can encompass the technical ability of the
teachers to handle in a better way the connection between the one who is educated and the
educator. This term, as far as I am concerned, bears a strong connection with educating the
youngsters taking into account their moral background based on a real appreciation of the
implication of every choice that a child is making. Why a humanist approach is really
necessary? What happens in todays world, inside the communicative processes that take
place under postmodernist clouds?
In todays world all discourse changed. Increased apathy, in particular among
students towards politics and civic society, all kind of violence in the public space
resulted in a renewed interest in the moral task of education (idem, page 13). Education
was invited to renew its pedagogical task and to compensate challenges. As a consequence
of that, some aims belonging to the citizenship education were formulated. They referred to
active participation and social integration (page 14). We notice nowadays a lack of
common values and norms. Those values and norms need to be defined in order to impose
a god direction to all society. We are very uncertain about the norms that exist today
because we are undecided about their value. Or course, from a postmodern view, this has a
good side, too. Our values today promote such a great personal autonomy in comparison to
the past. Humanism says that there is a perspective upon the way we construct norms
together because we have to live and to accept who we are and to construct social life
and society. A humanism perspective about the society will always focus both on autonomy
and society.
The tension between autonomy and social involvement is the core of humanism
(idem, page 4).A humanist perspective will deal will this problem of lacking the values and
norms. There are different approaches that have to be followed and all for a good end, the

32

society well-being.For Wiel Wengelers, in order to link autonomy and individuality,

everyone, and that including the members of the educational stage

must focus on

meaning making, diversity, bridging and embedding morality development inside the
(Linking autonomy any humanity, Sense publishers 2008, page 4) interactional processes
from our society.
If we talk about norms and values, first we have to decide what those are. Moral
values are options based on the idea what is good and bad. They refer to the concepts of
<good life>. Moral values are not personal preferences based on taste, but are more or less
explicit and fully developed ideas about a person relates to his or her life and social and
natural environment. Moral values are effectively related to behavior - they are personal
choices and are situated on the cultural level. (). Moral values give a personal meaning
to life (Wengelers, 2008, page 10). On the other hand norms are encapsulated in rules.
They are standards which are based on values, and are highly context dependent and have
the attributes of agreements. Norms are developed within every group in society, for
example in a family, a sport team, a school class, a local community, a worldwide
organization, in a country or in the United Nations (idem, the same page). What I want to
add I that the citizenship education is a set of rules that has to do with norms, but for an
active and lived citizenship moral values are important. Moral values give the person a
drive to contribute in making norms or to accept norms (idem, page 17).Wengelers presents
to us 3 clusters of educational objectives that were composed from a set of values by
parents, teachers and students after a 10 years research. These are the objectives:
1. Disciplining, where the objectives include obedience, good manners and selfdiscipline;
2. Autonomy, where the objectives include forming a personal opinion and learning to
handle criticism;
3. Socialconcern, where the objectives include empathy, showing respect for people
with different views and solidarity with others;(Wengelers, 2008, page 15)
It is remarkable that parents, teachers and students alike, indicate that the cluster of
discipline is more easily realized than the cluster of autonomy and social concern. (idem,
page 16)
All these objectives can be connected to different pedagogical and didactical
practices. Methodically, discipline can be accomplished through the transfer of values and
the regulation of behavior, autonomy can be achieved through independent learning and
developing critical thinking in a neutral way, and social concern can be attained through

32

cooperative learning, developing critical thinking through social inquiry and dialogue.
(idem, page 16)
What do the students think about these classifications of values? Students think that
is the teachers task to discipline the students, preferable the other students. (idem, page
17). They all like to develop their autonomy, which is very important for them. Social
involvement is less important to them. They like to broaden their horizon. They want to get
involved in political realities. They have the opinion that teachers should not interfere too
much with their identity development. In their pedagogical relations, teachers must find a
balance between on the one hand providing space and keeping their distance and on the
other hand supporting students in their identity development (idem, page 17).
How can educational practices accomplish the objectives presented above?
Education must not and foremost pay attention to knowledge and skills, but also to the
development of a personal identity for giving meaning to life. Education should
challenge students to think about the values and norms and their own moral development.
Of course, students should relate to this process of reflection to important value systems.
Relevant knowledge must be transmitted, but it is more important that attention is given to
moral development of people: to their values and social norms, their process of giving
meaning to life and their skills for thinking about values, to communicate about them, to
act accordingly and to reflect on this action (idem, page 19).
Education should challenge students to relate to the world around them and to the
global world; to learning how to assess differences and being able to deal with and to
appreciate those differences. Students should be given the opportunity to explore domains
in the curriculum and to further develop their values in these domains. Students develop
their personal values in a dialogue with the values that are woven into the subject matter.
By interacting with other people or with other materials, students develop skills for moral
reasoning, moral action and reflection on that action. Students should perceive education as
a moral practice in which they are challenged to further develop their own vales and
getting engaged with values. Of course, the process of developing norms is dialogical in
the sense for agreements, of course, contradiction will remain but the intention is to give
voice to everybody, to accept differences and to find ways to live together and to jointly
build communities. Whereas dominant educational thinking first emphasized the
knowledge paradigm, now emphasizes using skills to acquire knowledge. The challenge
for education and educational activities is to incorporate values in which students are able

32

to work in a reflective and dialogical way on the developments on values and norms, on
sense making and humanizing their own and the global world (page 20).
We must take into account the fact that the supreme test in education is putting all
theory into practice. The first thing that we have to talk about when referring to practice is
the way the teachers act. All things considered, from my point of view, having a proper
attitude is more important then everything. The teacher has to change the professional
self-image and pedagogical presence and take the challenge of the involved change.
(idem, page35)
Over a period of 2500 years ago, the humanistic tradition has been offering
various models of <humanity at its best> In the classical discourses of the East as well as
of the West, this ideal comprised central virtues of wisdom, justice, humanness, peace and
harmony ().
Nowadays, it seems that there is a wide agreement that humanism consists of a
cosmopolitan worldview and ethical code that posits the enhancement of human
development, well-being and dignity as the ultimate end of all human thought and action. It
further entails a commitment to form a pluralist and just democratic social order (idem,
page 36). The goals of education have changed too. There is a battle that still continues.
Unlike authoritarian educational traditions, which condoned physical or psychological
humiliation of unruly students, humanistic education is above all committed to a social and
intellectual oppression, physical punishment and dishonor. Based on the humanistic stance
that peoples unique dignity lies in their critical reason, moral sensitivity, creative
imagination, autonomous will and unique personality, it is essential for humanistic
education to prioritize the values of human dignity including freedom of thought, moral
autonomy and personal authenticity over () any set of values (idem, page 36).
This change has to begin with the teachers. Their professional identity as well as
their modes of pedagogical presence has to change (idem). In the years that we all live we
can notice an increase of all the possibilities and opportunities to depersonalize and
transform people into fanatic soldiers, submissive workers and addicted consumers (idem,
page 37). The defense against these trends have to be conducted by: educators, academics
and intellectuals who will organize themselves as an elite in service of the society and
undertake to develop immunization to protect the young children. The teachers need to
be real agents of social transformation and <active shapers> of educational messages. All
things considered, instrumental manipulation and ideological normalization have
become the dominant modes of interaction and communication.

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The teachers, in keeping

with their original humanistic ideal have to become real experts in <training the young
in the art of living> (idem, page 37). Educators should establish an infrastructure of
knowledge and values to serve as an overarching frame of reference for the practice of
education. While such educators, who know where theyre coming from and wither they
are heading cultured, autonomous, and professional educators may encounter some
resistance by the establishment, they will also reaffirm their dignity and prestige(idem).
In order for teachers to have an educative effect on their students, they must adopt
unique modes of being, expression and communication (idem, page 37). There are three
qualities that render the teachers presence educative: - the first is interpersonal trust,
which is essential for any educational success; this means winning the students trust,
making them feel that the teachers are on their side, that are truly concerned with their
growth and well-being. Without trust, the teacher is perceived as a stranger, as an
oppressive enemy who must be tolerated, but never listened or truly learned from. When
students trust the teacher as a person when they have faith in her honest caring and
concern for their dignity, growth and well-being an infrastructure is being laid down
will and openness, empathy and mutual respect (including concern by the students for the
teachers own well-being), for a true pedagogical and meaningful educational work..
This trust must not be won through cheap tricks of fraternization or flattery. Its
about a friendly good morning, extra-curricular activities, caring for the student and her
family, noticing changes in appearance or mood, reading body language and facial
gestures, offering help beyond strictly academic tasks - in short, authentic manifestations
of basic humanity and pedagogical caring (idem, page 38).
The second trait is cultural idealism: the awareness, on the one hand, that some
good and precious things are worth getting up in the morning, worth making and effort
to achieve and enjoy. (). Its very easy to lapse into vulgarity and barbarism, into an
egocentric and hedonistic attitude of total contempt for accepted norms of thinking, talking
and behaving. But when true passion is really felt, it suddenly becomes important to find
out what is true, what is the best way to stating a claim which is right, what is really
beautiful, how to build a society and how to take responsibility for my own life and turn it
into something precious, interesting and worthy. (idem, page 39)
These types of states cannot be triggered by <sober thought of scholarly
lectures>. In order to make it happen, the teachers have to be present for their students as
culture <freaks>: to share with them, in words or gestures, their excitement, impressions,
interpretations, anger, enthusiasm, joy, gladness, acts of commission and of omission vis--

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vis cultural creations and social events (idem, page 39). In my opinion, this kind of
enthusiasm may trigger these traits in students.
The third characteristic of the educators personality is practicing what you preach.
In daily and public conduct, the educator personifies the qualities that dignify any person.
Such an educator is most effective educationally when not trying to educate at all: He is
simply there(idem). His personality is revealed best in times of crisis for example
when a student is physically or verbally violent. It is then that the educators personality
comes to light, when he or she manages to steer the situation towards solutions without
great sacrifices, articulating standards of right and wrong, but under no circumstances
demeaning to the teacher or offending the dignity of everyone involved. (idem, page 39).
On the following pages there are some examples of activities that can easily be defined as
humanistic because of their structure, content, and teaching objectives:

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Source: Instant Discussions, Richard MacAndrew, Thomson Heinle, 2003, page 4

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9th chapter
My personal view about teaching humanistically: ideas about posture,
materials and content

My experience as a teacher has brought me restlessness. This is the word I was

looking for because it reflect very well the way teaching influenced me almost ten years. I
became like that because I realized, year by year, semester by semester, and month by
month that I have chosen a job that is similar in a way with sailing on waters that you cant
be sure to know 100%. Teaching represents a challenge that I like taking every day. It
represents hours and minutes which are so exciting and tiring, full of surprises but in the
same time filled with joyful moments when you realize that the diamonds are starting to
shine because of you.
I have chosen to research, to conclude and to express ideas about playing because I
think playing represents the corner stone of my teaching. I embraced humanism as a way
of teaching because I think it became unknowingly, my inner teaching core. In this chapter
I will try to develop and to tell about all my wonderful teaching moments and about
everything I consider I have done to make those moments worthy to be shared as positive
experiences.
First and foremost I would like to talk about the appropriate teaching posture which
in my case was clearly affected about humanism and about the way this doctrine
influenced the world in general and teaching in particular. The way we present ourselves in
front of our students is extremely important. The style of the teacher can influence
decisively the student motivation and the way he/she is willing to search along with you, to
discover, to share with the others and to enjoy the revelation. For me as a teacher it became
very important the way I greet my students. This is far more essential than the way they
greet me. A first impression is essential because it can open the perspectives for a
successful lesson. Smiling, but in the same time preserving a vertical and formal posture is
a correct way to enter in a classroom. It would be advisable to interact with a pupil, no
matter whom and to try to bring that child back from a reverie, or to make him or her not to
frown. A good way of doing this is to ask him if something wrong or a better way is to try
to send to that person non-verbally a message of understanding or another type of face
message, taking account, of course of the situation. I try to surprise my students.

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Sometimes I dont say anything, I keep my face down and when I reach the teachers desk
then I raise up my head with a tricky figure on my face. Many combinations of this kind
can be made. The teacher may involve in solving a problem or another, maybe connected,
for instance with a previous class. A tutors teachers role is quite applicable in this sort of
standpoint.This sort of role doesnt have to be viewed from a technical point of view. The
teacher is a person, who, from my perspective, shares love with his children and uses love
as pedagogy, as it is explained in the book with the same name, written by Tim Loreman,
in 2011. In a classroom where the teacher uses as his main great weapon love, there has to
be kindness and empathy, there has to be loyalty produced by intimacy and bonding and
there has to be forgiveness. Love, as Tim Loreman mentions, involves acceptance and
community. Passion infuses all the aspects of love and it doesnt stand alone, rather it is
evident to which the other elements of loving pedagogy identified above are
enthusiastically pursued (Loreman, 2011, page 14).A great deal has been said in
thousands methodology books about the way the teacher has to interact with his students.
This is extremely important, because the way we get involved in our teaching creates or
not the conditions for the teaching to take place. Scrivener affirms that the educational
process doesnt need to beunder the spell from jug-and-mugexplanation type approach.
Giving people opportunities to do things themselves may be much more important. But
in order to do that you need to create for the students the proper environment for learning
to take place. They need to be willing to get involved. Explanations from the teacher are
important, but language learners, especially, seems not to benefit very much from long
explanations. Scrivener says that classroom working styles may involve standing and
talking to students, but a teaching style that predominantly uses this technique is likely to
be appropriate (Scrivener, Learning Teaching, page 19) Classroom working styles has to
involve a number of different modes and not just an upfront lecture from the teacher.
(idem, the same page). I will present my point of view too because I think its worthy to be
shared and judged as a positive experience. It is understandable that we can communicate
verbally and non-verbally in the classroom.
The students sense the positive energy that a teacher has and most of them are
willing to accept it. The teacher has to be able to exorcise all the negative influences that
have modified his/her temper in a way or another and has to be ready to enter into the
classroom using love as his main pedagogical tool. Using kindness and empathy as
instruments in a pedagogy of love leads to positive change and creates the right
environment for learning. What is kindness? There are many sources that are arguably

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containers of this sort of feeling. The main is the religion. However is seemingly also an
a-religious value with atheist philosophers () citing kindness as being a curative in the
realm of human relationship (Loreman, 2011, page 14). Empathy has been described as
ability to understand the thoughts and feelings of self and others. It is a sophisticated
ability involving attunement, decentering and introspection: an act of thoughtful, heartfelt
imagination (Arnold, 2006, page7).
Having mentioning what kindness is in adopting a pedagogy of love, it is now time
to turn to the pragmatic question of how one might use kindness in a teaching and learning
situation, and what this might look like in practice. I think that most of us assume that we
are always kind in the relation with others. However, there is falseness in this assumption
because Ive noticed that there is a gap between what the people say and what they do in
connection with the way we treat others. For example, someone might push into line at the
supermarket, or not offer an elderly passenger a seat on the bus. While we might argue that
these are the sorts of acts that we would not engage in, clearly people do engage in them,
even though those people presumably also tend to think of themselves as generally kind. If
we accept this argument, then, we can see that in some cases there is a gap between
perceptions of ourselves as kind and the reality of daily actions (idem, page 17) This
happens because we tend to respond to moral situations based on intuition rather than
reasoned moral judgments.Tim Loremans book explores ways in which a person might
bridge the gap between ideals on the one hand and actions on the other. He suggests that a
goal setting and self-directed change might be beneficial in these circumstances. First of
all, one has to contemplate (to be aware) of the differences between ones current self and
ones ideal self. A focus on specific thoughts, actions and events is important here. A
second measure will focus on setting goals for which one expects success. Self-directed
goals tend to produce higher levels of success expectation. It is worth mentioning here that
if the goals are too threatening to the self, they will not be attained. One must feel
comfortable. In this way, changes to the self as a result of the goal pursuit can be
considered and made. Goals must be measurable so that one has a target to aim for, and
also so that one can evaluate the extent of success. Those who retain control of the process
are more likely to be alert to environmental influences and also how changes to behavior
can be enacted. (idem, page 18)
Once the educators are taking the lead in teaching with an attitude of kindness,
attention can then be turned to fostering this kindness in students. A number of strategies
exist, although the great part of the specialized literature is focused almost exclusively on

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developing kindness in younger children. The strategies presented can be extended to all
students, regardless of age, and indeed many of the strategies suggested are directly
applicable to students of all ages. (idem, page 21)
There are two main perspectives worthy of consideration when contemplating how
to produce kindness in students. The first perspective is an environmental perspective, and
the second one is an individual-interactional perspective. The first one involves the
manipulation of an educational environment in ways that facilitate the development of
kindness. One of the most important classroom resources that we can use is literature. This
highlights and supports secure attachment and positive interactionsbetween young
children and their significant adults and highlights kindness serves to build foundations of
trust whereby prosocial behaviors such as sharing, helping, comforting and caring are
acknowledged and valued. (idem, page 21) Literature, of course, is only one type of
resource that can be used to foster kindness. A class hamster, for example, must be cared
for, loved and treated with respect and dignity. Further examples include puppets and
dress-ups that allow children to dress up and role-play acts of kindness. Anyway, teachers
will need to review their classroom resources on a case-by-case base in order to ensure that
ideas about kindness are adequately represented in the materials used by students. (idem)
Classroom arrangements are handy and can be used to promote kindness. For example,
students may be grouped in ways that promote interactions with one another and staff.
Desks in rows can inhibit communication, and a careful consideration of how students can
be seated so as to communicate with one another in healthy and productive ways can be
beneficial in the promotion of kindness (idem, page 22). Of course, not all the seated
arrangements are ideal for all types of activities. Teachers can implement a number of
classroom procedures that place students in situations where they can develop kindness.
One example is that of a peer tutoring. This involves a peer with expertise in a certain area
teaching a peer without that expertise. Aside from the environmental perspective, there is
an individual interactional one. This refers to encouraging kindness in individual students,
and promoting kind acts occurring in the course of every day interactions between
students. An important feature of this approach is what Tim Loreman calls developmental
discipline. This involves students taking an active role in classroom governance, including
the devising of rules and helping one another to follow those rules.
Examples of teacher lead kindness activities:
-Making a kindness list. Led by the teacher, the students generate a list of altruistic events
they have noticed. This might be turned into a class bulletin board updated regularly.

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-Using pictures or videos of kind actions to generate a class or individual discussions on

what is it to be kind.
-Noticing and pointing out instances where students exhibit kindness.
Examples of student lead kindness activities:
-Cooperative group work activities where students must reach a common goal by helping
each-other and each performing a role.
-Self-monitoring of kind acts conducted by themselves and noticing the kindness of others
in concrete ways
-Generation and monitoring of classroom rules through class meetings where fairness and
compassions are emphasized.(idem, page 25)
Whereas kindness can be fostered through a deliberate process of identifying and
addressing gaps between ideal situation and a current reality, empathy is perhaps better
developed through immersion in emphatic contexts in combination with a raised
consciousness as to the value of listening and the impact this can have on our
understanding of, and engagement with, others. Empathy is best developed with others.
Individualism limits our capacity for empathy. It is worth pursuing even if utopian states of
empathy are impossible to achieve. Arnold (2005, page7) describes what he calls
emphatic intelligence, in a following way:
-ability to differentiate self-states from other states; (despite the unity that comes with
advanced states of empathy, two people are, in the end, different entities)
-an ability to engage in reflective and analogic processing to understand and mobilize a
dynamic between thinking and feeling in self and others; (an interaction between thinking
and feeling is essential for learning to occur).
-an ability to be enthusiastic, engaging, actively empathic, intelligently caring and
professional expert;
-a commitment to the well-being and development of self and others; (idem, page 26)
There are four strategies for the development of empathy; these can be uses in creating an
empathic classroom that all the teachers want.
-play; (defined broadly to include engagement in role-play scenarios; problem solving
simulations; cooperative activities, games, and tasks).
-Listening; (one is a compassionate active listening to others in all its many forms, the
second type is listening to oneself in order to uncover our own biases and
misunderstandings).

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-Offering options; (recognizing the helpfulness of being exposed to multiple perspectives

on the same problem or topic).
-Shifting paradigms;(this involves a conscious and deliberate effort to shift thinking in
order to accept the point of view of another)(Loreman, 2011, page 28).
There arent many teachers that cant handle explanations. Almost all of us need to
explain the knowledge. We are explainers, but we dont have to be only that. We have to
get involved, and that means we have to study methodology and we have to try to apply it.
So we need to try to apply in our classes many types of teaching ways. But beside that, we
need to share the power, to share the control. We have to let our students to decide about
their learning. In this way we built in them self-confidence. Its about that type of selfconfidence that immediately changes them. Scrivener says that we need to be enablers.
This refers to that type of teacher that: is confident enough to share control with the
learners, or perhaps to hand it over to them entirely. Decisions made in her classroom may
be often shared and negotiated. In many cases she takes the lead from her students, seeing
herself as someone whose job is to create the conditions that enable the students to learn
for themselves. Sometimes this will involve her in less traditional teaching; she may
become a guide or a counselor, or a resource of information when needed. (Scrivener,
page 22)
The way we dress and act in school and at home, in society or inside our families is
a trademark that allows our success or failure. I deeply believe in simplicity and in a
formal style. I dont think a connection can be made when the teacher has an extravagant
or an expensive and formal way of getting dressed. Then, the gap between the teacher and
his/her students enlarges.In the last few decades, the perception upon teachers changed
dramatically. They are not seen as specials anymore. Their intelligence is not considered
unlimited. They are not seen as sources of information anymore. This was in a past and
represented a power source that the teacher was able to use easily in his advantage. Now
the teacher has to regain his position in class not only as a content expert, a lecturer an
assigner or a grader, but also as an activity designer, as an actor or director, as an active
listener, as a case designer/organizer, as a coach, as a consultant, as a coordinator, as a
discussion facilitator, as a formative evaluator, as a negotiator, as a nondirective facilitator,
as a prescriptive advisor, as a process observer, as a questioner, as a resource manager, as a
resource person or as a role model. A teacher nowadays designs activities such as role
plays, group projects, simulations, triggers tapes and problems for students to solve. A
modern teacher listens to the content and feeling of what students are saying to get

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beneath the surface of the issues they are raising. An appreciated teacher uses dramatic
techniques in class to illustrate points/to set up role-plays to help students simulate the
application or implicationof important content points in class. It is absolutely necessary
to a teacher to directly observe students in various tasks while giving them advice,
encouragement, and feedback to become more effective. A successful teacher works
with students to help them explore appropriate ways to resolve a problem and manages
and oversees multiple student projects and course activities. A skillful teacher uses
discussion to review important information, to stimulate creative and critical thinking
about content or to explore the broader implications of information. A teacher who
considers himself a good evaluator provides students with timely feedback on an ongoing
basis about their strengths and weakness on course assignments and activities. A key point
here is negotiation. A good negotiator explores with students options for how course
requirements, assignments and goals can be achieved.The goal is to find ways to meet
teacher and student needs and to resolve differences. In a modern classroom, the teacher
encourages students to think for themselves, to develop their own solutions, to take
initiative and accept responsibility for their learning A well-trained teacher pulls together
and effective uses available resources to teach a course (projector, laptop, cd-player, TV
set, a network of computers, etc.) Finally, an experienced teacher sets an appropriate
example for ways to think about course content, how to solve problems and to apply skill
(Teaching with style, 2002, page 30-34).
The status of the teacher has fallen in the last decade, so the way we conduct
ourselves socially can help raising awareness about our social preeminence and also may
prove a solid point in transforming the community in a better and healthier one. In consider
myself a student that studies teaching in every one of my classes. I had in the past many
family difficulties; I had a great turmoil because of hard events, but Ive learned that a
positive attitude is fundamental because it is a prerequisite for all the other techniques. In
the past I was focused on external obstacles that prevent them from reaching my goals, but
Ive realized that mainly internal obstacles block my progress such as fears or negativity.
When I found myself in control over the internal obstacles and when I overcame those, I
found better ways to cope with the external ones as well. Every teacher that has this kind of
difficulties has to take a few moments to check of (and write down) a preliminary list of
obstacles that prevents him/her to enjoy work as an educator. (Totally positive teaching,
2004, page 22) I used to believe there was nothing I could do about my emotions. This
kind of thinking happens to many teachers. Ive found that I could look for positives, I

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could create positives through positive actions, I could develop empathy, I could alter my
goals and make them attainable, I could use prayer, meditation and exercise. Not in the last
position is the help that I got it from people I respected. These are some advices from book
dear to my heart: Totally positive teaching which I recommend it to all the ones who want
to become educators or better educators.
The teacher has to be generous but up to a point. His generosity has to be combined
with anoptimisticway of teaching. He has to understand, to forgive but a limit is always
necessary. It is understandable that discipline problems may rise, but they have to be dealt
with quickly using some indispensable tools, like compassion, empathy, optimism,
positivism, altruism and others. WE have to look in the students eyes and we have to say
to them: I know you are a good person, I hope next time you will respect your prestige!
From my discussions with my students, they often told me that enthusiasm is one of the
qualities of their best teacher. One way of teaching and enhancing learning is to have fun.
This attitude has numerous dividends. One of them is that, when students misbehave, the
others from the class make the ones who misbehave to stop talking. This is a way of
meeting mutual needs, because one of the most invaluable requirements that a students has
is the one of having fun. In my teaching years Ive noticed that if I bring passion, burning
interest or talent into the classroom, my classes change and I can arouse children interest in
the subject without problems or difficulties. I am passionate about literature, I have the
ability to sing, lets say nicely and I am also deeply interested in technology, biology, about
UFOs or in history, Ive tried to use all these elements in my classes. I always start my
elementary classes with a song and with some dancing. My students say that I sometimes
mumble songs when I interact with them. I try to connect the information from my lessons
with my own knowledge to make them more attractive. I consider that I have to create a
special bonding with my students. Ive already mentioned how important empathy and
kindness are. Last but not least I will like to mention that keeping our promise is extremely
important because it brings trust between us and our students.
Another important point at issue here is about we organize our materials. It seems
to me that the ones who direct the Romanian education system have lost the connection
with the importance for the students to have approachable and updated textbooks and
auxiliaries. Of course, together with textbooks, educational software is invaluable. It can be
used to enrich childrens knowledge in ways never thought possible before. In this moment
I can say that 99% of the English textbooks that are approved for the elementary and preintermediate levels are updated and out of the context. I wonder why such a textbook, like

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Spark, from Express publishing, or New Headway from Oxford, which is one of the bestsellers around the world arent approved yet.
There is nothing more meaningful inside of a lesson than the use of the blackboard.
The old fashion board has remained in many universities a fundamental instrument of
teaching that can be used in a purposeful way with the newer technological ones. Last but
not least, I want to add that the stage of feed-back from a lesson is extremely important
for the knowledge to be reinforced, to be consolidated.
Beside the materials or the teaching posture, what I what to add is that teaching, the
way we present the knowledge to our kids is fundamental. There are many ways of
teaching vocabulary, reading, speaking or listening that indeed produce the necessary
changes in our childrens intellect. It is extremely important to respect the childrens
language levels and even to teach differentiate, with different tasks specially build
according to the students language mastery. I wouldnt say that the use of mother tongue is
strictly forbidden. Sometimes is necessary from the point of view that it can represent a
way of bonding with the students. Using the mother tongue creates a special kind of
bonding, because words sent to the world dressed in the childrens own language bear also
an invisible emotional bearing.
The element of surprise has to be present in majority of our classes. There is
nothing more involving inside a lesson than a short contest when the students may get
maximum marks if they respond to a special question. The visual aspect of teaching has to
be taken into consideration if we want for our classroom activities to be successful.
Different schemata, pictures or grids, all sorts of flashcards have to be used to maintain the
interest of the children at a high level. If one weighs the pros and the cons he may say that
there are many ways of making the lessons attractive. The thing is to work on this aspect.

10th chapter
The importance of teaching literature

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What Id like to talk about in this chapter focuses on teaching literature and making
students enjoy reading. First of all, I want to express the fact that reading, and especially
reading literature has numerous significations. One of them is connected with reading for
pleasure. When we read for our own enjoyment, the way we judge the text falls onto a nonintentional perspective. This perspective comes and disappears fast from our minds
because we chose that. We are left with the remains that can be usually connected with
colorful feelings; usually simple ones that dont necessary enrich our lives in such a great
amount. As far as I am concerned, we have to add a supplementary dimension to reading.
We can call it reading for a purpose, and one of the strongest one has connection with
ethics. Teaching literature in school, and working on it needs to be connected with the
ethics factor, because, its my contention that literature changes personalities and shapes
characters, and does not only that. It corrects wrong patterns of behavior and offers
multiple perspectives upon many aspects that tend to corrupt the vision that we have about
life in general. This raises another problem. We cannot seize the purpose in reading any
text if we dont engage the students emotionally. Theres no escaping the fact that the
emotional or intellectual drive makes a reader to want to read more. Maryanne Wolf, in
Proust and the squid (HarperCollins, 2007, page 321) emphasis on the cognitive aspects as
she shows how a child develops to become a proficient reader:
As every teacher knows, emotional engagement is often the tipping point between
leaping into the reading life or remaining in a childhood bag where reading is
endured only as a means to other ends. An enormously important influence on the
development of comprehension in childhood is what happens after we remember,
predict and infer: We feel, we identify, and in the process we understand more fully
and cant wait to turn the page.
She continues to speak about emotional engagement at page 133:
After all the letters and decoding rules are learned, after the subterranean life of
words is grasped, after various comprehension processes are beginning to be
deployed, the elicitation of feelings can bring children into a lifelong, head-on love
affair with reading and develop their ability to become fluent comprehending
readers.
We use literaturefor the purpose of making the students speak English. We use it as a tool
because we want to develop their reading capabilities. But children require opportunities

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to explore books emotionally and intellectually, not just use them to learn to read. The
intertwining of emotion and intellect are, in essence, what drive literary engagement.
(Barone, 2011, page 3). Thats why we have to give students time to read for themselves,
or just to read aloud or to re-read certain text just for the fun of reading them. There are
many reasons for reading:
-Reading to learn to read - young children and adults engage in this type of reading. We
have to provide them with books that are suitable for their reading level because we want
them for their reading to be challenging but not tiring, so the input level has to be slightly
above their real level. Personally I provided books to children having a suitable vocabulary
according to their knowledge level, for example from Penguin publishing house.
-I agree with reading for pleasure - because students need to read just for the joy of
entering an imaginative world, provided the books the student read have a suitable content
from an ethical point of view.
-Some read to enjoy vicarious experiences. This reason for reading allows readers to
discover what it was like to participate in a historical event, to live in a different
environment or to survive hardships. Through that, readers are able to take on the persona
of a character to better understand an event beyond their personal realm. It is not possible
for adults or children to live everything directly, so books offer some opportunities. Thats
why, some read to develop background knowledge.
Most of the time we read to understand, and that happens when we read non-fiction texts,
but not only then
-Reading to understand who we are. By exploring how characters solve dilemmas, readers
can reflect how they might respond to similar circumstances and thus come to know
themselves better.
-Reading for ponder. Adults and children read to explore ideas and beliefs - for instance,
the beliefs of a culture or a community to compare them with their own.
-Reading to appreciate. Adults and children read to appreciate the quality of a book or the
art within. They reread a favorite phrase or explore an illustration from the pleasure they
derive from it.
-Reading to engage in conversation. Reading opens opportunities for adults and children to
exchange ideas. They argue about a character or why he or she did something. They judge
his/her action ethically.

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Personally I think that ethics deal with the way we should live our lives. To have a
powerful ethical perspective means to be capable to discern between right and wrong. I
wouldnt say that this is a difficult task, although the philosophers will contradict me right
now. I am convinced that we do the right thing when our decisions affect positively a
greater number of people. I know it is something utopic, but I think that God can be a rolemodel because He does the right thing for everyone. There are hard questions to be
answered when we talk about ethics. For example, how does one balances self-interest
with the concern for others? Under what conditions we are morally responsible and why?
How is ethical understanding influenced by cultural assumptions? by gender? Are moral
claims universal, absolute, pluralistic or relative? How can one mediate between
competing ethical positions? It is obviously that all these questions are difficult and
attractive, but I think also without a clear answer. They need to be studied, they have to be
discussed and they haveto occupy a special shelf in our minds. The special mission of
answering to them comes from a great endeavor and which one can be more suitable then
the one with literature. We must not overlook the fact that literature represents ethical
issues and poses moral questions. It does that through the literary Canon. The literary
canon represents highly appreciated books that academics say that are valuable. These
books and not only these have to be searched throughout and have to be discussed in detail.
Children books can offer unexpected perspectives about live and we have to count on them
to teach our students facts of life, to instruct and raise them mentally. But how do we do
that? In what way does literature represent ethical issues or pose moral questions? Does it
do this through content; for instance, through the events a narrative recounts or through a
narrators commentary? Through transmission of values? Do the moral possibilities reside
in literatures ability to give a reader accessto other minds, cultures or viewpoints? For an
analytical mind, the answers are simple. It is clearly that it poses moral content or moral
questions through content. But the content itself is made from many points of view and its
up to the reader to decide the road that he will walk on. When we teach literature, as
professional readers, we can lead our students on the right tracks. (Teaching literature - a
companion, 2003, page 70-77)
When I was a child and not only then I had the habit of rereading books. Ive
discovered in time that after I had finished with the plot I had the time to watch to other
aspects of the book. I remember my first book taken from my village library. I have read it
many times noticing every time another element that was connected with the pot. It was a
picture book. I learnt by reading it the way the illustrator visualized the story. I pondered

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the meanings shared in the illustrations and I appreciated the connections between the
illustrations and text. However, it took multiple readings of this single book to absorb these
nuances. (Childrens literature in the classroom, 2011, page 2)
When we have reading activities and we study literature texts, its very important to
ask our students to read and reread everything, if three times or four times at least twice.
We dont necessary need to develop the well-known techniques of reading for gist or for
specific information. Sometimes reading is just for the pleasure of it.

We live through play (conclusions)

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What I have discovered in this research is, surprisingly, unexpected. I always

thought that the teachers have to be cold-blooded professionals that needed to apply
techniques in order to have success. BUT this is not so. If we dont descend ourselves at
the level of the children and if we dont look at them emphatically and filled with kindness,
we dont have any chance to truly play with them and to understand their playing because
they will not open up to ourselves as educators. What it all boils down to is the necessity of
applying a methodology connected with love. Loving them is the primordial condition for
truly teaching them and having effective results. I dont necessary speak about the abilities
to conjugate the verbs and to be able to translate: antidisestablishmentarianism. I speak
about enjoying these activities passionately and enthusiastically. We can do anything if we
can produce the change inside their mentalities, inside their perspective on the world. We
can transform the boringness of each activity that we organize with our students. There is
something extraordinary in each word that we write on the blackboard or each poem that
we say to the children. The important aspect is to teach it through play, if it is possible and
to get into contact with that child. If your student doesnt feel your soul, there cannot be
created the ideal conditions for the learning to take place. Everything would transform
itself into a monotonous routine, difficult for the teachers but disastrous for the students.
To sum up, this is what the paper wants to say to the children but also to their
educators: To read, to learn from everything, to play and to care about each-other. It is very
important for each one to realize the true blessing of being into a classroom, of having the
privilege to know the other. When I say these I refer to the classroom as a whole of positive
energy, a sacred place where a piece of God takes shape every time something new is
discovered or discussed..
These are tools from heaven: teaching through play, using a methodology based on
love, using literature in order to educate and enjoying every little aspect from all around us.

It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.
Albert Einstein

Appendix
Lesson plans

32

LESSON PLAN nr.1

TEACHER: Hurjui Viorel
CLASS: 3rd grade
LEVEL: 1st year of study
NO. OF HOURS PER WEEK: 2
NO. OF STUDENTS: 24
TEXTBOOK: I am special, ED&P
DATE: 26.05.2008
LESSON:I cant find my shirt
TOPIC: Clothes
VOCABULARY:

basic clothes

the prepositions of place

get up, wake up, to wear, to brush, to find, to like-to hate

STRUCTURES:

I hate getting up

FUNCTIONS: talking about wearing clothes

AIMS: The students will learn:

Vocabulary related to clothes

Expressing what do they wear in different circumstances

OBJECTIVES
By the end of the lesson, my students will be able to:

differentiate between different items of clothing

show where the things are using the proper prepositions of place

describe somebodys clothes

TEACHING AIDS:

BB

PPT presentation

computer with speakers

ASSUMPTIONS:

32

I assume that students have already learnt the items of clothing and are eager to practice.
ANTICIPATED PROBLEMS:
Students might feel tired because the ending of the school-year approaches
ACTIVITIES
Activity 1: Warmer
Aims:
To create a pleasant atmospere for learning

Procedure

Interaction

Ss greet T

T-Ss

Timing
4

T asks questions:
Who is missing today?

T-Ss

What is your lesson for today?

The teacher gives to the SS some handouts with the lirics of
a song. The teacher asks the SS to sing together the song
You are my sunshine
Ss sing.
Activity 2: Checking homework
Aim:
o

to check the understanding of previous lesson (the items of clothing from the lesson I
cant find my shirt, page 40)

Procedure
T checks everybodys homework. The nicest pieces of drawing

Interaction
T-S

Timing
5

are displayed on a board.

Ss read and check
Activity 3: Reading activity
Aim:
o

to practise reading properly the words connected with clothes

Procedure

Interaction

32

Timing

The teacher asks the SS to pay attention because a presentation

T-Ss

10

with the learnt clothes will follow and theyll have to guess the
name of each piece of clothing.
T reads the text of the exercise 4

S-Ss

T verifies if the SS know the meaning of the word to wear.

T reminds the SS about the present continuous tense.
The SS have to read individually each sentence, to guess the
name of each boy or girl and to correct the sentence

Activity 4: Speaking activity

Aims:
o

to provide further practice of the studied vocabulary

to encourage Ss to participate in a fun-filled activity

Procedure

Interaction

Timing

T-Ss

T ask the SS to describe what are Mickey and Minnie wearing,

that being the task from exercise 5 page

Ss

The T asks the SS to say what is Mickey wearing. Each

sentence is written at the BB. The mistakes hunters will
correct the sentences if necesarry

T-S
Pair work

Activity 5: Writing activity

Aim:
o

to revise using the prepositions of place

to further practise the using of items of clothing

Procedure

Interaction
T-Ss

T asks SS to look at the exercise 7 from page 41. They have to say
where the items of clothing are in the room .

Ss

The T asks the SS to use the colour of the clothes, if necessary.

T-S

Activity 6: Reading for pleasure

Aim:

32

Timing
10

to practise reading

Procedure
T reads the poem from page 41

Interaction
T-Ss

Ss read in turns.

Timing
5

T explains unknown vocabulary.

T-Ss

Activity 7: Assigning homework

Procedure
T asks SS to continue the the description of the image from exercise 7
With as many sentences they can.

Lesson Plan nr.2

GRADE: 8th

32

Interaction
T-Ss

Timing
6

LEVEL: Intermediate, 4th year of study

TEXT BOOK: Snapshot - intermediate, Ed.Longman
NO. OF STUDENTS: 13
TOPIC : Nepal Trek.

LESSON AIMS:

- To develop Ss' ability to use language in real life situations

- To activate language functions: expressing permission (asking for, giving, refusing)
- To develop Ss' listening-comprehension abilities
- To revise and practice grammar: Past Tense Simple vs Present Prefect Tense.
OBJECTIVES: By the end of the lesson the Ss will be able to:
- Use correctly the new words and phrases
- Employ correctly the revised grammar topic
- Create their own situations and deal with new circumstances in a conversation
TIME: 50 min
SKILLS INVOLVED : speaking, writi ng, listening
AIDS : textbook, worksheets, class cassette, pictures
STAGES:
- Activity 1:Warm-up ( 5min)
Teacher's activity: T enters the classroom, greets the Ss, asks them how they are, if there
are any Ss missing. T remembers the task for the day, ex.5 pg.16 from the textbook and
asks Ss to review it quickly to make sure there were no problems with solving it at home. T
corrects the mistakes, if any.

32

Students 'activity: Ss greet the T, answer the questions and in turn read the exercise.
Class management: whole-class activity
Skills: speaking, reading
- Activity 2: (5min)
Teacher's activity: T hands in worksheets where Ss have to use correctly the Past Tense
Simple and Present Prefect Tense by arranging the words in the bubbles.
Students'activity:Ss solve the task.
Class management:whole-class activity
Skills:writing

- Activity 3:Answer the questions! ( 5min )

Teacher's activity: T gives Ss cards with questions in the Past Tense Simple or Present
Perfect Simple and instructs Ss to put down as many sentences as they can. The group with
the most correct sentences wins. T explains that there is a time limit,5 min.

Students activity: In groups, Ss put down the sentences.

Class management: group-work
Skills: writing

- Activity 4: Pre-listening: prediction (5 min )

Teacher's activity: T asks Ss questions about the characters in the picture, their location,
state of mind etc. and without reading the text asks them to imagine what the story may be
about.
Students' activity: Ss answer the questions and try to predict the story based on the image.
Class management: whole-class activity

32

Skills: speaking,

- Activity 5: While listening (7min)

Teacher's activity: T makes groups and gives each a card instructing Ss to write down
phrases that indicate asking for, giving, refusing permission while listening to the tape
together with focusing on the unknown words, if any. T asks Ss to think of a suitable title
for the lesson. T plays the tape.
Students' activity: Ss pay attention and listen to the tape. In groups, Ss solve their task.
Class management: group-work
Skills: listening, writing

- Activity 6:Post listening (5min)

Teacher's activity: T asks Ss questions to check understanding and puts down whatever
unknown words Ss may have difficulties comprehending. If necessary, T plays the tape
again. T instructs Ss to focus on the phrases concerning permission. T elicits answers
concerning the most suitable title.
Students' activity: Ss answer T's questions and solve the task.
Class management: whole-class activity
Skills: speaking, writing

- Activity 7:
Secondary practice: Make your own conversation! (10min)
Teacher's activity: T makes groups and gives each one a picture showing a particular
instance and some prompts to illustrate asking for, giving, refusing permission. T instructs
Ss to make up suitable conversations using the phrases identified in the previous text..
Students' activity: In groups, Ss solve their task. They correct each others mistakes, if any.

32

Class management: group-work

Skills: writing, speaking

- Feedback: (5min)
Teacher's activity: T gives Ss a worksheet in order to further practice the asking for, giving,
refusing permission patterns. Ss have to complete the conversations.
Students' activity: Ss write down the sentences and read them aloud.
Class management: group-work
Skills: writing, reading

- Assigning homework (3min)

T asks Ss to put down similar conversations concerning asking for, giving, refusing
permission ( ex.14/pg.18)

LESSON PLAN nr.3

32

TEACHER: Hurjui Viorel

CLASS: 6rd grade
LEVEL: 3rd year of study
NO. OF HOURS PER WEEK: 2
NO. OF STUDENTS: 19
TEXTBOOK: Snaphot elementary, level 3, ed.Macmillan
DATE: 29.11.2011
LESSON:Fast rewind
TOPIC: Countries and locations/rules/describing your home
VOCABULARY:

Countries/nationalities

Must/mustnt

Can/cant

There is/there are

Prepositions of place
STRUCTURES:

What+do+your+............ +looks+like?

FUNCTIONS: talking about countries and languages

AIMS: The students will consolidate:

Vocabulary related to countries and nationalities

32

OBJECTIVES
By the end of the lesson, my students will be able to:

Use the forms of the verb to be in different communicative situations

Use the affirmative/negative/interrogative forms of the present tense simple in different

contexts

Use the modal verbs can and must in different exercises

Differentiate between can and must taking into account the speakers attitude

TEACHING AIDS:

BB

PPT presentation

computer with speakers

ASSUMPTIONS:
I assume that students arent very eager to find out that they will again have to
remember about any grammar rules, so I have to keep them positive and enthusiastic!
ANTICIPATED PROBLEMS:
Students might feel tired because the semester is about to end in a couple of weeks
ACTIVITIES
Activity 1: Warmer
Aims:

To create a pleasant atmospere for learning

32

Procedure

Interaction

The Ss.. greet the T.

T-Ss

Timing
4

The T asks questions:

Who is missing today?
What was your homework for today?

T-Ss

The teacher asks the SS to sing together the song

walking, walking
Ss sing.
The SS are asked to walk around the room

Activity 2: Checking homework

Aim:
o

to check the understanding of previous lesson (the Ss. had to solve exercises from the
page 19

Procedure

Interaction

T checks everybodys homework.The T. verifies the way the Ss.

T-S

have learned the new vocabulary elements.

The T. asks the Ss. to read the lesson paying attention to the
right pitch and intonation.

Activity 3: Listening activity

32

Timing
8

Aim:
o

to practise listening

Procedure

Interaction

The teacher asks the SS to pay attention and to watch carefully

T-Ss

the text from the page 56. Before listening the first time they
have to keep in mind that they have to make a list at the end
with the names of all the children. Their task before listening

S-Ss

the second time is to make a list to all the countries they listen
to. Their task before listening the third time is to make a list to
all the language names they listen to.
The conclusions are drawn when the T. completes a chart with
all the mentioned elements on the BB.
Tne T. intervenes by presenting the meaning in mother tongue
of some problematic items of vocabulary.

The name

country

language

live ?

of the child

Activity 4: Speaking activity

Aims:
o

Where do they

to provide further practice of the studied vocabulary

32

Timing
10

to encourage Ss to participate in a fun-filled activity

Procedure

Interaction

Timing

The T asks the Ss. to solve exercise 2/3 from page 56/57

T-Ss

They have to ask and answer questions using a wh-?

question together with the interrogative form of the

Ss

present simple.

T-S

*(The Subject is at the third person singular).

Pair work

Activity 5: Writing activity

Aim:
o

to diferentiate beween city and town

to use the different items of vocabulary in different communicative situations

Procedure

Interaction

Teacher asks SS. to read the texts and to solve exercise 3 from

T-Ss

page 56. The SS have to complete the blank squares with the

Ss

letters A, B or C.

T-S

Timing
6

Individual
work

Activity 6: Reading activity

Aim:
o

to practise reading

Procedure

Interaction

T asks the Ss. to pay attention to the reading of the text from

T-Ss

exercise one from page 58. The T elicite the meaning of some

32

Timing
11

words form the context. When reading, they have to pronounce

T-Ss

the words with the proper intonation.

The new items of vocabulary are presented in a funny way.

Activity 7: Assigning homework

Procedure

Interaction

The Ss. have to solve exercise 2 from page 58, by completing the
squares with the right letter.

Lesson Plan nr.4

School: coala cu clasele I-VIII Satu-Mare
Teacher: Hurjui Viorel

32

T-Ss

Timing
5

Class: The fourth grade

Level: the first year of study
Textbook: Way ahead, level 2
No.of SS 19
Skills: Reading, Listening, Speaking, Writing
Unit: Unit 11 Lesson 1 Where do you come from?
The aim of the lesson
To teach about countries and nationalities
To revise can
Objectives:
O1. To ask and answer using the modal verb can in affirmative/negative/interrogative
forms
O2.To use in different communicative situations the interrogative form of the present tense
simple
O3. To read properly using the right pitch and intonation
O4. To introduce himself/herself according to the country of origin and to the native
language

Lesson Stages:
1. Lead-in
2. The review of the previously learnt material

32

3. Consolidation
4. Vocabulary presentation
5. Vocabulary practice
6. Feed-back activity (Homework assignment )

Stages

Time&

Teachers and Students activity

Objectives

Interacti
on

32

Focus

Te

aid

The teacher and the students prepare the

Warmer / Lead-

materials for the lesson. The teacher asks

in

for absences and for the names of the one

who havent written their homework.

greetings

lockstep

The teacher asks the SS. to make sentences

O1

having in mind the actions that are done by

The review of

the teacher.

individu

vocabular

the previously

The teacher sings loudly, speaks quietly,

al work

learnt material

runs quickly and walks slowly.

O2

The Ss. writes the sentences on the BB. The

individu

Bl

mistakes hunters are summoned when

al work

bo

necessary.
The teacher checks the Ss. homework.
The T pays attention and corrects the Ss.
pronunciation according to the rules.
Reading

Consolidation

The SS. are introduced with some exercises

pronunciat

from the software of the textbook. The

ion

exercises deal with the modal verb can

O3

Pairwork

The teacher gives to the SS some working

vocabular

sheets with some exercises in which they

have to use the affirmative, the negative and

the interrogative of the modal verb can.
The SS work individually and in pairs to
O4

solve the exercises

The SS are invited to watch a video from
Real English (www.real-english.com). They
watch the video first, then a request is
introduced to watch it a second time and to

Vocabular

Vocabulary

put an X into the right square from a

presentation

working sheet.

32

Pair-

Reading

The teacher asks the SS to listen to and to

O4

work

watch the lyrics of a song Where do you

listening

Ha

ou

live?, then to use the question to ask the

colleagues where do you they live.
The SS have to answer in a written form to
the following questions.

Th

Vocabulary

They also have to attach a photo to that

co

practice

paper.
Whats your name?

Homework

Where are you from?

group

Where do you live?

work

assignment

Lesson Plan nr.5

School: coala cu clasele I-VIII Satu-Mare
Teacher: Hurjui Viorel

32

Class: The third grade

Level: the first year of study
Textbook: Way ahead
No.of SS 29
Skills: Reading, Listening, Speaking, Writing
Unit: Unit 13, Lesson 2 Please sit down
The aim of the lesson
- to teach about basic actions
Objectives:
O1. To use the vocabulary in different communicative situations
O2. To act accordingly to the given tasks
O3. To differentiate between there is and there are
O4. To read accordingly to the right pitch and intonation
O5. To express time correctly

Lesson Stages:
1. Warmer

32

2. The review of the previously learnt material

3. Vocabulary consolidation
4. Game
5. Writing activity
6. Evaluation
6. Homework assignment

Stages

Time&

Teachers and Students activity

Objectives

Interacti
on

32

Focus

Te

aid

1.Warmer

The T and the SS prepare their materials for

the lesson.
The T asks the children to sing the song:

lockstep

Head and shoulders, the third song from the

Vocabular

SS

received hand-outs . The SS. sing along.

no

The T. writes down the absences.

reading

Te teachers checks for the SSs homework.

T->SS

The mistakes hunters are summoned when

S->S

necessary.
2. The review of
the previously

The teacher uses some flashcards to revise

learnt material

the vocabulary referring to actions

O1
The T acts as a controller and gives

Vocabulary

O2

consolidation

commands the SS to act accordingly to the

learnt verbs.

Individu

actions

al work
The Ss are asked then to walk around the

imperative

classroom and to act as teachers and to give

commands to their colleagues. The actions
are corrected when necessary
lockstep
game

O5

The Ss are asked to play the game Sue says.

The ones who dont act accordingly are out
from the game. The ones who remain
standing are the winners.

Writing activity

individu
The SS are asked to make up sentences
O5

al work

writing

using the images from exercise 1 form page

78. The SS have to write the sentences on
the BB. The mistakes hunters are

Th

summoned when necessary

Evaluation
The SS receive a hand-out. They have to

32

pair-

work in pairs and to choose the right image

work

for exercise 1 and the right sentence for the

second sentence.
They are asked to watch a video material
with deals with expressing time.

Homework

Then the Ss. have to say whats the time

be

assignment

from a clock brought by the teacher. The

clo

SS have to ask others to say what the time

Th

is.

co

As their homework, they have to solve

exercise 1 a 2 from pagnde 79

LESSON PLAN nr. 6

32

TEACHER: Hurjui Viorel

CLASS: 6rd grade
LEVEL: 3rd year of study *(they started learning English from the 4th grade!)
NO. OF HOURS PER WEEK: 2
NO. OF STUDENTS: 19
TEXTBOOK: Snaphot elementary, level 3, ed.Macmillan
DATE: 29.11.2011
LESSON:Fast rewind
TOPIC: Countries and locations/rules/describing your home
VOCABULARY:

Countries/nationalities

Must/mustnt

Can/cant

There is/there are

Prepositions of place
STRUCTURES:

What+do+your+............ +looks+like?

FUNCTIONS: talking about countries and languages

AIMS: The students will consolidate:

Vocabulary related

-to countries and nationalities

OBJECTIVES
By the end of the lesson, my students will be able to:

32

Use the forms of the verb to be in different communicative situations

Use the affirmative/negative/interrogative forms of the present tense simple in different

contexts

Use the modal verbs can and must in different exercises

Differentiate between can and must taking into account the speakers attitude

TEACHING AIDS:

BB

PPT presentation

computer with speakers

ASSUMPTIONS:
I assume that students arent very eager to find out that they will again have to
remember about any grammar rules, so I have to keep them positive and enthusiastic!
ANTICIPATED PROBLEMS:
Students might feel tired because the semester is about to end in a couple of weeks.
ACTIVITIES
Activity 1: Warmer
Aims:

To create a pleasant atmospere for learning

o
Procedure

Interaction

32

Timing

The Ss.. greet the T.

T-Ss

The T asks questions:

Who is missing today?
What was your homework for today?

T-Ss

The teacher asks the SS to sing together the song

Five little monkeys
Ss sing.
The SS are asked to walk around the room.

Activity 2: Checking homework

Aim:
o

to check the understanding of previous lesson (the Ss. had to solve exercises from the
page 19)

Procedure

Interaction

T checks everybodys homework.The T. verifies the way the Ss.

TS

have learned the new vocabulary elements.

S SS

The teacher asks some SS to remind to the class the rules of

Individual

The T.asks then the SS. To solve exercise 4 and 5 as for their

work

knowledge.

Activity 3: Grammar activity

32

Lockstep

the verbs must and can

classroom activity in order to consolitate the previously learnt

Timing

10

Aim:
o

to practice grammar and vocabulary

Procedure

Interaction

The teacher asks the SS to pay attention because they are

T-Ss

going to receive some handouts in which they will have to

solve some exercises regarding the learnt grammar problems.
The teacher asks SS to solve the exercises in 3 groups. *(Wild wolfs/red

S-Ss

dragons and dirty snakes )

Two students are asked to monitor the other students
If some exercises are remained to be solved , they will
be left as a homework. Prizez are given for the team that has the most
correct anwers.

LESSON PLAN nr.7

32

Group work

Timing
25

TEACHER: Hurjui Viorel

CLASS: 7rd grade A/B
LEVEL: 3rd year of study / they have an hour per week
NO. OF HOURS PER WEEK: 1!
NO. OF STUDENTS: 18
TEXTBOOK: English together, level 2, ed.Longman
DATE: 29.11.2011
LESSON:Astronauts
TOPIC: describing things/was/were/past tense/that/What did?
VOCABULARY:

Food

Kitchen tools

What was/who was

STRUCTURES:

What/where.......did?

FUNCTIONS: talking about nature/unique objects

AIMS: The students will consolidate:

Vocabulary related

-to food

OBJECTIVES
By the end of the lesson, my students will be able to:

Use the forms of the verb to be at the past tense in different communicative situations

Use the new elements of the vocabulary in different communicative situations

Use this/that/these/those

Use different irregular verbs in different communicative situations

TEACHING AIDS:

BB

PPT presentation

32

ASSUMPTIONS:
I assume that students arent very eager to find out that they will again they have to read and translate , so I
have to keep them positive and enthusiastic!
ANTICIPATED PROBLEMS:
Students might feel tired because the semester is about to end in a couple of weeks
ACTIVITIES
Activity 1: Warmer
Aims:
o

To create a pleasant atmospere for learning

Procedure

Interaction

The Ss.. greet the T. The T asks questions:

T-Ss

Timing
7

Who is missing today?

What was your homework for today?
The teacher asks the SS to sing together the song

T-Ss

I am a music man
Ss sing.

The SS are asked to walk around the room.

Activity 2: Checking homework

Aim:
o

to check the understanding of previous lesson (the Ss. had to solve exercises8/9 from the
page 16)

Procedure
T. checks everybodys homework.The T. verifies the way the Ss.

Interaction
TS

have learned the new vocabulary elements. For the teacher:

S SS

Timing
8

Lockstep
Individual
work
10
Activity 3. Speaking and listening activity
Procedure

Interaction

32

Timing

The teacher elicits some new words from the lesson. Those words wchich TS
Are quite difficult they are translated by the teacher on the BB.

S SS
5
lockstep

Activity 4. Speaking and vocabulary developing activity

Procedure

Interaction

The teacher gives to the SS. A drawing in which they have to draw

Timing

T-Ss

Whatever they think it is fit to go into a spaceship. The object may be funny.S-Ss
The T. offers the SS. his help and in this way acts as a resourcer.

lockstep

New lesson / listening activity

InteractionTiming
For the teacher:

T-Ss

S-Ss

As their homework the SS are asked to find in their new lesson examples of irregular
verbs and to search for their forms and definitions in the dictionary.

TEACHER

DAY

TIME

32

GRADE

15

HURJUI VIOREL
GRADE

MAY, 25TH , 2011

9.00-9.50

THE SEVENTH

Lesson plan nr. 8

Textbook: Shine 2
Lesson: Ive just been sick (Present Perfect simple)

Stage: Lead in

Aim: By the end of this stage the children will be ready to engage
enthusiastically in the activities requested by the new lesson.
Developed skill: singing; listening
The students are requested to listen to a song from the book: Singing
grammar, song called Josephine. The students are given a handout with the
lyrics. First, they are asked to listen to the song and to read the text. Then, they
are asked to say if they have any problems with the vocabulary. If there are
any, the teacher elicits the meaning of the new words. Then, while the Ss. are
listening the second time, they are also asked to sing the song.
At the end of the activity the teacher asked the Ss. to connect the tense that is
mainly used in the lyrics with the previous grammar lesson. The Ss. recognize
the present perfect.
Interaction: lockstep/individual work

Comments:
Time: . minutes

Stage: The review of the

Aim: By the end of this activity the children will be able to check and correct

previously learnt

the homework received in the previous class.

Developed skill: reading grammar production

material

Method: grammar production

The Ss. are asked to read the way they have solved the exercises they have
received last time as their homework. The forms of the present perfect are
elicited from the Ss. by the teacher. If there are problems with the new words,

32

there will be presented on the Bb.

Comments:
Time: . minutes

bStage: Practice

Aim: By the end of this activity the Ss. will be able to use the present perfect

activity

in new communicative situations.

Developed skill: reading.
Method: grammar production
The Ss. are divided in 4 groups. They are asked to solve exercises 3 and 4 that
remained unsolved from the handout that was given to them last time.
The teacher acts as a resource and helps whenever is necessary.
Interaction: lockstep, group work

Comments:
Time: . minutes

Stage: Grammar

Aim: By the end of this activity the Ss. will be able to use the present in new

activation

communicative situations.
Developed skill: reading/writing
Method: grammar production

production

The Ss. are asked to solve the exercises from the units 20 and 21 (Present
perfect) from the educational software Grammar time 3
Interaction: individual work.
Used materials: a laptop/a projector/speakers

Comments:
Time: . minutes

Stage: Ive just been

Aim: By the end of this activity the Ss. will be able to read the new lesson

sick.

with the right pitch and intonation.

32

Developed skill: reading/listening

Method: vocabulary presentation
Engage

The Ss. are asked to pay attention and to listen carefully the new text: Ive
just been sick. Before listening, they have to be attentive to some guiding
questions:
Who eats fish?
Who has just eaten eggs on toast?
Who feels sick?
Who advises Dave that he should see a doctor?

Study

After they listen to the text and answer to the guiding questions the T. elicits
the meaning of the new words and asks the SS to listen to the text again.
In the end they have to solve the exercise from the end of the lesson if there is
time. If not, the exercise is given as homework.

Activate

Interaction: lockstep, group work.

Comments:
Time: . Minutes

If there is time !

Bibliography:

Primary sources:

Selected Bibliography
Atwood,Margaret.AliasGrace.New York:AnchorBooks, 1996.

32

---.Bodily Harm.TorontoMcClelland,1981.
---.Cat'sEye.New York: Doubleday,1988.
---.LadyOracle.Toronto:McClelland,1979.
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