De Montfort University, Leicester, UK. So fairly urban, but not metropolitan.
Some of the asian female students were strongly active - very focussed
on getting good grades, often asking whether something would be in the
exam or should be mentioned in their essay. I'm really remembering one
or two people here, who probably stick out in my mind because they
conformed so surprisingly to a stereotype.
The rest of the more active students were generally either a) mature,
b) misfit autodidacts or c) both of the above. But possibly I'm
over-remembering the ones I liked best. There were others who
participated who were just normal, well-rounded late-teenagers. But
you know how rare those are.
Some seminars were more lively than others; those dealing with
Victorian fiction were better than those dealing with Poetry, for
example. Almost all of my students hated studying poetry.
Class - it's hard to tell. DMU's 18-21yr-old intake always seemed
fairly uniformly lower middle-class to me, with the odd slightly more
affluent person who'd stuffed up their A-levels and come in through
"clearing". The mature students were much more diverse in terms of
background.
Dominic
On 3/31/06, Mark Weiss <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Dominic: It would help to know where this was (at least what part of
> the country, urban, suburban, rural) and what the demographics were,
> as best you can tell. Did the more active students in any way differ
> in background, age, ethnicity, from their more passive classmates?
>
> Mark
>
> At 10:24 AM 3/31/2006, you wrote:
> >Most of the undergrads I taught English to were female. Some of the
> >groups were pretty passive and quiet. Anybody with something to say
> >could dominate the conversation pretty much by default. Occasionally
> >someone did; it was a blessed relief, since then at least there was
> >some conversation.
> >
> >It's possible that I was just a lousy teacher; I certainly found it
> >difficult to care about the ones who weren't alert and engaged,
> >although occasionally one of them would turn in an absolutely
> >first-rate essay (some people prefer to sit quietly, listen and
> >think...)
> >
> >Dominic
>
--
Shall we be pure or impure? Today
we shall be very pure. It must always
be possible to contain
impurities in a pure way.
--Tarmo Uustalu and Varmo Vene
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