I have been loath to requre memorization, but this thread makes me want to: my own education involved a fair bit of it, which I didn't like but which I now realize helped me develop an ear for poetry in ways previous postings have emphasized.

On a closely related topic: aloud reading.  I use it in class both with play texts and with lyrics for a couple of very practical reasons that have already been touched on.  In my lyric poetry courses I tell the students to read poems aloud to themselves to prepare for class, because it will slow their reading down.  Habits of silent reading that are geared toward culling the meaning or message need to be actively resisted by a reading that attends to the shape of the poem by "hearing" it on the page.  In class, I will often call on people impromptu to read aloud, and the reading is usually not very successful, but that's its usefulness: it alerts me to lines that have not, for whatever reason, been well understood.  From this perspective an imperfect reading need not embarrass the reader, and my students quickly figure that out: what's at stake is comprehension rather than performance.  That said, I can also do some performance coaching by stopping the reader and asking her to begin again slower, or by commenting on a reading that has been especially successful, whether because she didn't rush it, or because she held onto a sentence even when it took her over the end of a line--things other students can emulate when it's their turn to read. 

A strategy I stumbled on that works well for prose is to designate a passage of one or two pages in length (e.g. from the end of Pilgrim's Progress, that wonderful bit where Christian and Hopeful pass over the river) and have the students take turns around the seminar table reading two or three sentences each.  At first I would tell each reader when to stop, but then it occurred to me to have them each decide how much to read--i.e. when to pause and turn the text over to the person whose turn came next.  I found that after we had done this a couple of times in class they were figuring out where to pause--i.e. when they had read a chunk that was syntactically or in some other way shapely and resonant. And the activity was a stimulus toward commentary; it refreshed the text and gave me a way to call on people, as in, "Alice, what do you notice in the part you read about Bunyan's syntax--why is it so easy to read aloud?" or "Moira, you had the hardest bit to read because it's not clear what . . . . means, yes?" or "Sharanya, when Bunyan has Christian say: "'Tis you, 'tis you they wait for, you have been Hopeful ever since I knew you," what is he getting at, and how is he using allegory?"

Jane Hedley
Bryn Mawr College




----- Original Message -----
From: "Susan Oldrieve" <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Wednesday, July 1, 2009 8:43:16 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: Re: Teaching question: memorization or performance?

I must respectfully disagree with Professor Fleming's statement that recitation and  performance are non-critical activities.  Most of the works that we study from the Middle Ages through the 17th century were written to be read out loud, not silently.  They were written for the ear more than for the eye. Hence the vague pronouns and the importance of sound techniques, even in prose works.

Meaning is carried by syntax and sound as well as by figures of speech and allusions.  Reading the texts silently, particularly for many students, causes them to miss subtleties of form that can impact tone and meaning.

Choosing how to read a passage is a critical activity because performance shapes the meaning of a text.  The student or professor or performer must interpret the text in order to make performance choices.  Hence, they have to engage deeply with the purpose, motives, and issues with which the text engages, and become better literary critics in doing so.

Performance also encourages and helps train students in close reading, and develops their sensitivity to language in ways that silent reading cannot.

Many professors read passages to their students, accomplishing this work of criticism for them. Like many of you, I like having the students also engage with the text orally, whether in just reading or in memorizing it, just because I think that deeper learning occurs through active engagement than through modeling.

I'm working with a group of high school sophomore boys this summer, and many of them struggle with reading the text aloud, even though they are good silent readers.  We were talking yesterday about why they need to read aloud (most of them hate it, and those who are good at it hate listening to those who aren't).  Thanks for this discussion, because it will give me more reasons to keep these young men practicing reading their texts aloud.

Susan
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Susan Oldrieve
Professor of English
Baldwin-Wallace College
Berea, Ohio 44017