There is a time in every student s life when a text - whether that is a book, a play, a poem, a film or even a picture - that incurs that dreadful, immediate reaction: What on earth am I looking at? More often and not in secondary school, that text is covered with the one word that has been lurking round the corner of every classroom, the name that all pupils fear:
SHAKESPEARE.
And from that moment, you begin an uphill battle towards getting to grips with the most renowned name in the English language. Where do you begin? How on earth do you approach these big names, these famous plays, this alien language? You are forced to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous terminology: iambic pentameter& blank verse& heroic couplet& apotheosis& catharsis. These words are given to you as tools to deploy on the text and unpack the products within. And yet, I m reminded of the time I was given a glue-gun in primary school: I was given a tool that was said to help me, and I ended up burning the skin off my finger with it. (The teacher spent the last half hour of the lesson trying to pick off the solidified glue).
I don t believe there s any point throwing terminology at students, lecturing them on what it means, point it out on page x, and leaving them to work out the rest. I think such teaching can be very informative for note-taking in a class of thirty, and homework tasks can help solidify these terms and the formula. But what about the people that get left behind? The inbetweener that sits between the disenchanted pupils at the back, and the ones leagues ahead at the front, with too many questions to be dealt with individually, but with too much up and atom to seem like an obvious problem to a teacher? For understanding Shakespeare, or Tennyson, or Orwell, or Golding, textbook formula won t do.
Let s keep at it with Shakespeare. The first time I began to do well with those horrid plays was when I began to read it out loud. Studying Othello, my mate Charlie pointed to me and said Miss - Jonny would make a great Iago! He was having a laugh - I hadn t even started reading the play, and we were already three weeks in. But my teacher agreed with Charlie, and for the next six weeks in A-Level, I read every line of Iago in Othello. Talk about being chucked into the deep-end.
Something strange happened. I never knew how to read out loud without stammering, apologising, muttering my way, palms sweating, knees trembling - right up until I was 16, this was the case. Shakespeare was different. You read it aloud, you follow the rhythm of the lines, and you begin to understand - maybe not every word or even every line - but you get the gist, and, more importantly, you begin to perform. Many weeks after we finished Othello, I ended up being chosen to direct and act in our own production of it. I went absolutely crazy being Shakespeare s cunning villain on stage, and later received an A* in the written exam that year. What happened was weird, but simple: I found the fun in Shakespeare.
Okay - I don t expect everyone will find Shakespeare fun. He s an old, dead Elizabethan guy - he doesn t exactly scream relatable. But finding in pleasure and play in reading is not limited to him. With literature, the difference between getting by and standing out is the difference between being passive in class and being active. And I find the best way to make your reading active is to find what you are doing enjoyable, productive, and energising.
When faced with the board of examiners and markers, the approach you have to take on when studying literature, or even history and politics for that matter, is that of performance. Marking criteria and guidelines gives you a part to play - the character of the A* student. Coursework and exams gives you the stage to perform one. And you have to believe that your that student, make it out to your audience that you re not playing a part as much as you are that part. And that takes investment, time, energy, but, more importantly, you need to find it fun. From that comes the vigor and independence that examiners will lap up.
When it comes to tutoring English, I tend to take a practical approach. Reading, analysis, essaying, should be approached as play, as performance, something like showing off. The best readers are the ones that won t be upstaged, that are prepared to go gung-ho, and make every line their own. From Shakespeare to Byron to Orwell, the student that takes the text and injects their all into it - without the fear of being wrong or unwanted or unimportant - will be the one that stands out in class, and will stand out to the examiner.
