Annotated Table of Contents: Organizing a Literary Discussion.

Teaching English, How To.... by Raymond Stopper

Part Five: Literature

Chapter 23. Organizing a Discussion of Literature: How can teachers organize literary discussions in which most of the students participate?

I encountered the model for good literary discussions when I took the Great Books training course, a program that changed forever the way I organized discussions. The key was the requirement that the group leaders, in formulating the questions, could ask only questions about which they themselves had some element of doubt as to the answer. The Great Books Foundation calls its discussion technique "Shared Inquiry" because everyone can participate in the search for answers; no one is designated as the expert, not even the leaders.

However, the Great Books program requires discussion leaders, not the students, to formulate the questions and insists that the literary work should not be introduced, that the students should just begin to read without any preparation. I disagreed with both restrictions. Therefore, I have used the Great Books technique with some modification, and almost everyone becomes involved.