What’s the point of learning literature?

Sat, 21 Aug 2010
3 min read
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Picking your brain - or feeding it?

tldr: Study literature if you enjoy reading fiction texts. The benefits – growing intellectually, emotionally and having career options for the future.

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Someone asked me this on Formspring and I thought the answer was worthy of a longer reply.

Just to clarify, I’m using literature and language here generically unless I state otherwise, because I think what I have to say is applicable to any language e.g. French and consequently, the literature of that language i.e. French.

  1. For the higher-order thinking skills of analysis and evaluation in a familiar setting.
    Here, I’m assuming that you like reading and you want to practice thinking critically as a means of personal development. If you don’t, this doesn’t apply to you.

    Now, you can derive these skills from studies in almost any discipline. The advantage of deriving these skills while doing literature is that you get to derive these skills in a domain you are comfortable with and enjoy i.e. fictional texts, drama and/or verse.

    Having said that, I must say that literature consists of a whole range of genres and periods. Not everyone is comfortable in learning higher-order skills in texts from ‘strange’ genres or older periods.

    For example, I only really started understanding what literature was about when I started doing contemporary texts in my last two years of university.

  2. For the humanity!
    All aspects of literature deal with the study of human beings – the ways human beings think, the ways we interact with other people, and our motivations for doing these things.

    I think this is very important in anyone’s education – it provides perspective and (hopefully) reduces chances for conflict between human beings.

    If your question is: But how does it benefit me?, then this is my answer: life is not about you.

    Life is learning about other people which in turn helps you – you learn to reflect on your actions, you learn how to communicate to reduce miscommunication, etc.

    And that helps you be a better person so that you can be a better person to other people.

    Once more, most humanities/social science courses offer this perspective, so choose literature as the vehicle to help your growth only if you like reading fiction texts.

  3. For the future, because that’s what we’re all working toward.
    Besides degrees or careers in education or the arts, the sensitivity to language and language use provides good training for degrees or careers in:

    • law,
    • the media,
    • public relations,
    • advertising and
    • marketing,

    to name a few industries that are not commonly associated with learning literature.

    Why?

    Success in these degrees/careers depend very heavily on communication skills, and one very important aspect of these skills – put simply – is knowing what word to use at a certain point in time and why you have to use that particular word at that point in time instead of another word.

    Again, you don’t have to do literature to gain these skills if you have a good command of the language, so it really boils down to personal preference.

Have a question for me? Head over to my Formspring page to post your query.

Please help my children!

Fri, 2 Jul 2010
1 min read
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Will fight giant monsters for food.

My students are in the midst of carrying out their Project Work assignments and one of their tasks is to gather primary data to support their research.

This is where you can help them out – they need survey respondents from as diverse a range of people as possible to ensure their findings are accurate.

Hence, we’d really appreciate it if you could help us out by completing the following surveys:

Once you’re done with the surveys, please help us spread the word to your friends.

Last but not least, remember that you’re not just a number – if Whitney Houston is anything to go by, you’re helping to shape the future of Singapore with each click of your mouse button!

So don’t wait – participate in their surveys now!

Richard III: The Man and his Ideas.

Sat, 26 Jun 2010
2 min read
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I know some of you are still confused about the characters and the action in the play, so I’m going to share some web resources with you, which I hope will provide you with more guidance in your study of Richard III.

What’s important is that you invest some time and effort into reading all the material including your text. You must also actively re-read your materials and refer to them continuously e.g. refer to the family trees as you read the history. This will help you make the connections which you need to better understand the play.

If you do this diligently and in a disciplined fashion, I guarantee that you will see the academic pay-off sooner than later.

  1. Student Guide to the Play.
    This Insight Text Guide may be a six-page preview but I think it will help to clarify some of your doubts.

  2. A Brief History of Richard III and the War of the Roses.
    I covered this in my introductory lecture, which can be found on Moodle along with notes for revision. If you feel that you need more background context/information, you can find it here:

    • You Can’t Tell the Players without a Scorecard.
      This is a simplified history which is quite different from the action in the play. Please bear this in mind when you read this article.
    • Richard III – A Man and his Times
      Another summarised history, which again is very different from the play we are studying. I’d like you to read this for insight into writing style; the tone of this article differs from the previous as it tries to dissuade the reader from believing the traditional portrayal of Richard III.
  3. Family Trees.
    Last but not least, many family trees which you must refer to when you read the above material or the play, so that you can attempt to map the interactions between each character, or at least differentiate one similarly-named character from the other. A gentle reminder: there is also a Plantagenet Family Tree on p. 262 of your text.