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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:'This is where I am coming from': gangsters, thatched roofs and cheese boys in an undergraduate classroom
Author:Martin, Julia
Year:2003
Periodical:The English Academy Review
Volume:20
Pages:98-114
Language:English
Geographic term:South Africa
Subjects:environment
pedagogy
literary education
social life
External link:https://doi.org/10.1080/10131750385310101
Abstract:'What is it like where you live?' The author used this question many times when beginning courses in what she calls 'environmental literacy' with students in English at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa. She considers it crucial to bring some of the questions and priorities that have characterized the local and international discourses of ecology into the English Studies classroom. In August 2001, she taught in a semester-long English Studies module called 'Travel and the environment'. Her part of the course aimed to facilitate discussion of ecosocial questions and their relevance to students' experience, and to analyse textual representations of these and related concerns through close reading, class discussion and several kinds of writing. The first step was to try and articulate where each member of her class was, literally, coming from. Key aspects of people's built environments were identified with reference to a 1991 Eco-Programme Workshop flyer (waste, housing, transport, fuel, green spaces, etc.). The author reflects on one particular tutorial session, based on extracts from the text of a discussion she reconstructed immediately after the class. Bibliogr., notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract]
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