230217 Children's Literature in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (BS) (WiSe 2017/2018)

In this course, we will explore children’s literature, particularly picture books, comics, storybooks and graphic novels, from various perspectives. First of all, we will define what an authentic text is and discuss advantages and disadvantages of these compared to graded readers. In a next step, we will consider the characteristics of the different types of authentic children’s literature and analyse a number of example texts with regard to certain criteria, in particular their value for intercultural learning. This will also include setting up criteria for choosing suitable texts for EFL teaching. Building up on the more or less theoretical basis, different approaches of using these texts in class, particularly in primary and lower secondary school, will be explored. These will include storytelling, extensive reading projects, book reports and class libraries.

To put all this knowledge into practice, all students will be engaged in a book project at school. This project has to be conducted between the second and the third block day and selected parts of it will be presented on block day three. Information about assignments as well as a list of literature will be discussed in the first session.

Towards the end of this course, we'll have Tyll Zybura and Katharina Pietsch as guest lecturers who will present to us their project on the depiction of children in adult literature (see <http://uni-bielefeld.de/lili/projekte/childhood/>). This will draw the connection to English literary studies and we will discuss whether their findings have implications for the English classroom.