Current Students - Teaching and Learning

Teaching Methods

Lectures

Lectures give you the opportunity to hear and see academics `performing´ their interpretations of the works you are studying. Lectures are less intimate and fluid than other forms of teaching. To benefit from them, it is helpful to have done some preparatory reading. Attendance is strongly recommended at lectures: even if you have not read the texts or authors in question and are not intending to write about them in assessment, lectures are planned as integral parts of your modules, addressing matters related to the period you are studying, the theories you might encounter and the methods you might use.

Seminars

Seminars, consisting usually of 10 to 15 students, are designed to promote discussion and it is essential that you prepare for them properly. Here, in a more sociable ambience, sometimes in response to a short presentation by a student, ideas can be tested rapidly and often sharply interrogated. Problems of interpretation can be vividly exposed. In a good seminar, a wide range of ideas can be discussed and a sense of the complexity of literary texts will emerge. The success of seminars depends not only upon preparation but upon collaboration. It can let down the group not to have read the material for a seminar meeting or to make little or no contribution to the debate. If you are invited to give a presentation, you should remember that it is designed to generate discussion and is different from an essay. You should base it around a small number of clear formulations of a generalising kind or around short analyses of particular parts of a text. Don´t be afraid to start part of the discussion by defining questions or posing problems to which you have not yet found solutions. Giving a good presentation will help you develop confidence and the skills that employers often look for in English graduates. You should also take the opportunity to see your tutors on an individual basis, to discuss your written work, for example, during their Office Hours or at appropriate times during Reading Weeks.

Workshops

Workshops are designed to consolidate the material from lectures, and often also go beyond this. They give you an opportunity to check your understanding of lecture material, and may involve presentations, discussion, and exercises. The same member of staff may be both your lecturer and workshop tutor for a particular module; this tends to happen more often at Levels 2 and 3, as material becomes more specialised. At Level 1, you are more likely to see one member of staff for lectures, and another, or some-times a graduate student or part-time teacher, for your workshop. It is worth knowing, however, that exercises for Level 1 modules are set by the module convenor(s), so that in the first year, all workshop groups will be doing the same work in each week (as indeed will be the case for certain modules at later levels).