HOWARD PEASE, PAT, and a BOOK REVIEW à la PAPA DAN

I imagine you have all heard of such recipes as Chicken à la King, Shrimp à la Creole, Blah-Blah à la this and so on. What follows is a description of one of my favourite class recipes, a Book Review à la Papa Dan[ my students’ name for me]. Guaranteed to whet the appetite of even the most reluctant language student, satiate the Ministry of Education’s predilection for language-skill integration, this particular concoction or any adaptation of it and the approach, the method it suggests and upon which is based is a must for the pedagogical cookbook of any language teacher.

Like so many of our teaching instruments this one too has a history; it too underwent quite an evolution over the years. It was in the early 1970’s while doing tons of reading for the development of a mass media course that I chanced upon a letter by a writer of teenage fiction to a young fan of his interested in distinguishing the good from the bad book, that worth reading from that not worth the reading effort. The writer’s name was Howard Pease, the fan’s Pat. I read the letter and as sometimes happens, the light lit… Howard Pease’s letter to Pat is one piece of writing my students became very familiar with during their time in my classroom.

Of all my teaching instruments this became one of my most precious because of its ability to make good readers, good viewers of my students.


AN UNFORTUNATE TRUTH...

In our language classrooms, students are assigned books to read. This is good. Here’s a description of what often happens after, which, unfortunately, is not so good. The teacher comes to class, usually on a Friday, and gives his young charges a content test, usually consisting of 25 or so fill- in- the- blank, underline- the- right- word, multiple- choice type questions, designed to check whether the student has read the novel or not. Note that all the student needs to be successful here is a good memory.

The student is then sent home for the weekend with a photocopy of a “famous” critic’s analysis of the novel’s style, major themes and symbols or he’s asked to purchase a copy of Cole’s Notes or similar reading material to pore over for the weekend.

On Monday the real work begins- at least for the teacher. He comes in armed to the teeth with a briefcase full of notes on the novel under study gleaned from the most scholarly of literary articles -and Cole’s Notes- and begins a chapter- by- chapter study of the novel which sometimes lasts for weeks, depending on how much time he’s got at his disposition, with his students. At the end, he gives them another content test to check if they’ve been developing their listening skills while he’s been developing his speaking ones.

And all over the globe our respective ministries of education are wondering why our young people are having such difficulty developing language skills. He who does learns. It’s as simple as that. If the teacher does all or most of the work he does all or most of the learning.

If by now you’re wondering how I know all of this it’s because in my early years of teaching I did all of this. As the expression goes, “ been there, done that ”. Then, not unlike St-Paul, I fell off my high horse, and the light lit… [Eventually, I hope to be able to share my philosophy of language teaching with you in another piece of writing.]

What I particularly like about Howard Pease’s way of reading fiction is that it puts the responsibility for understanding what one has read exactly where it belongs: in one’s lap. Once a student understands the concept of criteria and Pease’s four criteria for evaluating a piece of fiction, written or film, he can make meaning of anything he reads or views. In effect, he is well on his way to becoming a fine critic himself, all the while developing those language skills language teachers are hired to help him develop.


THIS BEING SAID…

Here’s how I approached a book review à la Papa Dan.

During the first week of school I would tell my students that they were going to have two supplementary books to read during the course for book review purposes, that one of these would be done in the form of an essay, [which I would teach them how to do], the other orally up front of the class for the benefit of all their classmates. This, I would also add, would be the major part of their public speaking program. I would also assure them that when the time came for them to do their major presentation they, like those who had come before them, they too would have the wherewithal to do so successfully.

It was also at this time that I would ask them to start selecting and obtaining approval for and starting to read as book review time would be upon them more quickly than they thought. I would caution them about procrastination and get them under way.Eventually, and only after teaching them how to write the good essay, I would finally get around to showing them what a Book Review à la Papa Dan entailed.

The first thing to do was have them read by themselves Howard Pease’s Letter to Pat. This was followed by a class reading and general discussion of the letter’s contents. A series of units designed to explain and clarify each of Howard Pease’s four criteria for evaluating a piece of fiction was the next item on the classroom agenda. It goes without saying that what a criterion is, what criteria are, was also an integral part of these units.

Though these units took different forms during the years, the one thing they retained was their inherent capacity to involve the students in the tasks at hand. One thing I learned over the years , as aforementioned, was that when I did I learned, that when thy did they learned. So, I tried to design units that would involve them in most of the doing.

Time consuming, you say. Yes, but that is why you have them in your language classroom. Your job is to help them become producers of language, not merely spectators of others’ language productions. Stephen D. Krashen, an American researcher in how language is acquired, puts it this way. One of the great paradoxes of language teaching, he says, is that “language is best taught when it is being used to transmit messages not when it is explicitly taught for conscious learning.”

One of the things I did was have them divide themselves in groups and prepare kits or units for another class that would help students in these learn what a theme is. By the time they had shared these kits with each other and we had discussed them they were ready to evaluate any novel, film, piece of literature, and here I use the term in its broadest sense, according to Howard Pease’s first criterion for so doing, that is, “ find the theme of a story and be able to express it in your own words, the fewer the better.” To Pease’s criterion I would add the words: preferably in one complete sentence.
Once we had gone through the four criteria via such units the students were asked to evaluate any film they had recently seen according to Howard Pease’s four criteria. Then it was on to an evaluation of one of the novels we had read for class study and discussion in similar fashion. By the time we had finished this exercise, they knew Howard Pease and his four criteria for evaluating a novel quite well and were ready to be put to work by themselves. This is when I would refresh their memory regarding their two book reviews.

I would tell them when they had to hand in their written book review. This usually presented no problem as by this time we had undergone all of the steps the production of an essay entailed, from the selection of the subject, through the brainstorm all the way to the conclusion and final draft. We had gone through this process as a class, they had written a composition in groups, and they had also handed in or were working on a major paper- putting into individual practice what we had learned and practiced together.

The oral book review, however, was usually a bit more frightening for them. This is the way I handled it.I would usually ask a student to reproduce on standard 8 x 11 paper the school calendar for the months of our English class. I would then cross out with an X those days which I wanted to reserve for class purposes. I discovered over the years that more than two presentations a week tended to be monotonous so I would usually X out all but two days per week.

Using this calendar, students would choose their own date of presentation by penning in their John Henry on a first-come, first-served basis. As much of that period they required to do their oral book review was theirs- and given the task at hand, most of the time they needed most of it.
Their presentation started off with a brief summary of their book. [If they had chosen to do their presentation on any other book than a novel they chose other evaluation criteria with my help. Some of Pease’s evaluation criteria do not easily lend themselves to the appraisal of such literary forms as biographies, autobiographies, informational literature, and so on.]

The summary was followed by a thorough evaluation of their novel according to Pease’s criteria for evaluating fiction, thoroughly explained in his Letter to Pat, which follows this piece of writing. The numerous tasks their presentations entailed usually took up the better part of a forty minute period. I required, however, that they keep the last seven to ten minutes for questions.

That basically is what the presenter did. What, however, did the students do during the presentation besides listen, especially if the presenter was not the best of speakers. It’s important to remember that the goal here as far as the presenter was concerned was to help him or her develop speaking skills. To assume that he or she had to have these in order to present is to miss the whole point of the exercise. During the years I designed several tasks to keep them on their intellectual toes, so to speak, to keep them at their listening best.

First, at the end of the presentation, I would select two or three students at random to prepare a critique of the presentation. These critiques had to be written and were orally delivered at the beginning of the next class period during which there was no presentation. The same student could be called upon once, twice, three times in a row, so he couldn’t afford to sleep even though he had already been picked once or twice do a critique. Everyone did at least one critique. Another task those being presented to were required to do was put to paper five thought- provoking questions on the various topics touched upon by their classmate during the presentation. These were sometimes picked up for evaluation. Often they were used to initiate discussion.

These pen-and-paper listening activities kept most of my students listening most of the time. It goes without saying that I would spend some time with them showing them how to do a constructive critique and how to devise thought-provoking questions, questions that required more than a yes or no answer. We also developed together a checklist for the assessment of speaking skills. It was these criteria that were used to appraise their oral book review.

In senior grades, I had students go one step further in their reviews, both written and oral. They were asked to not only employ Howard Pease’s criteria in their evaluation, but also to identify, explain and use two of their own personal criteria for evaluating a “piece of literature”. Again I use the word literature in its broadest sense, to include not only written but also film, television and other productions.

So, there you have it- a unit that involves all the students in a language class in myriad language activities, in fact, in all of the major language areas, namely, reading, writing, speaking, listening and thinking.

Students never forget a book review à la Papa Dan. They had too much practice. Some years ago, a student I had taught about ten years earlier asked me if I remembered Howard Pease’s Letter to Pat. Naturally I answered in the affirmative. She then went on to ask if I’d be kind enough to send a copy to her Mom, an elementary school teacher, who was taking a university course and who wanted a “way” to evaluate a novel she was preparing for a seminar. I complied with this call for help and later found out that both Mom and daughter had been very happy as Mom’s assignment had been highly praised by her professor.

In closing, it is important to note that the recipe described lends itself to a myriad of adaptations. Flexibility is key to successful classroom utilization of different strategies for different purposes at different grade levels. Students at an academic level, for example, can use them to evaluate two different books they’ve been assigned, one in the form of an essay, the other orally for the benefit of their classmates. Non-academic students, those who are viewers a lot more than they are readers, can use them along with film and television- specific criteria such as set design and special effects, to evaluate a book and\or movie and\or television program.

Variations on a theme. An expression worth remembering when using Howard Pease’s FAB FOUR. The potential for adaptation is almost limitless… Good Luck.