Growing Up in Literature: Liminality in YA as a Reading Incentive

English Young Adult literature has known an enormous boom over the last two decades. As a result, English YA books are increasingly becoming an integral part of our pupils’ cultural world, also because of film adaptations and BookTok, the literature feed of TikTok. The genre of YA thus offers plenty of opportunities to improve our pupils’ English skills, to enthuse them over studying literature as well as to stimulate their willingness to read.

Programma

Growing Up in Literature: Liminality in YA as a Reading Incentive is a course of lesson materials, which offers both background on YA literature as well as worked out exercises to be used in class. The session starts with a brief look at the origin of the genre and its typical characteristics, pays homage to a few genuine YA classics and delves into four important subgenres within YA: fantasy, dystopia, romance en realism. The essential YA concept of liminality (the quality of being in a state of change or transition) will be highlighted, as this is a key factor in the genre’s appeal to youngsters, to dive into excerpts and exercises focusing on several relevant recent YA novels.

Doelstellingen

By the end of this workshop, you will be able to:

• broaden the horizon of your pupils by introducing them to authenthic English YA literature;
• open your pupils up to YA literature as a form of English culture;
• teach your pupils to empathize with literature and bring them into contact with the creative side of the English language, with attention to the importance of imaginative thinking and acting;
• teach your pupils the visual power of language and literature;
• provide your pupils with story-analytical tools to gain a better literary understanding of YA texts;
• provide your pupils with reading strategies to achieve a better (literary) text comprehension;
• give your pupils insight into the social relevance and impact of (recent) YA books;
• teach your pupils to recognize and appreciate the different genres within YA literature;
• let your pupils interact verbally and in writing about YA texts;
• stimulate your pupils to express their own experience with and interpretation of literary texts.

Doelgroep

Leraren Engels uit de tweede en derde graad secundair onderwijs

Begeleiding

Bart Goossens is leraar Engels en Nederlands en co-auteur van de handboekenreeks On Track.

Lore Goossens is doctoraatsstudent in de Engelse young adult literatuur aan de Universiteit Antwerpen.

Praktisch

Cursusmateriaal inbegrepen