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You can't do my scheme with a class of 300. But you can with 35-40 -- if the class meets twice a week. Then you can screen but one full length (say 90-100 minutes) film in class. I do lose students as they see they are going to be held responsible for work in front of others (nothing concentrates their minds so much as Johnson said of a man going to be hung). That's fine. Usually they are replaced by others (we have a sort of revolving door in the first couple of weeks) and eventually I settle down with a class where most students are doing the work. Don't mind my metaphor: I keep things very constructive, only positive ("constructive") ways of talking are allowed, no making fun whatsoever, no digs; I make that clear from the beginning too. I teach at a large state-supported suburban college where there is even a substantial minority of students who do tend to stay in the college and graduate, whose parents do read, hold professional jobs and are themselves reaching for a middle-class professional or vocational job of some sort. By the time of the junior year this type is more in evidence. I use my scheme for introduction to literature courses with Freshmen and Sophomores, but it does work better with Juniors, particularly if they are majoring in the area the Comp course is supposed to be about. Thus when we are doing say Danielle Ofri's _Singular Intimacies_ I've encouraged in the 1st two weeks all students who mean to major in some area of medicine to chose a talk. Often I get nurses and they give wonderful talks I couldn't begin to do on the real practice of medicine in the US. One thing I learned from this: students really can talk to one another and reach one another. It may be that my explanation is the better or more accurate or informed one, but I often can only reach less than 1/3 with a lecture, and of those many would have had the insight (and can read to get the information) without me. The student's explanation is understood by many more of them (say the middle average), and I can debate or try to qualify or correct from my seat. And that gets other students joining in. They all have a way of listening to one another that they don't when I talk. And I have but one outlook, one experience, that of a now 59 year old European-American woman who has spent her life studying literature (married, two children). By doing this I open the arena of the classroom to so many experiences of different types. As I wrote by assigning one talk per one person and getting the person to stand up there with 10 minutes his or hers makes each one take it seriously. I also try hard to make sure the first talk is taken by a superior student (says she smiling). Ellen Moody
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