TEACHING UNIT PLAN

Receivers: students of a fourth/fifth year in a senior high school with an upper intermediate level of English (B2 according to the Common European Framework), teachers, trainers or grown-up learners.

Abstract: the following teaching module focuses on the rise of the novel during the Augustan age in England, showing how it was made possible by the particular historical and social situation.

Pre-requisites: in order to exploit this teaching module effectively:

• learners are supposed to have a smattering of the different literary forms (Fiction, Poetry, Drama) so that they can identify the basic elements of each form;
• they should have prior knowledge of the precursor of the novel, the romance.

Aims: The aims of this teaching module are:

• to make students familiar with the specific features of three of the different forms novels can assume;
• to appreciate the novels written by the English novelists that gave impulse to novels.

Objectives: By the end of the module learners will:

• be able to find connections between the first English novels and the historical and social context in which they were written;
• be aware of how the emergence of the novel in the 18th century as a genre in its own right represented the most striking development in the history of prose writing and will know its originators and their main works;
• be able to group novels according to different categories;
• know the historical and social context in which the first English novelists wrote.

Materials: the lessons can benefit from the reference to the Internet sites quoted in this teaching module and from the reading of portions of the novels mentioned.

Methodology: lectures for a preliminary presentation of context, subject and authors by the teacher (or possible cooperative learning with jigsaw procedure); interactive lessons: individual and pair work, listening and reading activities, plenary work, open discussions and written evaluation.

Evaluation: a test will be introduced at the end of the module aimed at verifying the competence acquired by the students by means of multiple choice questions and questions related to passages from the various novels the module is centred around.

Self-evaluation: a test will be introduced at the end of the module aimed at verifying the competence acquired by the trainer/teacher by means of multiple choice questions and questions leading to reflection on different passages inviting a more critical approach.