Literature in Chung Cheng High (Main)

English Literature is offered at all four levels at Chung Cheng High and I am currently helping out with the Secondary Twos for English Literature.

Secondary One
The chosen text for Secondary One is The Clay Marble. There are three assignments in total for the entire year. Last year there were two written assignments and one project assignment. There is more emphasis on project assignments this year so the new system now has one written assignment and two project-based assignments. One of the teachers teaching Secondary One literature mentioned that this would help both students and teachers. The students are able to process more of the text when they have hands on activities and this also helps to reduce the teachers' workload. As far as I can tell, one of the projects includes a list of 9 activities to choose from. Some of these include designing a book cover for the text (and then explaining why it was created as such), conducting interviews with people and classmates as part of a 'talk show' programme or performing a short skit. This particular assignment has students working in groups.

Secondary Two
Secondary Twos are working with The Outsiders. They follow a system with alternating weeks for tutorials (odd weeks) and lectures (even weeks). Half of the entire cohort will attend the first lecture of the week and the second half will attend the second lecture. The lectures are used mostly to deliver content while tutorials are used for students and teachers to clarify concepts and techniques. This system came about with maximizing time for both teachers and students. Teachers take turns to conduct the lectures with each teacher taking a single week each to prevent a single teacher from being overloaded with work. Secondary Twos have both written and performance tasks (they are doing a sketch of the text at the moment).

Secondary Three & Four
Not too clear on the Lit syllabus for the Upper Secondary students but they are doing Romeo & Juliet, Things Fall Apart and unseen poetry for 'O' Levels. From what I know, they study two texts simultaneously; two different teachers for the two texts who come in once a week each and these two teachers will come in a third time to do unseen together with the class. Students are assessed using the usual methods such as essays, passage-based questions, exams etc. but are also graded (to a small extent, around 10%?) based on other means like journals, dramatizations and even poetry writing where they will organize a Poetry Slam for students.