Eleven-year-olds are to learn Shakespeare using the approaches taken by actors, and English teachers will be encouraged to let pupils walk around the classroom rather than read the plays while pupils are sitting at their desks.
Within the English curriculum(课程) you tend to look at a play text as a piece of literature rather than performance. But you can’t possibly understand Shakespeare’s language if you’re just reading it in your head. Shakespeare is difficult; it’s not a 21stcentury text. You have to use different ways to understand it.
The new teaching way focuses on how actors come to understand Shakespeare’s language. In fact actors have the same nervousness about Shakespeare’s language as young people in schools do. But in six to eight weeks they get to a place of complete confidence about the play. Pupils can do as well.
Exercises devised are to let children aged 11 to 14 imitate the methods of professional actors. Written and oral assessments developed alongside the lessons will show how well students have understood the texts.
In one task pupils will work on creating four key physical figures of king, warrior(勇士), lover and joker, finding which lines of their chosen character go with those features first and then acting them out. Through this they can examine how a character such as Macbeth can switch dramatically within one scene from soldier to kingly figure to trick planner. It’s really creative but you’re still getting a really wonderful model of understanding. It’s miles away from a “chalk and talk” method.
Educators think Shakespeare should be a central part of every young person’s education. Developing a love of Shakespeare at a young age often leads to a lifelong passion for literature and helps to improve a child’s reading and writing.
小题1:How will young people learn Shakespeare?A．Reading them aloud.B．Reciting them.C．Cooperating with actors.D．Acting them out.小题2:You cannot understand Shakespeare’s words easily because________.A．they are pieces of literatureB．their expressions are different C．ordinary people cannot understand themD．they are performances小题3:The underlined sentence “It’s miles away from a ‘chalk and talk’ method.” In Paragraph 5 means_____.A．Chalk and talk are far away from each otherB．It is much better than the traditional wayC．Chalk and talk are quite differentD．By chalk and talk we can understand Shakespeare小题4:What’s the best title of the reading passage?A．The New Approach to ShakespeareB．The Introduction to ShakespeareC．How to act Shakespeare’s playsD．Shakespeare’s works in the English curriculum