“The Reader” was like a small stone thrown in the water. It rippled my sensibility and made me awake all through the night due to the lingering image of the movie and my academic curiosity to delve into its pedagogical implication. Not only gentle was the movie, but also it was heart-aching. Besides appreciation of the movie as a beautiful work, the movie rendered me another reading to me about learning process and how to apply it to my teaching. As I was made to watch the movie as an assignment, I would be faithful to the given task.
In terms of learning process that the main character, Hanna Schmitz, learned how to read and write, the first step of learning she took was she was motivated to learn reading and writing. While she was presented with cassette tapes of having recorded reading novels, she was beamed with hope and expectation. She could sustain her barren life behind the bar with her memory and feeling of bond with her old love, Michael. Since she had desire to express her appreciation and affection for him, she decided to learn letters. It triggered her to venture the hardest and intimidating task. Then, she decided a book named “The Lady with the Little Dog” which was most familiar and fascinating to her, to study with. Next scene describes she is picking a pencil and opening the book with nervousness and awe. She plays the cassette player and listens to the title being spoken several times. The first thing in the main learning process was to match the words and sounds coming out of the player. To the point of the word “the”, she stopped, pronounced the word, and circled the identified word “the” on the book. Here I wondered why she stopped at the word “the” among six words in the title. I think she decided to familiarize the word “the” because it was the most common and easiest word consisting of only three letters. Here she started to circle every “the” throughout the page. On the piece of black and white thousands of pieces of puzzle, she seemed to turn up the useful cue pieces until she finally makes all the pieces uncovered to complete a whole picture. Circling the most common and familiar words is compared to a scaffolding activity which teachers start teaching based on students’ preexistent knowledge to make new learning easier. As Hanna extended the number of words she got to know by making a list of words she circled, she made use of the words she learned in the real life at the same time, through writing letters to Michael. Using what she learned in the real context must have helped her to retrieve the words. Importance lies on her way that she read the word aloud once she identified the same word as she heard from the cassette player. In this way, Hanna built up her vocabulary list in her brain and her learning was reinforced by using them in the meaningful context. Then she read dozens of books. With perseverance and effort in part of both Michael and Hanna herself, accumulated throughout the years, she finally changed herself into literate.
Hanna’s case of learning reading and writing by herself gave me useful teaching insight. What changed her from a coward who kept running away from being shamed to an active learner, was consistent devotion of Michael – reading and recording novels for almost twenty years. Michael was not coercing or pushy, but his help was most appropriate for her needs and level. Love is the best motivator to make change (learning) happen. It would make any learner an active learner who ventures the best way for herself/himself.
Ms. Lee
Thank you for this beautiful review. I highlighted important parts of your discussions, and underlined some parts which looked terrific to me. Personally, I have never put my focus on the part of Michael, but your review tells me that I ignored something very important in this movie - which is the role of Michael as a model of a teacher. I buy your opinions. Thank you so much.
댓글 없음:
댓글 쓰기