Literature for ELT

[Т А Кузнецова]

Literature lesson plans

This site is suitable for teachers who use literature in integrated or profile classes. You can find information how to use the novels, poems, stories by classic and modern writers.

The navigation is very easy; you just click on the name of the author and have a list of resourses from biography to the analysis of the work.

http://litplans.com

Here is an example of Harry Potter by JK Rowling:

Creative Writing

A Unit based on the Harry Potter Series

There are many uses for the Harry Potter series in the classroom and one of them is definitely when trying to teach the concept of creative writing.

Lesson 1 how do we write effectively?

• If I said to you I saw a big cat yesterday, what sized cat would you imagine? Big is a fairly subjective word and we all interpret it in different ways? The same can be said for the word sad. Consider if I were to say, I saw a monstrous cat yesterday, as wide as a freight train and as long as a mack-truck. I think you would have a much better picture in your mind of what I was trying to convey! Never underestimate the use of DETAIL to paint the picture! In relation to the word sad, there are much more descriptive words to use to convey the depth of the emotion one is feeling, such as miserable, distraught, heart-breakingly painful or heart-wrenching.

• The point of the story is that the more descriptive we can be in our writing, the more effectively we are able to paint a picture that the audience can see in their own minds. That is what effective creative writing is all about.

Consider these examples from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire where J.K.Rowling has described her characters in such precise detail;

1) A small and skinny wizard, completely bald but with a moustache to rival Uncle Vernons, wearing robes of pure gold to match the stadium, strode out onto the pitch. A silver whistle was protruding from under the moustache, and he was carrying a large wooden crate under one arm, his broomstick under the other (p96)

2) As she stepped into the light flooding from the Entrance Hall, she was revealed to have a handsome, olive-skinned face, large, black. Liquid-looking eyes and a rather beaky nose. Her hair was drawn back in a shining knob at the base of her neck. She was dressed from head to foot in black satin, and many magnificent opals gleamed at her throat and on her thick fingers. (p214)

3) Four fully grown, enormous, vicious-looking dragons were rearing on their hind legs inside an enclosure fenced with thick planks of wood, roaring and snorting torrents of fire were shooting into the dark sky from their open, fanged mouths, fifty feet above the ground on their outstretched necks. There was a silvery blue one with long, pointed horns, snapping and snarling at the wizards on the ground; a smooth-scaled green one, which was writhing and stamping with all its might; a red one with an odd fringe of fine gold spikes around its face, which was shooting mushroom-shaped fire clouds into the air, and a gigantic black one, more lizard-like than the others, which was nearest to them... Mesmerized, Harry looked up, high above him, and saw the eyes of the black dragon, with vertical pupils like a cats, bulging with either fear or rage, he couldn’t tell which it was making a horrible noise, a yowling, screeching scream (p286)

4) The merpeople had grayish skins and long, wild, dark green hair. Their eyes were yellow, as were their broken teeth, and they wore thick ropes of pebbles around their necks. 432

5) Voldemort looked away from Harry, and began examining his own body. His hands were like large, pale spiders; his long white fingers caressed his own chest, his arms, his face; the red eyes, whose pupils were slits, like a cat’s, gleamed still more brightly through the darkness. He held up his hands, and flexed the fingers, his expression rapt and exultant. - 559