Response to Chapter 4

The narrative and expository modes of discourse construct people’s ways of viewing this world: how people give reasonable interpretations to their experiences and how they use evidence to define the truth. The narrative discourse is a mode of thought that is essential in teaching and learning, and this is not only applied in literature, but also in the real-life situations. Showing some film clips on the same topic is one of the teaching methods that teachers can use to teach students to see the real-life situation in different ways. After watching the film clips, teachers need to ask some significant study questions to prompt students to think. For example, an ESL teacher wants to teach “culture” under a multicultural setting where students coming from different countries and trying to adjust to the new culture. The important issues related to this theme might be cultural identity and culture shock. The teacher can show the film clip of “The Namesake,” which reveals the conflict between two generations of Indian immigrants in the US and the identity crisis of the new generation: whether he belongs to the US culture or his native Indian culture. There are several scenes in the film that depict the shift of identity (the main character’s change of his name). The teacher can require students to identify these scenes and ask them why the main character changes his name twice and what the meaning of his original name is. After the discussion, students can talk about what cultural conflicts they encounter and why they encounter these. By so doing, students do not just study the definition of culture and the phases of culture shock, but they observe the film character’s situation, associate the character’s experience with theirs and try to find meanings of these scenes. After students are aware of what they have been through and why, they will be able to predict what similar situations will happen in the future and know how to react to the situations accordingly.