Horacio quiroga el hijo3/5/2023 Quiroga was an unhappy and rebellious child whose mother both spoiled and misunderstood him. Within months his natural father was killed in a hunting accident, the first of a series of tragic deaths that were to affect profoundly Quiroga and his work. Horacio Quiroga was born in 1878 in Salto, Uruguay. To begin to achieve those goals, let us first look at the man himself-Horacio Quyiroga. To have students familiarize themselves with and to gain an appreciation for an important Latin American author who writes in a medium workable in a secondary foreign language classroom, and to have them read that author critically, therefore, are the overall goals of this unit. It will conclude with a discussion of two of his stories and suggested classroom activities to accompany them. The unit will then proceed to a discussion of Quiroga’s major themes and stylistic principles. Because Quiroga’s life, on the other hand is fascinating, and because of the significance of his experiences in his writing, this unit will devote some time to his biography. To expound on “naturalism” and “modernism’’ may excite the curiosity of some and impress others with the “learnedness’’ of the the teacher, but it will undoubtedly either bore or scare senseless most students. Last and not unimportantly, Quiroga’s stories exploit the fascination with the horrific that seems to grip many teenagers.Īs to background information, only a passing reference to some of the relevant literacy “-isms’’ will be made. Because they are obviously in prose they tend to be less intimidating than poetry. Because a number of stories can be read, they lend themselves to a greater variety of critical thinking skills, such as comparing and contrasting. Short stories can be dealt with in one to three class periods. Short stories, therefore, lend themselves ideally to the study in a limited amount of time of serious literature. They are used to TV programs and movies whose conflicts are quickly resolved. Students whose basic language skills are limited often find it difficult to focus for long periods on a work of literature. What they will lose in the beauty and precision of the original Spanish they will gain in their own willingness to read on and to consider critically what they have read. I am convinced that a struggling to understand one word in three is no way to enable students to appreciate a work of literature or to induce them to read more of it. In order to achieve these goals my first decision is to present this literature in translation to the second year students and to give both English and Spanish versions to the third year students. In other words, I want them to be exposed to the literature of another country and to read that literature critically. I want my students to gain an appreciation for a new and different literary experience and I want them to appreciate the skill with which this experience is narrated. To answer the last and most important question first, my purpose in presenting this unit is twofold. Rather they represent a rationale for teaching this specific literature-the short stories of the Uruguayan Horacie Quiroga-to a specific group of students-those in Spanish II or III who by and large do not excel in language skill in any language including their own. The answers set forth in this unit, therefore, are in no way meant to represent a personal philosophy of teaching literature in a Spanish class. Having grappled with these issues many times, I have become convinced that there is no pat set of answers which gives a coherent logic for the teaching of literature in a secondary level foreign language classroom. How do you present literature in a foreign language to students whose language skills in their own language may be weak and whose skills in the foreign language are likely to be woefully inadequate to do justice to the literature? What kind of literature is to be taught and to whom? How much background information do the students need to have? How much time are you prepared to spend on a given work? What do you expect the students to learn? What is the purpose in teaching the literature unit at all? When considering the teaching of literature in a foreign language classroom, the teacher must make some very clear decisions before beginning.
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