한국 대학에서 영미소설 가르치기

How to teach English novel in Korea

Korean students in English novel class read presentable papers about a novel, but if asked about some parts of the novel, they are helpless. How do they know the whole novel without knowing its parts? Because most Korean students cannot read through an English novel in a short time, they are awfully pressed with preparation for papers to be presented in the class. That makes their papers composed entirely of appropriated ideas from references. Being conscious of students' inability to read through a novel, some teachers select and read only some important parts or chapters of the novel. That makes students take a novel not as literary art, but as a prose work for abstract ideas. In order to solve the problem, I propose chapter analysis. Attentive reading new critics applied to poetry and short story is applicable to the chapter of a novel. Because no critic or scholar analyzes a novel chapter by chapter in his/her articles or books, students cannot wholly mosaic their papers with ideas from references. Chapter analysis will enable Korean students to interpret a novel with their own view point. This paper includes such sections as the theoretical background of fictional chapters, some items to be considered for chapter analysis in the class, and examples of analysis of a short story and two chapters from a novel.