How to Teach Shakespeare to College Students

Video Transcript

"Hi, this is Laura Turner and today I'm going to talk to you about how to teach Shakespeare to college students. College students are naturally more adept at reading a writing raw Shakespeare than other students will be, students of you know lower, students like high school students, middle school students. So you can sort of bank on the idea that they're going to have a higher reading comprehension level. However, when you first start to read Shakespeare in college, and I know that I had this problem, it's very daunting to read the plays because they are very long and take probably three and a half to five hours to read. So although you can bank on their reading comprehension you should also spend some time going in to the workings of the poetry, helping the students to understand the language of Shakespeare, helping them to pick out the words that really don't have any meaning anymore to us and figure out what that meaning is, words that he uses. Help them to use the tools that you give them to actually help them read the plays faster and more efficiently. Next, actually have the students do readings of Shakespeare. This helps immensely in that you actually bring the plays to life instead of just having them on the page, being the daunting huge plays that they are. Next have the students read scholarly research on Shakespeare. Since they are in college they can sort of branch out to other publications to figure out what other people think to help them write their own papers. Next, and this is a very good tactic, have students watch film versions of Shakespeare's works so that they can get more out of Shakespeare himself than just, you know acting out themselves, trying to fluff through it, they can actually really sit down and watch a play and say, wow, o.k., this is why Shakespeare has been studied for so many years. And finally you can even go so far as to have the students present a final scene by Shakespeare for the class as their final exam. This is something I did as an undergrad and I think it was really fun. College kids really need to have fun as well in class and they need to do things that are going to engage them rather than just sitting at lecture and having things sort of fed to them. So help them be creative and let them do a scene. And those are some tips for using Shakespeare to college students."