Discussion Guidelines & Groups

Discussion Guidelines

One of the most enjoyable components of a literature course is being able to discuss your interpretations and responses. However, large courses at UCSD tend to be depersonalized which frustrates student engagement with the texts and leads to lecture-heavy learning. It is also a technical danger: you are left to work out your ideas only when graded papers are due! The group-led discussions are meant to remedy this. Each Thursday, we will devote most of class time (40-50 min) in a peer-led discussion about the readings.

When you are a presenter:
Please direct class discussions on the readings for that week. You do not have to cover all the readings – focus on what you deem important. Your exercise should be carried out for the full class discussion period and be designed to engage the class. You will be assessed by 3 general criteria: Engaging? Useful? Interesting?

If you’d like, you can run your ideas by me before hand. In general, individual presentations tend to be disjointed so work as a team in building a central activity. If you have numerous questions/quotes, it also helps to have a handout. Design your exercise with your audience in mind – or think, what would YOU find useful and interesting? You can…

• Illustrate or elaborate on a difficult theory with various examples from the texts or from your lives.
• Give select passages and questions for students to respond to in small groups or as a whole class.
• Springboard from the weekly questions provided in the syllabus.
• Provide your own interpretation of a phenomenon or text.
• You can also pose a debate on a controversial position.
• Feel free to be creative. You have access to the multimedia console.

When you are a non-presenter:
Since discussion develops your ability to make insightful readings of the texts, make use of this 50 minute period to benefit you and don’t be concerned about impressing the teacher. If that is not compelling reason enough, your 15% participation grade is also determined by your regular discussion. Ask questions, make insights, and disagree (politely). Respond directly to your peers, as they are the ones conducting discussion for the day. Most importantly, be respectful of your classmates and the exercise they put together for the day.

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Discussion groups:

week 2:

Skylar Johnson

Joshua Seto

James Grosvenor

Dat Kieu

Week 3:

Rika Yatchak

Maggie Do

Jennifer Lam

Chase Wong

Priscilla Cheng

Frank Michioka

Eric Grunow

Terry Ly

Week 4:

Raihan Anwar

Karen Miller

Janet Chang

Kin Yi Leung

Jessica Cheung

Ola Sojobi

Week 5:

Lindsey Horowitz

Brian Tyler

Andrew Whitworth

Linda Lo

Week 6:

Stephanie Robitaille

Thuy Vo

Kelly Honda

Rebecca Hasegawa

Junna Murakawa

Takaaki Ueno

Week 7:

John Jeng

Chikako Ota

Alejandra Fernandez-Ortega

Ryan Fujinaga

Megan Kelly

Week 8:

Mayu Saito

John Hancock

Thomas Archibald

Lorraine Bueno

Week 9:

Elizabeth Hood
Melissa Martinyak
George Tracy
Kim Carpenter
Chun Kan Chan

Joshua Axelrod