專家妙筆
熱切討論下選出的 「共讀書」 By Dr Rodney Jones, Associate Head, Department of English
文：Rodney Jones博士 英文系副系主任
“A common book helps students to feel a sense of shared intellectual experience and gives them the experience of being part of a community of readers.” The reasons were: 1. It is a contemporary book written at a level most students could handle. 2. It was well reviewed and deemed to be of high literary merit. 3. It is a fantasy, a genre we believed would appeal to many students. 4. It is based on a classic in English literature (Paradise Lost), and contains a lot of allegory and symbolism that would give our students a good introduction to the kinds of devices used in literary works they will encounter later in their studies. 5. It is an extremely popular book, and so there are many online resources available that would help students feel part of a larger reading community beyond the walls of the campus. Having a common read across the whole university is a common practice at US universities. For example, the common read at University of Washington this year is Barak Obama’s Dreams from My Father. It would be wonderful to institute this at CityU, but there are also some difficulties. Firstly, there is quite a lot of variation in English proficiency among the students, so choosing a suitable book would be difficult. Secondly, measures need to be devised to motivate students and ensure that they read the book. In the English department these measures include the books being referred to and used as teaching material in all first year courses. The department also holds regular functions (social events, seminars, etc.) around the theme of the book. These kinds of measures would be more difficult to institute across the university.
January 2010
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