An Interview with Madame Bovary (LS-HR-575)
The 21st century is full of texts that reach readers through various media. The students should always be taught in the field of media literacy, especially in distance learning scenarios during the year of COVID -19.
In this learning scenario the students (age 16 or 17) will recognize the fact that an interview helps to develop critical thinking about a literary character’s actions. The main topic is : Is Emma Bovary a literary hero or antihero? Students will imagine an interview with Emma Bovary and thus approach the problematization of this literary heroine, they will learn to understand and approach literary heroes when they are antiheroes. They will work in pairs and groups.
The lesson contains various technology-based activities including searching for free-to-use images in the Europeana Collections, H5P tool for interactive material, Mentimeter for feedback.
Activities
After looking at some Europeana pictures, the students will design a clickbait. Through humor, they will recognize the fact that fake news abuses our emotions.
Fake news is effective because it is compelling, attracts attention, and uses stereotypes and prejudices that are prevalent in society, but also because it can mimic real news that can often be misleading. At the same time, they abuse our emotions – anxiety, contempt, anger, and frustration that very easily aroused in us.
In the second activity, one part of the students will write some questions for the people from pictures, others will write answers. They will try to reach an interview as a result.
An interview is a conversation; a newspaper type of text in which the content is expressed in the form of questions and answers, a conversation with a prominent person about himself or herself on an interesting topic, at the right time and with clever questions. The success of the interview depends on the choice of topic, person, and question.
The third activity supposes that students watch a book trailer (students’ homework) with Emma Bovary, imagine an interview with Emma, trying to understand her feelings and thoughts.
Would you like to know more about this learning scenario? You can download it below:
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- Using multimedia in the study of a writer or a relevant book
- Books Unchained: The Spread of Literacy in Europe
- You can’t judge a book by its cover. Or can you?
Public Domain Mark 1.0: the featured image used to illustrate this article has been found on Europeana and has been provided by the Nationalmuseum, Sweden.