For some students, studying literature is a dread. Reading stories and poems and analyzing them does get a little boring, but studying literature is an important part of the syllabus and you must do it to perform well in your exams. Your English exam also requires you to perform well in both grammar and literature, and you don’t want to lose any marks in a subject like English.
No subject should feel dreadful, hence, it is important for you to figure out a way of making literature a fun subject. While everyone has their ways of doing so, some tips can be commonly shared by everyone. Your interest in studying literature can be easily developed if you just follow some simple tips in the classroom and at home.
Read the stories out loud
Every teacher tries to make the students read the stories out loud in the classroom. Do you know why they do that? They do so so that everyone is attentive in class and listens to their classmates when they are reading.
When stories are read out loud, everyone listens to them and it automatically becomes more fun. Reading quietly at your desk is very boring, and it can make you lose interest very quickly, so to make sure that you stay interested you should read the stories out loud.
While reading the stories loudly, you can also use various expressions and voices to convey the emotions of the characters. This will also make the activity more engaging and make sure that everyone is interested.
While reading plays, students can form groups of four or five students and they can each choose a character and act out its dialogues and actions.
Poems can be read out loud as well, poems require a lot of voice modulation and emotions. Reading out poems can be fun and it could help in conveying the meaning of the poem is a better way.
If you are studying literature alone at home, you can read the stories out loud for your family members or even just for yourself, it will be an enjoyable activity that your family members could also participate in.
Group activities
Reading the stories and poems out loud is not the only step in studying literature, there is a lot of analysis that has to be done as well. This part feels extremely boring as it is a little difficult. One of the best ways to make sure that this part of studying is interesting is by doing it with your friends or your classmates.
After forming groups of three to four people, you can take up a particular chapter for discussion. When studying literature, it is important to dive as deep into the matter as possible, you can analyze every single thing start from the characters and their descriptions, the plots, the meanings of difficult words, the dialogues.
You can divide the work among group members and then discuss has everyone has completed their work. If a story has a complicated meaning, you can discuss the meaning and storyline and figure it out the same way. The discussion will make studying literature a fun activity and as you will be listening to the opinion of other people, it will be even more interesting.
The same thing can be done for poems as well, as poems need a lot of analysis to be done, it will be better to do it in a group. You can again divide different paragraphs of the poem amongst the group members and then hold a discussion. Most poems are open to personal interpretation, it will be better to listen to everyone’s opinion and ideas.
Studying in this manner would be more interesting than studying alone and it could also help in increasing your retention power and your critical analysis skills.
Practice sample papers
The most efficient way of preparing for any subject is by practicing on sample papers, you can go online and download CBSE Class 9 English Language & Literature Sample Paper 1 and practice answering it. Practicing with a sample paper that is based on CBSE’s pattern will prove to be extremely beneficial. Practicing on the sample paper will prepare you for your final examination and your next year’s board exams as well. You can understand the pattern of your exam and prepare for it, sample papers include all kinds of questions that will be asked in your exam as well. Apart from that, practicing sample papers can help you with time management as well. As English papers require you to write a lot of long answers and there are writing skills as well, students usually run out of time during their English exam. When you practice a sample paper along with a stopwatch, you can practice staying within the time limit, as you will practice more and more sample papers, you will be able to finish the paper on time and you may also manage to get some time for revision as well.
To make practicing sample papers more fun, you can ask your friends to solve the papers with you, you can set a timer and all of your friends will solve the paper. This will induce a healthy and friendly competition which will motivate you to give your best. When you are done solving the paper, you can check each other’s answers and try to help each other by giving advice and sharing your answers.
Go online
Going online is not just for entertainment purposes, you can use the internet for your benefit as well. You can go on youtube and try to find some channels that make educational and study-related content, Watching the videos on these channels is a fun way to study the material in a non-conventional way. You can also go online to read blogs and articles written by different people and try to study through this method.
Use these methods to make studying literature a fun and interesting activity!