Highlights of Teaching - ELA:The Great Gatsby

Whole-book reading has been an honored tradition of the ELA department in the era of fast reading and fleeting attention span. Believing the nourishing and enlightening power of classics, ELA teachers of Grade 11 started the adventurous one-month reading of The Great Gatsby—dubbed “the great American novel” by its enthusiastic readership. Dialogue in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece plays multiple roles and presents substantial challenges for readers as English learner. This activity of role-play and group reading is assigned to give students a better taste of the subtlety in characterization and pave the way to an in-depth analysis of characters.

Students are required to read the dialogue from different characters in groups. There are two choices, a four-character plot and an eight-character plot. After discussion, some groups decided to choose the plot with eight characters because that plot was more vivid. Group members gathered together before class to figure out how to achieve better performance. Tweaking large chunks of descriptive and narrative from the assigned part, students need to focus on the essence of dialogue and rely on their tone and body language to fill in the gap. The way to achieve this is to reproduce the action or the scene through the description from that novel. The performance reinforces the reader’s impression of the plot and deepens understanding of the characters and the story simultaneously.

In the process of the activity, students need to put themselves into the role and feel the emotions and ideas of the role. Students are required to show the content of empathy through voice tone and body movements. Through this activity, students not only deepened their understanding of the characters, but also had the opportunity to carefully analyze the texts they saw.

For example, in role play based on "the NY apartment," students will find F. Scott Fitzgerald compare Tom to John D. Rockefeller when he mocks the dog dealer. This quote reveals what the author and society of the time thought of John. D. Rockefeller. Give students the opportunity to speak about the comparison between Gatsby, who was also a wealthy man, and John. D. Rockefeller. In order to make the interpretation more vivid, the students read the text over and over again so that they can learn different meanings of the same sentence. Role-playing after reading the entire book allows students to explore details and improve their understanding of the book while having a firm grasp of the plot. Let the students learn in more interesting ways and understand deeper things.