This is serendipity. I get from my excellent local library Jaume Cabré’s autobiographical essay on why and how he writes, El sentit de la ficció. As I read it on the train I find the perfect passage to close my first-year course on 20th C English Literature (pp. 24-25, in case you know the book). My last lecture is scheduled for just one hour later…
In this passage Cabré explains how pleased he was to discover that at university he would be given marks for reading books he would have read anyway for pleasure. This seems written for my students!! What is more important, he explains next how reading led him to writing and how our souls are trapped as we read by style, “sempre l’estil, sempre l’ús de la llengua, sempre la relació íntima de tu amb la llengua amb que t’has fet persona i que, mitjançant la intencionalitat artística, es converteix en llengua literària i deixa de ser vehicle per convertir-se en essència.” (p. 25) I rarely quote here this long, but I think this time it is worth it. As I read aloud in class, I realise we often forget that ‘philology,’ a word which has been dropped from the names of our degrees because students often didn’t know what it stood for, means that: the love of the language. How hard it is to instil it…
I realise that the main difficulty in a first year course in a second language degree is that although students’ love of languages may lead them to us, the way they love English is diffuse, based just on a superficial acquaintance. We possibly spend more time improving this acquaintance than teaching them to savour the beauties of Literature for the very basic reason that without a sound knowledge of the language these beauties pass unnoticed. And here’s the rub: the courses we teach are designed for students who already know English intimately; instead, students often approach us because they want to learn English, starting from that superficial acquaintance. And this is not enough, much less when they take combined language degrees, mixing two poorly known foreign languages.
Why don’t we introduce entry level qualifications? Well, for some strange reason we can’t. In contrast, they have them in the Translation Faculty or School, I have no idea why. I mean to say that it would make perfect sense for both to have entry level exams: ballet schools have harsh examinations for prospective students and I don’t see why future ‘philologists’ shouldn’t be tested on their command of language, both first and second. Instead, we admit everyone –many of them are those who didn’t pass the Translation test… And hope for the best.
I wonder if in Mathematics they have the same problem.