Below, Professor Bahr describes various aspects of how he taught 21L.705 Major Authors: Old English and Beowulf in spring 2014.
Curricular Scope and Sequence
My goal for the course was for students to read Old English. I wanted them, if they were faced with a sentence in Old English, to be able to confidently navigate it. This is significant given that this course is typically taught over two semesters: Old English is taught in the first semester, and reading Beowulf in the second. Because these are MIT students, I felt empowered to compress a lot into the first half of the semester, which focused on grammar. Classes began with a vocabulary quiz, followed by questions about the grammatical elements of prose included in our text, Introduction to Old English. We started by identifying the subjects, verbs, nouns, etc., and then worked through passages that became longer and more complex as the semester progressed. Students started reading Old English very early on in the semester—probably the fifth day of class.
During the second half of the semester, we were working with riddles and other passages in Old English, and Beowulf. I had students read out loud as we translated these texts. I offered feedback, students asked questions, and if there were any particularly tricky grammatical or syntactic elements, I recorded these on the board. I also carved out time for literary-critical conversations. In fact, in the second half of the semester, I required that students came prepared to share a literary-critical comment or appreciation, or a grammatical question, which contributed to their participation grade.
Choice of Textbook
Introduction to Old English was the main text we used in this course. It is user-friendly, does not assume extensive background knowledge, and moves students quickly into translating. I used A Guide to Old English as a reference work. It helped to have both books because they contain different texts. I also used—and loved—Word-Hoard, a vocabulary book containing over 200 of the most common word groups in Old English poetry. Each word group has a paragraph or two of comparative etymologies indicating cognates with Latin, Greek, and so on, along with an explanation of semantic relationships between various words that are derived from one another. For students with a background in another Indo-European language or who were interested in etymology, this text offers a much more interesting way of learning vocabulary than just rote memorization.
The other really interesting book I used was The Word Exchange: Anglo-Saxon Poems in Translation. One neat feature of this book is that it contains a translation of every Anglo-Saxon poem that exists, excluding the lengthier Beowulf. The second special feature is that actual poets—not scholars—have translated the poems. As an Anglo-Saxonist, I occasionally thought, “My God! This translation is terrible!,” while other translations seemed awesome or just kooky. These variations created an opportunity for rich discussion as students compared their own translations with those of the poets. This facilitated conversations about concepts central to translation, such as literalism versus flexibility.
Assessment
Creating Challenging Exams
Classes I taught previously were essay-based, as opposed to exam-based, so determining how difficult to make the exams for this course was challenging. I wanted to stretch students academically, but because they are so smart, this required throwing tough stuff at them. The dilemma is how to do this without the exams seeming punitive. One strategy I devised is to allow students opportunities to make choices throughout the exam. For example, I asked them to select seven out of nine sentences to translate, and I assessed their best translations. This strategy is still a work in progress, and I’m not yet completely satisfied. One thing I’m certain about, however, is that exams should push students outside of their comfort zones. Exams assessing students’ mastery of dead languages, such as Old English, Latin, or Greek, too often ask students to regurgitate translations or rely too heavily on overly helpful glossaries. Although these should be components of the exam, I encourage educators to think of ways to help students move beyond these exercises. Often this involves a lot of effort on the part of the course facilitator, as composing sentences in Old English from scratch for students to translate is hard work!
Using Mock Exams as an Opportunity to Model Thought Processes
I borrowed the concept of mock exams from science and engineering classes at MIT. I felt mock exams were valuable for students taking Old English primarily because the mock exams gave them a sense of how difficult the real assessments would be and how they needed to pace themselves when taking the exams. Additionally, they provided an opportunity for me to model the thought processes involved in completing complex tasks, such as sight translations, which are unusual to include on exams. I don’t know of anyone else who includes them, but I do because all of the Old English textbooks have glossaries that are extremely helpful—but almost overly helpful. When glossaries hold your hand too much by telling you that a word is accusative, plural, or masculine, for example, you are not really learning Old English—you are learning how to use an Old English dictionary. I wanted to help students move beyond that. Sight translations were very challenging for students on the first exam because they’d only been taking Old English for four or five weeks, and I was expecting them to translate sentences without the help of a glossary.
After they completed the mock exam on their own, we went through each sentence together during a class session. We discussed how they approached their translations and typical syntactic structures in each sentence. For especially hard sight translations, I shared with them what was particularly difficult about the sentence and why I expected them to figure it out. This process of modeling was very important for students who had limited exposure to foreign languages prior to this course.
The mock exams were also valuable to me, as an instructor, as a form of self-assessment. I knew that if all of the students performed poorly on a particular item, I needed to reassess how I was teaching that concept.
Developing Rapport with Students
I developed good rapport with students because I treated them like colleagues. When I was a junior faculty member, I had wonderful senior colleagues who treated me as a peer, but also as somebody who should be mentored, helped, and guided. My relationship with students was not entirely parallel to my relationship with senior faculty because of the wider professional gap, but it was comparable—my students were incredibly talented and smart people from whom I learned as well. Conveying a sense that “we’re all in this together” and that learning was not a zero sum game also helped me develop productive relationships with students. Many MIT students feel that the success of another student is at their expense, especially in fields like science and engineering—even though MIT does not grade on a curve. I made it very clear that another student’s success did not negatively effect their grade in my class, as this would have been a deeply pernicious way to approach learning. Finally, I really love teaching, and I think if you love something, that comes through.
