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Teaching Unpopular Classes in a Seminar Style: A Case of English Medieval and Renaissance Literature

  Teaching literature classes in highly job-competitive surroundings is not an easy task. In present Korean college classrooms, those who teach English literature of the earlier periods such as the Medieval and the Renaissance often find their task very challenging, as they face a big dilemma of how to make their class job-efficient while simultaneously satisfying the intellectual needs of those few students who are there for academic enlightenment. As an attempt to solve this problem, this study suggests that English literature teachers teach their high-level (junior or senior) classes in a seminar style, provided that the classes remain small in size. Recently, many Korean companies prefer a group-discussion interview to a traditional, single style interview, so that they can test their candidates not only for their leadership, resourcefulness, and creative thinking, but also for their manners and attitudes in human relationships, i. e., how tolerant and understanding they are in their ways of handling the conflicts with others. By teaching students how to conduct a discussion, listen and tolerate others, and disagree with or persuade others in a conflicting environment, a discussion-oriented literature class may help students prepare to be a more successful candidate in the competitive job market.