Taking a Pedagogical Look at Shakespeare

1. The play, Julius Caesar, by William Shakespeare, should be taught at a secondary level with an emphasis on rhetorical tradition.
   
    I read one article which talks about the rhetorical properties of the two funeral speeches. I have also taken 2 different rhetoric history classes and I think there is a lot of useful information to be had by students in the consideration of rhetorical analyses. This play by William Shakespeare in particular is full of allusions to the rhetorical tradition. Things like virtue, logos, pathos and ethos, types of speeches, etc., are all things that fall beneath the category of rhetoric. By helping high school students to understand these concepts, it will make it easier for them to spot some of these same things at work in other literature and speeches that they will read throughout their education.
2. The greatest challenge a teacher faces in teaching Shakespeare at the secondary level is making the literature accessible to his or her students and through the use of alternative teaching methods, this barrier is easily overcome.
   
    In my research, I have found that there are many challenges with teaching Shakespeare at the secondary level, including time constraints, lack of relativity to the modern student, fostering active learning, helping learning disabled students and audience, but in almost every article, overcoming the difficult language so that students are able to understand the literature is the number one complaint. Most teachers struggle to make Shakespeare interesting to their students because they are using traditional methods of teaching (lecture and reading aloud) as well as traditional methods of assessments (tests, literary analyses, and research papers) which do little in the way of aiding student comprehension. A lot of research and experimentation has been done in the classroom by educators to find ways to help foster critical thinking in students without falling back on less effective traditional methods of teaching. These new alternative methods of instruction have been found very successful and have not only allowed students to better understand the works of William Shakespeare, but also have helped students to actually enjoy doing so.
3. Using the works of William Shakespeare as a vehicle for reading comprehension has been proven to boost reading scores in secondary schools, and because of this it should be taught at every age grade within this group.
   In one study it was found that in a group of students with learning disabilities, by studying Shakespeare, it improved the skills of these students and in particular raised one dyslexic student’s reading score 4 complete levels after one year. Students who are able to comprehend and untangle the difficult language of Shakespeare find it far easier to comprehend other works of literature, completely unrelated even. Many teachers shy away from the works of William Shakespeare, but this is a mistake because it denies their students a valuable resource for learning.