SATE

Attended by 14 people. Set Book The Cat’s Table by Michael Ondaatje. Usual mixture of discussions, lectures by guest speakers, work on advanced grammar and vocabulary, etc.

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SATE Course «Charles Dickens»

Meggen LU, 21 to 23 November 2012

Organiser: Roland Lüthi, SATE

Tutor: Simon Hicks

There were 13 participants from the French and German parts of Sitzerland, which led to good exchange, also during lunch and dinners. Simon Hicks and the group discussed A Christmas Carol and Great Expectations. They looked at how to approach the works with classes (CC for 5^th formers, GE for final years), how to bring out both the modern sides to Dickens and aspects of the Victorian age. Simon Hicks’ valuable input and friendly way of running the tutorial was much appreciated, thanks to Simon Hicks.

Pictures from this course

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Aldeburgh Poetry Festival 2012

Aldeburgh, UK, 2-4 November 2012

Organiser: Richard Begbie

Attended by 12 people. Writers included: John Agard, Leland Bardwell, Ingrid de Kok, Jackie Kay, Ko Un, Christopher Reid, Michael Rosen, Philip Schulz

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Dublin International Theatre Festival 2012

Dublin, 5-10 October 2012

Organiser(s): Richard Begbie, Simon Hicks, Dewi Williams

Attended by 30 people. We saw the following plays:

a) Everyone is King Lear in his own Home – an experimental version of Shakespeare’s play: a dialogue between an old man and his daughter using extracts from the original play
b) A Trilogy by Tom Murphy (3 plays in one day!): Conversations on a Homecoming (Irish-American emigré returns to Ireland for a visit). A Whistle in the Dark (harsh depiction of violent Irish family living in Birmingam), Famine (bleak, but poetic description of the Irish Famine of the 1840s).
c) Pineapple by Philip McMahon, “beautifully tender and bitingly funny”
d) The House that Jack Filled – an amusing music-hall style performance by the physical actor Louis Lovett
e) Bird with Boy – “an immersive dance installation performed by Ireland’s junk ensemble to live music in an old house”
f) Hamlet – an experimental performance by the innovative American Wooster Group of the Shakespeare play, using computers, extracts from the old Richard Burton 1950s film performance, etc. Stimulating and controversial!
g) The Picture of Dorian Gray – stage adaptation of the book. Excellent performance which was fairly loyal to the original
h) The Boys of Foley Street – immersive, site-specific ‘drama’ where participants were driven in pairs around a squalid Dublin area and witnessed scenes depicting drug-dealing, prostitution, etc. Tough, moving theatre intended to raise awareness of social deprivation.
i) The Talk of the Town – a play by Emma Donoghue about the Irish emigré Maeve Brennan who wrote laconic short stories for The New Yorker in the 1950s. A sharp-witted, poignant play.

All in all, a highly stimulating course which will be repeated in October 2013.

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CALP (Course in Advanced Language Practice)

Berne, 25-27 January 2012

Organiser(s): Rosemary Allemann, Richard Begbie, Dewi Williams

Attended by 24 people. Set Book A View of the Harbour by Elizabeth Taylor. Usual mixture of discussions, lectures by guest speakers, work on advanced grammar and vocabulary, etc.

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“The Art of Storytelling”

Berne, 16 November 2011

Organiser: Simon Hicks (guest tutor: Clare Murphy, Ireland)

Attended by 18 people. Clare Murphy is a talented storyteller, who performed at the Cúirt Festival in Galway in April 2011 and was subsequently invited to give a highly successful workshop in Berne.

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Aldeburgh Poetry Festival 2011

Aldeburgh, UK, 4-6 November 2011

Organiser: Richard Begbie

Attended by 11 people, most of them ‘returnees’. Writers included: Fleur Adcock, Jane Draycott, Leontia Flynn, Robert Hass, Roger McGough, Maurice Riordan, Kay Ryan, Peter Sansom.

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Five Plays in Five Days

London, 10-14 October 2011

Organiser: Verena Linder (tutor: Peter Storford)

Attended by 20 people, including Véronique Vouilloz, who described and commended the course at the 2011 SATE AGM. Participants read and discussed the following plays: Top Girls by Caryl Churchill, My City by Stephen Poliakoff, Playboy of the Western World by JM Synge, The Tempest by Shakespeare, Saved by Edward Bond. In addition, participants had the chance to listen to several actors (Stella Gonet, Isabella Bird, Niamh Cusack, David Troughton) talking about their roles and interpretations in the plays – always a highly enlightening part of this excellent course.

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Cúirt International Festival of Literature

Galway, 26-30 April 2011

Organiser(s): Richard Begbie, Simon Hicks, Dewi Williams

Attended by 22 people. Usual mixture of prose, poetry, drama, lectures, discussions. Writers included: Simon Armitage, Kevin Barry, Sujata Bhatt, Geoff Dyer, Anne Enright, Helon Habila (Oil on Water), Thomas Lux, Clare Murphy (who subsequently gave a workshop in Berne), Penelope Shuttle.

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CALP (Course in Advanced Language Practice)

Berne, 27-28 January 2011

Organiser(s): Rosemary Allemann, Richard Begbie, Dewi Williams

Attended by 31 people. Set book was Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri. Usual mixture of discussions, lectures by guest speakers, work on advanced grammar and vocabulary, etc. Many participants were attending this course for the third or fourth time.

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Make it New: Modernist Poetry

Wislikofen, 18 to 19 November 2010

Organiser: Hans-Jürg Suter, SATE

14 people attended the extremely successful course at Probstei Wislikofen. Prof. Dr. Martin Heusser (University of Zurich) led the group through Modernist background, art, poetry. This led to great insights, animated discussion of poetry and through this, great ideas for further reading – and of course ideas for lessons.

Pictures from this course

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Crime Fiction in the Classroom with L. Anderson

Wislikofen, 10 to 13 November 2009

Lin Anderson, a Scottish crime-fiction writer, led a lively seminar from 11 to 13 November at Propstei in Wislikofen for a group of twenty-three Swiss high school teachers of English. The large attendance was in itself indicative of teachers’ interest in this form of writing, which seems to be growing in popularity.

Many of the sessions were plenary lectures about the craft of writing such fiction. Lin clearly set out the style of writing that distinguishes Scottish authors of this genre from others. Their works tend to be gritty, full of the facts of crime and not the charm of guests gathering at country estates and knocking off one of the company. This approach towards crime writing has become known as “Tartan Wars” for it draws out the Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde qualities latent in human nature. According to Lin, readers are attracted to crime series because of their interest in the development of the character of the primary protagonist—the detective or the character who does the work of solving the crime, as in her case a forensic scientist.

A few sessions were “hands on” work with the participants pairing off to construct characters and situations, outlines for eventual crime stories. The task was to set up contrasting figures and then to put them in action where their differences became a focus for the story. These drafts were then read out and some showed real potential. The workshop had become an occasion for creative writing.

Film from fiction was the third component of the seminar and we watched films that Lin had participated in making. Her crime series featuring Rhona MacLeod is to be filmed for TV so Lin read to us a“treatment” that is done of a story in preparation for casting it. She has also won awards for short films that have been aired on British TV.

The days and evenings were full and convivial, yet many felt that this kind of workshop does not really have a connection with classroom teaching. True, lessons were not analyzed or even planned, but some of the points could certainly be carried over: making students aware of the contrast in characters and how that feeds the plot, which is certainly not limited to crime writing. However, the criticism stands and was discussed. In the end the general feeling was that these SATE courses do not need to be only for classroom use, but can, and perhaps should primarily, be self-enriching, the advantages of which do not need to be spelled out. In the future course descriptions should not put an emphasis on the classroom if it is not absolutely applicable, and let it stand that the course is relevant to teachers who are literary enthusiasts.

Martha Ritchie
Course organizer

Pictures from this course

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Literary Research Today

Central Library, Zurich (26 August 2009)

This course was held at the Central Library in Zurich on 26 August 2009. Prof. Dr. Martin Heusser (University of Zurich) and Mr Haslinger (Zentralbibliothek Zürich) gave the attendants an interesting and worthwhile overview – with some hands-on practice – of what is possible in terms of research online.

Roland Lüthi

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Student-centred work on literary texts

27 March 2009/ 6 May 2009 (repetition)

Mario Rinvolucri is well-known for his humanising approach to teaching. 50 participants applied for his workshop, which shows that there is a strong need for new and challenging ways of addressing our students. We did exercises that opened our eyes for the importance that students learn to reach out, listen to each other, discover the positive aspects of a classmate’s statements and possibly even manage to link one argument with another, etc. Mario’s pedagogical concerns are obvious and to be considered more strongly when teaching literature. He wants the students to experience that literary works can have an educational effect on them.

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Teaching Language and Literature Through Drama

27/28 October 2008

Jonathan Neelands from Warwick University showed us the drama approach to teaching English literature. Learning by doing, which means identifying with characters, situations, issues, etc. by creating understanding for them. There are resources in us to be tapped in order to turn a topical issue, a narrative, etc. into a very living and personal experience. Emotional involvement and immersion will be the inspiring result. Jonathan proves to be an example of an empowering teacher who can make a disinterested student come to life by pushing him/her into activities that they are carried away with.

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Course in Advanced Language Practice

Berne (14–16 November 2007)

This course (organised by Dewi Williams and Richard Begbie) was attended by 35 teachers. Work included: an analysis of three short stories; lectures; a translation; group discussions; work on advanced grammar, collocation and vocabulary; various cultural activities. More than 80% of the participants were returning for the second or third time. The course will be held again in 2008.

Dewi Williams

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Fiction in the Classroom

Boswil, Switzerland (14–16 November 2007)
with Prof. Stevie Davies, FRSL, University of Wales (Swansea)

Stevie Davies, author of both fiction and non-fiction and Professor of Creative Writing at Swansea, started by showing how a novel is "mercurial": something which is never finished or definite. Various drafts by the author, adaptations for film, theatre or radio, the readers' response all add to the many lives of a novel.

We considered the process of composition, trying our hand at creative writing. (e.g. How does narrative advance in dialogue?)

We studied excerpts from several works closely, always with the author's (various) intentions in mind. (e.g. How does an author get agents and publishers to read on past the first page?)

In our evening sessions we dealt with adaptations (an ITV production and a radio-play) of Stevie Davies's novel Web of Belonging. (What happens to a novel when it is reduced to a 45-minute radio play?)

Prior to the course participants had been asked to read Stevie Davies's novel The Eyrie. This was constantly referred to in discussions as it gave everybody common ground to stand on. Of course it was most interesting and enlightening to have the author at hand. The course was attended by 14 people who enjoyed both the atmosphere set by the tutor and by course organizer Hans-Jürg Suter, as well as the fact that the topic was approached from such a variety of angles.

Roland Lüthi

Pictures from this course

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Unfamiliar Landscapes

Berne (24–26 September 2007)

This seminar was organised by Richard Begbie, and the guest tutor was Sinéad Morrissey, a young Irish poet who is currently Writer-in-Residence at Queen's University, Belfast. A dozen people attended the seminar which consisted of discussions about the role of metaphor and metonymy in poetry and an analysis of how certain poets deal with the aspect of landscape in their work. Participants analysed poems by Les Murray, Elizabeth Bishop and Sinéad Morrissey herself. The reaction to the seminar was very positive, and many people said how enlightening it was to spend some time on the close analysis of a poem.

Dewi Williams

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Stanza Poetry Festival

St Andrews, Scotland (14–18 March 2007)

This trip was organised by Richard Begbie, Simon Hicks and Dewi Williams and was attended by sixteen teachers. It was the 10th Stanza Poetry Festival and included:

readings by established and lesser known poets
workshops run by well-known figures, e.g. Padel. Khalvati, et al.
master-classes where young poets submit their poems for analysis
lectures on 'dead poets'
panel discussions
readings by foreign poets followed by English translations
a 100 Poets Gathering, where 100 poets read their poems throughout the day

The course was intensive but also stimulating and enjoyable.

Dewi Williams

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