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Volume 6, Issue 2 provided by University of Bedfordshire Repository

Teaching Shakespeare to Young ESL Learners in Hong Kong

Anna Wing-bo Tso, School of Arts and Social Sciences, The Open University
of Hong Kong
Email: [email protected]

Abstract
Teaching Shakespeare to young ESL learners can be one of the most challenging tasks for English teachers
and parents. Because of the difficult vocabulary and unusual language, Shakespeare is often left unread
and unexplored both in school and at home. With a view to helping children overcome reading obstacles
and learn to appreciate Shakespeare and his plays, the Hong Kong Public Libraries and I co-hosted a
weekly Shakespeare teens’ reading club for K12 learners from local grammar schools. Four Shakespearean
plays were introduced to about twenty Cantonese child participants who had no or little experience
reading or studying Shakespeare’s works. To enhance imagination and interactions among child readers,
various learner-centred, interactive, and multimedia pedagogical activities such as the reader’s theatre,
movie screenings, creative writing tasks, comics reading and drawing, etc. were used in the reading club.
In this paper, I will share teaching ideas and reading activities that make Shakespeare understandable and
enjoyable for ESL young readers.

Keywords: Shakespeare, lifelong learning, lifewide learning, multimedia pedagogy, reading club activities

Introduction
Four hundred years since his death, Shakespeare is still read, studied, performed and translated more
than any other writer in the world. His works transcend time – not only do they show English in its most
glorious form, but they also mirror contemporary issues we face today, such as love, fate, death, conflict,
betrayal, temptation, and morality. Most teachers and parents would agree that young learners should at
least have some basic knowledge of Shakespeare so that they would not find themselves ignorant of the
cultural icons, feeling isolated from society. However, because of the difficult vocabulary and unusual
language, teaching Shakespeare is not easy. Some English teachers make their students read
Shakespeare’s original plays in class and design compulsory homework for their English class; some
overzealous parents in Asia even force their children to memorize and recite famous quotes of his in
English. But rote-learning, drilling, and tedious reading exercises may daunt young learners. Learners
should choose for themselves what they want to read and learn. As Gardner (2008) puts it, ‘You can’t
force kids to love Shakespeare.’

One way of making Shakespeare palatable to young learners of different learning abilities is to bring down
the ‘high art’ (Frossard, 2012:1) of Shakespeare to the level of popular culture. To do so, first and
foremost, one should not insist on teaching Shakespeare’s works the way they were originally written and
performed. Rather, one can consider using the multimedia pedagogical approach. According to Gilakjani
(2012:58), the rationale and pedagogical values for using multimedia in class are as follows:

 To raise interest level – students appreciate (and often expect) a variety of media.
 To enhance understanding – rich media materials boost student comprehension for complex
topics, especially dynamic processes that unfold over time.
 To increase memorability – rich media materials lead to better encoding and easy retrieval.

To help the class over the difficult language of Shakespeare, teachers can start by introducing non-
traditional texts such as cartoons, comics, movies, animations, abridged versions, and even digital games
to motivate young learners. As Frossard (2012:16-17) remarks:

When students leave the classroom, they should leave with positive experiences —whether related to the
language of Shakespeare, the context of Shakespeare, or something else entirely — that will push them to
pursue a career of life-long learning. Through the use of non-traditional texts, such as graphic novels,
teachers can resolve the challenges of teaching Shakespeare in their own class. Whether students struggle
with engaging in the text, the difficult language, lack of time, or a learning disability, it is possible to
teach…Shakespeare in an exciting and meaningful way.

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Moreover, one can consider teaching Shakespeare beyond the classroom. Instead of forcing learners to
study the literary texts in the school setting, one can use Shakespeare as material for life-wide learning,
where experiential learning can take place in real contexts and authentic settings. It is also important for
the teacher to encourage life-long learning, which goes far beyond in-class tests and public examinations
in the formal education setting. It should stimulate learners’ interest, invoke their prior learning
experience, leave room for imagination, and encourage discussions that will be useful and meaning in the
rest of their lives.

Figure 1. Concepts of lifelong and lifewide learning (Jackson, 2014)

In this paper, I will share my experience of introducing Shakespeare to a group of child learners in the
English teens’ reading club in Hong Kong. I will illustrate how Shakespearean drama can be used to arouse
the reading interest of child learners. Then, I will also discuss how the reading club activities can also
promote life-wide learning skills such as art appreciation, creativity, and critical thinking. In the following, I
will first provide some background information regarding the English teens’ reading club and its club
members.

Background of Hong Kong Public Libraries’ English Teens’ Reading Club

The English teens' reading club, organized annually by the Hong Kong Public Libraries (HKPL), is a learning
platform for Hong Kong children and youth to share their love of reading and learn English language
through reading. At the moment, only seven major public libraries in Hong Kong will hold the English
teens’ reading club, which is usually held in spring each year. Registered club members will meet weekly
for one and a half hours during weekends. Participants who have an attendance rate of seventy-five per
cent or above will be awarded a certificate.

In March 2013, I was invited by the Leisure and Cultural Services Department of the Hong Kong
Government to conduct the English teens’ reading club at the Kowloon Public Library. Regular meetings
were held on four Sunday afternoons (from 2:30 pm to 4 pm). There were altogether twenty participants.
Most of them were primary school students aged nine to twelve. The participants’ mother tongue is
Cantonese, and English their second language. From the questionnaires collected before the reading club
sessions began, I noticed that almost all of the twenty local Cantonese participants of the reading club
came from traditional English grammar schools in Hong Kong, where all subjects, except the Chinese
language, were taught in English. Having started learning English language since kindergarten (at about
three years old), most participants were competent users of English. Most of them had no problem
reading simple English children’s books and they were able to express themselves in simple English, both
spoken and written. However, from my observation, English learning, to them, was not always enjoyable
because the English curriculum in school was filled with a great deal of homework, dictations, grammar

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tests, and exam-oriented drilling exercises. On the other hand, after school, many of them were sent to
tuition classes arranged by their parents. As a number of participants revealed, during their leisure time,
they preferred reading Chinese books, newspapers and magazines to English ones.

Despite the strenuous English drilling in school and tuition classes, among these twenty participants, only
a few said they had exposure to Shakespeare and his plays before coming to the reading club. Very few of
them can name any of Shakespeare’s plays apart from Romeo and Juliet. To my surprise, when I told them
the Chinese titles of Shakespeare’s plays, many realized that the selected texts were actually not totally
new to them. So to speak, the English learning environment beyond classroom may not be as supportive
as the Hong Kong parents and teachers believe it to be. English reading, to most children in the city, is
largely related to school work, assessment and exams. If we want to encourage a lifelong English reading
habit from their childhood, it is not sufficient to only teach them English grammar, vocabulary and
pronunciation in class. We need to arouse child learners’ reading interest and build a creative learning
environment that involves integrated skills outside the classroom and beyond language alone.

Text Selection
One problem in teaching Shakespeare to ESL young learners is that of remoteness. According to Parkinson
and Thomas (2000:11), ‘[t]exts can be remote from learners in all sorts of ways – historically,
geographically, socially and in terms of life experience’. With regards to the young learners’ limited
exposure to Shakespeare as well as the time constraints of the reading club, I selected some non-
traditional texts, such as comics, cartoons, movies and quick text versions to introduce Shakespeare to the
reading club members. Four Shakespeare’s best-known plays were chosen, each for one Sunday session:

1. Twelfth Night
2. A Midsummer Night’s Dream
3. Romeo and Juliet
4. Macbeth

For Twelfth Night, we used Appignanesi’s Manga Shakespeare (2010), which provides straightforward
visual experience to young learners. Since children nowadays are familiar with the visual media, using
texts of different media modes can engage child learners in learning Shakespeare immediately and
automatically. What is also good about the Manga Shakespeare series is that besides the comic
illustrations, original Shakespeare text is excerpted. For example, an excerpted monologue by Viola, the
female protagonist of Twelfth Night, can be found in Appignanesi’s manga version (2010: 68-69): ‘My
master loves her dearly, and I, poor monster, fond as much on him, and she, mistaken, seems to dote on
me. What will become of this? O time, thou must untangle this, not I! It is too hard a knot for me to untie.’
From my experience, such a combination of comics and texts can easily get young learners involved in
reading the actual text of Shakespeare.

For A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I used Shakespeare: The Animated Tales (1992). The fun and colourful
cartoon can visualize Shakespeare’s characters and enhance learners’ English listening skills. With the
shortened play in plain text, child participants of the reading club were able to follow the story even
though they had little to no experience in reading Shakespeare.

In the third reading session, we discussed Romeo and Juliet by using Baz Luhrmann’s William
Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet (1996), the modern film version starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire
Danes. This modern-day adaptation of Shakespeare’s best-known play not only allows young learners to
gain a better control over what is going on in the plot, but also bridges the gap between the original verse
in Romeo and Juliet and the real life, helping the ESL learners feel more at ease with Shakespearean
rhetoric as they further their studies later on.

As young learners had earned much positive and powerful learning experience from our reading club, in
the final club meeting, I used Macbeth the graphic novel: quick text version (2008). In the book, original
ideas of the play are covered but shortened and simplified for quick reading. The abridged English version
is suitable for both silent reading and reading aloud. In the reading club, children were instructed to
highlight and recite powerful lines with emotions after they listened to the quick text. With the recitation

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practice, the participants became more alert to repetition patterns and the variety of sentence lengths
and structures in Shakespeare’s dialogues and monologues.

Activating Background Information on Shakespeare

After selecting interesting texts for the reading club, I tried various teaching and learning methods to
motivate the young learners. I found that to arouse children’s interest, first, the teacher needs to help
them activate their general knowledge in the content area. Providing learners an introduction to
Shakespeare’s life and works is crucial, which can contextualize the reading. When I introduced the
background information about Shakespeare, I did not rely solely on plain texts. Instead, I showed the
young learners Shakespeare’s portrait, Shakespeare’s family tree, a map and a set of photos illustrating
Stratford-upon-Avon (Shakespeare’s hometown), photos of his birthplace, a timeline of Shakespeare’s life
and works, as well as photos and a video walking tour guide of the Globe Theatre in London.

Motivating Learners
To further encourage active learning, the teacher should also help learners see the point of reading,
realize how the reading is related to them as individuals, and learn how to develop new and creative ways
of looking at things. Learning can become effective if the teacher can instill knowledge through the four
kinds of knowing (Heron and Reason, 2001:183) below:

1. Propositional Knowing, the knowing of facts through ideas and theories. This kind of knowing is
also the commonest kind that occurs in traditional learning processes.
2. Experiential knowing, the knowing that takes place through the transformation of experience. As
Cantor (1997: 81) states, experiential knowing can be achieved as students make connections in
the process of learning and increase their compassion and empathy.
3. Presentational Knowing, the knowing that encompasses intuition and reflection, imagination and
conceptual thinking (Heron, 1992: 158). It reflects the ability to verbalize explicit knowledge and
represent tacit knowledge. The form of expression may not be limited to linguistic articulation
though. Other ‘expressive forms of aesthetics, such as drama, movement, story and dance’
(Murphy, 2001: 10) can also be included.
4. Practical Knowing, or ‘knowing ‘how to’ do something’, can be ‘expressed in a skill, knack or
competence’ (Heron and Reason, 2001: 183). It shows the learners’ ability to apply what they have
learnt to accomplish something. Through practical knowing, one puts something into action and
finds out how to do things better.

Noticeably, while propositional knowing can occur in the traditional classroom settings, the other three
kinds of knowing extend beyond the classroom and are best manifested in life-wide learning settings such
as the teens’ reading club. In the following, I will focus on how experiential knowing, presentational
knowing and practical knowing can be achieved through various pre-reading, while-reading, and post-
reading activities in the Shakespeare reading club organized by the public library.

Enhancing Experiential Knowing through Pre-reading Activities

Experiential knowing, as Reason and Bradbury (2007: 369) define, ‘is feeling engaged with what there is,
participating, through the perceptual process, in the shared presence of mutual encounter’. In the reading
club, experiential knowing started with the pre-reading activities. Before I introduced Shakespeare’s plays,
I first stimulated the child participants’ mind with open-ended questions that directed them to the main
topics in the play. For example, because a large part of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is about love,
dreams, fairies and magic, I encouraged conversations by putting young learners into small groups and
asking them to share with one another their views on:

 ‘love at first sight’;

 whether they think there could be a world of spirits and fairies that affect our daily lives;
 whether they believe that strange things would happen on some special days of the year, and
 whether they remember the dreams they had the previous night.

As participants expressed themselves freely on such familiar topics, they were also given the opportunity
to share their personal experiences with authentic feelings.

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Similarly, before I introduced Macbeth to the child learners, I set pre-reading tasks to help students
engage in and experience the main themes of the play. First, the young learners were invited to share
with one another scenarios which they might have come across – they were asked to share whether they
had experience getting away with doing something wrong, whether they felt lucky or guilty.

When all participants of the reading club had finished sharing their thoughts, I showed images from the
play of Macbeth to visualize the story and main characters. I then invited participants to describe
everything that they noticed about the images, which in turn supported comprehension for learners
whose linguistic comprehension was not native-like. Through happy sharing, the child learners were also
given a chance to construct descriptive points, verbalize and elaborate their ideas, as well as develop their
skills in using relevant vocabulary.

However, if the lesson/session does not allow sufficient time for the teacher to organize pre-reading
activities for the learners, the teacher can prepare a brief story map, a character tree, or simply a one-line
plot summary that catches learners’ attention, arousing their curiosity: e.g. Boy meets girl. Boy marries
girl. Boy and girl commit suicide (Romeo and Juliet).

Encouraging Presentational Knowing through While-reading Activities

Grounded on experiential knowing, presentational knowing, as Reason and Bradbury (2007:371) state,
can occur ‘non-discursively through visual arts, music, dance and movement, and discursively in poetry,
drama, and the continuously creative capacity of the human individual and social mind to tell stories’. In
the reading club, presentational knowing was achieved through drawing, role-play, and the reader’s
theatre.

In every reading session, I would allow child learners to watch the cartoon or movie adaptation of
Shakespeare’s play, especially the first act. They were also given silent reading time to read just the first
few pages of Manga Shakespeare or the abridged play. Then, when the child learners came to know more
about the beginning scenes, I encouraged them to summarize what they knew about the story and predict
what they believed would happen as the story continued. After the child learners had captured some
good ideas, they were invited to express their ideas by writing a short conversation between the main
characters and recite the lines in a role-play. For instance, in the session on Romeo and Juliet, children
were instructed to create a conversation between Juliet and Mrs. Capulet, her mother, who tells Juliet
that she must marry Paris. As for learners who preferred presenting their ideas through non-discursive
means, I encouraged them to draw four-box comics of what they thought would happen in the tomb
scene.

Besides role-play and comics drawing, I also encouraged presentational knowing and art appreciation
through the reader’s theatre. Fun scenes from Twelfth Night were excerpted and simplified, and child
learners, each assigned with a role, were taught to recite the character’s lines with meaning. Through the
reader’s theatre, participants brought Shakespeare’s characters to life. When the child recited Viola’s
lines, she used a feminine voice; when Viola cross-dresses as Cesario and talks with Countess Olivia, the
same child used a man’s voice, and all participants laughed and enjoyed the recitation. Meanwhile,
notions of English word stress, intonation, linking, even pauses, were also introduced to the child learners.

Promoting Practical Knowing through Post-reading Activities

Last but not least, to achieve practical knowing, the English teacher can help learners make connections
between Shakespeare’s works and their everyday experiences. For instance, before each reading club
session ended, I selected one part of the play that most reading club members found particularly
meaningful. Then, I encouraged everyone to write a short piece of creative writing to consolidate their
conceptual understanding. For the session on A Midsummer Night’s Dream, child learners were invited to
invent a magic potion. In the post-reading task, learners were instructed to describe the function of the
potion, together with its colour, smell, and other characteristics. To make the writing process even more
interesting, I also asked the participants to write a recipe of the magic potion they invented.

As for the session on Romeo and Juliet, I asked the young readers to write letters. One-third of the
participants were told they were Romeo and they were asked to write a love letter to Juliet. Another one-
third of the class pretended that they were Juliet and wrote a love letter back to Romeo. As for the rest of
the child participants, their writing task was to write an Agony Aunt advice letter to Romeo or Juliet.

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As the child learners worked on their writing tasks, they naturally put themselves in the shoes of
Shakespeare’s characters; at the same time, they improved their English language and critical thinking
skills. When all participants finished their writing task, I displayed all their letters on the board, gave
everyone some time to read over all the writing, and asked participants to leave comments, including
comments that suggested how the writer could improve his/her writing. Finally, the participants were
invited to vote for the letter they liked most. Through the creative writing and peer-assessment process,
child learners were encouraged to relate personal memories with the plays and look deeply into everyday
experiences, making learning meaningful and enjoyable.

Besides creative writing, the teacher may also consider wrapping up the reading club session with deep
reflection, true-to-life games such as hot-seating. For example, after sharing the story of Macbeth, I
wanted the reading club members to express their views freely. I then asked one child participant to
pretend that she was Lady Macbeth. Sitting around her, the rest of the learners took turns asking Lady
Macbeth questions, such as: ‘King Duncan trusted you and your husband so much. How could you kill
him?’ or ‘How did you feel when King Duncan died? Did you really feel happy?’ Through the hot-seating
game, learners felt even more deeply for the characters and they understood the main themes of the play
better. As Flachmann (1997: 61) notes, Shakespeare’s characters live in us, so ‘all we have to do to
understand them is find the very “human” objectives which motivates their actions and mark their kinship
with us as vivid, unique individuals in this world’. To arouse children’s reading interest, it may be more
important to spark curiosity and encourage involvement than to focus on thematic abstraction and
symbolic representation, especially at the initial stage.

Conclusion
English teachers often find Shakespeare difficult to teach because it is hard to make students see the fun
of reading the difficult language in the original plays. One way of helping young ESL learners is to teach
Shakespeare through manga, cartoons, films and abridgement versions beyond traditional settings and
approaches. The multimedia pedagogy can provide ‘a complex multi-sensory experience in exploring our
world through the presentation of information through text, graphics, images, audio and video’ (Gilakjani,
2012:57). Compared to using only one single medium, the multimedia pedagogical design presents ‘more
information at once’ (ibid), encourage ‘active processing’ (ibid.), and allows learners to use ‘more than
one representation to improve memory’ (ibid.). My teaching experience in the teens’ reading club has
shown evidence that multi-visual media and various fun but non-traditional reading activities can elicit
enthusiasm and intelligent responses from child learners, including those whose first language is not
English, and those who may not have learnt about Shakespeare previously.

Besides, affective dispositions, creativity, cultural literacy, and art appreciation can also be enhanced
among child learners as they shared their viewpoints and interpretations of Shakespeare’s plays and
characters. As my teaching experience in the reading club reflected, Shakespearean plays, when used
effectively, can be good materials for lifelong and lifewide learning.

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