modeling practice

This research shows a diagnosis of teaching methods of poetry writing used by teachers at some high schools in Mexico City. At the initial stage of this research, teachers of three different types of high schools were given a questionnaire using Google Forms. This included general questions regarding the teachers´ working conditions, their literary preferences, the sections in their Study Programs containing the subject matter of study, and the activities and methods used for the writing of poetry. The results were analyzed with the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). It was found that within the Study Programs of three different types of high schools, poetry is approached studying its essential characteristics: the fundamental interaction of form and content, its rhetorical figures, its contrast with others genres, appreciation, analysis and criticism of texts, but a specific systematic method for the teaching of writing of this genre is missing. Only two study programs included a small section for poetic writing but was not systematic and it did not had specific activities. Therefore, didactic sequences of poetic writing are proposed progressively so that students develop the ability to write poems practically and consecutively. Teachers can create variations of them either in terms of structure or in the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Each one of the sequences is based on a poetic resource such as alliteration, epithet, metaphor, comparison, among others with the purpose that students can create their own texts and at the same time consciously be aware of some of the resources that are used when writing poetry . It is proposed that the writing exercises be done first and later on the teacher explain the concept of the poetic resource that were used to compare it with the finished product. What is intended is that the student does not learn the concept of the resources used in isolation and without meaning, but with the modeling in practice they can better understand and assimilate each concept. The sequences are based on the use of videos, audios, programs or specific applications that young people use in their daily lives.

In this paper, I regard generative literature as a model-object from the perspective of Mahr and Erdbeer’s application of model theory in order to give insight into the functioning of generative literature as well as further specify the new research focus of literary model theory (Erdbeer 2014). Through the modelling practice of literature generators, own preconceptions of what literature is (supposed to be), are projected. In its algorithmic writing, generative literature mimics intention-typical literature while at the same time destabilizing its very foundations. Through multiple short case study analyses, I outline (1) how generative literature self-reflexive in the sense that it is a model of literature, (2) how literary models change due to practices in generative literature and (3) how temporality is modelled in generative literature.

(Source: Abstract ICDMT 2016)