The Call of Ecology in Canadian Teenage Fiction. A Project for School (PDF)

Academic Paper from the year 2019 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Miscellaneous, University of Marburg, language: English, abstract: While picking up foreign languages teenagers all over the world are directly (or indirectly) confronted with environmental issues.
Ecological matters and problems are not only presented and discussed in non-fictional but also in fictional texts, a clear hint at their relevance. It is here where personal interests, experience and expectations often meet with a high emotional energy which supports language learning.
The use of environmental issues in teenage fiction can be regarded to be a positive by-¬product of reading in the sense of a further motivation or a challenge to reflect fixed and traditional attitudes.
One consequence from this is what some critics consider to be 'ethic thinking' or an 'option of kids' participation of their own opinions, attitudes or value systems' all of which are focused on something which is seen as environmental learning in the widest sense of the word (see movement Fridays For Future started by Greta Thunberg).
Books for early learners can be seen as starting points for this development and the confrontation with these problems in teenage fiction is one form of introduction into ecological learning.
Pupils between 12 and 13 years of age already dispose of an attitude in connection to environmental issues and to discover, discuss and present them in a literary Canadian context can be considered to be a further motivation for their future reading habits.
To choose a book set in the region of the Vancouver Islands is based against this background. The work will be done with the help of several projects which accompany the analysis of The Secret of Whispering Island simply because of the higher motivation for the students involved. The work will first be done in individual web quest work which is accompanied by group work and an exchange of selected material. The projects themselves are based on given questions (2 - 3) which should help students to focus on specific matters.
It is also important to leave it open to students what the output of their results will look like. The range here includes posters for presentations, power point presentations, essays, newspaper articles or the option of a website. In short students here should / could be creative.