Cognitive teaching model: cognitive framework for teaching literature

Abstract

Twenty first century is regarded as the age of telecommunication, digital technology and globalization. Traditional teaching methods and strategies are considered as inappropriate to meet the challenges of the today s' world. Therefore, the educationists throughout the world are emphasizing the need for redesigning teaching methods. Today the major of the education is to prepare the learners to process information, organize it, and solve the real world problems. Learners are prepared to think about the innovative ways of generating and managing the resources. The present paper combines literary studies and cognitive learning psychology. It illustrates the cognitive teaching model which is designed in accordance with the information processing model of human cognition and Bloom's (1956) ranking of thinking skills. It also incorporates tools and techniques for nurturing creative thinking such as defamiliarization, PMI, advance organizer and other visuals. The paper attempts to explore how the cognitive teaching model can facilitate the students of English literature with English as their second language to comprehend the text and generate creative response to it. The model takes literary texts as tool which can be used to enhance students' cognitive processing. It systematically helps learners to choose, process, and organize information in order to generate multiple solution to the problems they are given.