Lesson Plan for Teaching How to Write Using Secondary Academic Sources

One of the most challenging aspects for many college-level students writing about "Things Fall Apart" is finding a theme or idea to go with. As an experiement that I've used, I have constructed a research paper assignment on "Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe in which I give out the actual sources to be used. What is interesting about this lesson plan for "Things Fall Apart" is that 1) it utilizes scholarly journal articles, which for some students is a first-time experience, both in reading and comprehending and 2) Although all scholarly articles I gave them focused one particular theme, they offered one or more other ideas for students to run with. In short, the challenge associated with this lesson plan for "Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe is to make studetns think critically about otuside research sources they use. Far too often students look at the title of an article and attempt to summarized based off that alone. The main concept behind this lesson plan for "Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe is to encourage deeper readings of scholarly material and to formulate a thesis based on outside sources that doesn't take the most obvious route.

For this lesson plan on "Things Fall Apart" the focus then is on coming with an original thesis that somehow incorporates all of the articles given, but doesn't do so in a "list" fashion. Many of the papers that came back that didn't score very high for this assignment took this list approach and went through each article systematically, one by one, talking about something completely different. This lesson plan offers you the articles (in the form of an annotated bibliography, which can be part of your lesson plan, students need to know how to write them) and offers some thoughts on what good thesis statements might look like. For example, one general thesis for Things Fall Apart that is discussed in these articles revolves around the intersection of history and narrative in the novel and how these two forces both compliment one another and serve entirely different and sometimes opposing ends. Certainly, you must leave it up to your students to be creative. Also, it is not appropriate for this lesson plan on "Things Fall Apart" to make them have to write a certain amount of their paper about each article-just make sure the students have an understanding of the articles and can succinctly put these thoughts into words and a cohesive thesis.

The following are the annotated articles I use for this lesson plan.

Begam, Richard. "Achebe's sense of an ending: History and tragedy in Things..." Studies in the Novel 29.3 (1997), 396-411.

This article closely investigates the end of Things Fall Apart on both a textual/formalist basis as well as in terms of general African history. It examines the function of nationalism, both in the true historical context and how this context relates to Achebe's fictional world. Following this, the author seeks to tie together nationalist histories and the tragic form in a literary sense as he explores the ways Achebe seeks to write "a form of metahistory" (398). In other words, this article combines elements of history and literature as it "explores the intersection between narrative construction and colonial representation by focusing on an aspect of literary form that has received little attention in postcolonial studies-namely, the question of closure" (399).

Gikandi, Simon. "Chinua Achebe and the Invention of African Culture." Research in African Literatures 32.3 (2001), 3-8.

Although published in a scholarly jounral, this article employs first person to discuss some of the more general themes and meanings in Things Fall Apart. While the article's author clearly states that his motive for writing "is to call attention to an interesting phenomenon...on the role of literature in the making of African subjects" (4) he branches this thesis out and discusses how this book (as well as others) have shaped Western reader's ideas and images of what African culture is. He unravels this thesis through examples and cites how the symbol of the yam summarized these thoughts since"the yam was important to Igbo culture, not because of what we were later to learn to call use-value...but because of its location at the nexus of a symbolic economy in which material wealth was connected to spirituality and ideology and desire" (2). In short, he is suggesting that these "exotic" items and locales presented by Achebe shape a reader's understanding of Africa and African cultures in general.

Osei-Nyame, K. "Chinua Achebe Writing Culture: Representations of Gender and Tradition in Things Fall Apart." Research in African Literatures 30.2 (1999): 148

This article's thesis hinges on the intersection of gender and the Igbo culture as it is presented as a narrative in Things Fall Apart. As the article's author states, "the definition of tradition in Achebe's work hinges upon ideological conflict, it

Quayson, Ato. "Realism, criticism, and the disguises of both: A reading of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart..." Research in African Literatures 25.4 (1994), 117-136.

This article seeks to offer a critique of Things Fall Apart on two levels. First, the author presents a thorough review of the book so that the reader is refreshed on events that will be discussed later. The thesis of this is finally revealed as the author discusses the representation of women in Igbo society and how these depictions contribute but do not fully achieve a level of realism in the novel. Quayson states, "the representationalist readings that relate to the work are, though valid, grossly inadequate and it is preferable to adopt a multi-tiered approach to his work and to African literature in general that will not take them [women] as mimetic of an African reality" (118). Instead of seeing Things Fall Apart as a standard for the way women "really are" in African culture, one must look beyond Achebe's representation for the full truth.

Sengova, Joko. "Native identity and alienation in Richard Wright's Native Son and Chinua Achebe's Things..." Mississippi Quarterly 50.2 (1997), 327-351.

While this article explores Things Fall Apart in the light of another novel, it seeks to point out many ways in which people of African descent (or actual Africans) experience some level of displacement and discusses how characters in each novel cope with such isolation. At the heart of the author's thesis is the idea of how "society's denial of native status and identity with full citizenship...to the people of his community and background, leads to alienation and certain violent responses to it" (327). To highlight his points, he performs a complex analysis of the character Onkonkwo and looks at the ways his violent acts stem from the fact that he is ostracized and isolated.