Title: Copy That!

Author: Nicky Melville

Theme: Innovation & Creativity in Teaching

Learning by rote – copying, repetition, memorizing – is an outmoded style of education that is discouraged as a modern method of teaching. Yet, several of my class-based creative writing exercises arguably fall within this tradition. My innovative exercises are inspired by the writing considered in class, the majority of which is experimental writing, so-called, and reflect my own creative practice and published output. My research has helped me to realise that avant-garde writing is often not as ‘avant’ as all that. Contemporary ‘innovations’ can actually be found in old texts, from late-antiquity to late Middle Ages, for example. In this paper I will explore: 1) how certain experimental techniques are in fact nothing new, by looking at the work of the Roman poet Ausonius and Renaissance theologian Erasmus. Both of these writers employed the idea of copying, learning by rote, and 2) how modern learning objectives can be met using outdated techniques 3) how so-called experimental, difficult or avant-garde texts can expand the focus of learning to span hundreds of years, via centuries of inter-textuality, and thus demonstrate to students the value of ancient texts and the classics in a contemporary focused learning environment.