Category — Advanced Students

Without a knowledge of the Declaration of Independence and its ideals, students have little hope of understanding American rhetoric and literature. Provide your advanced students with the opportunity to read the Declaration of Independence and debate its ideals.

(My opinions on the importance–and pitfalls–of teaching English and American culture from source documents are forthcoming and will be linked here.)

Skill Level:
Advanced students.

Materials Needed:
Individual copies of the Declaration of Independence for each students.
I’ve uploaded a bilingual English-Chinese copy of the Introduction & Preamble to the Declaration of Independence in .pdf format. Please feel free to use it in your class.
I found it to be very helpful to let the students refer to the translation for words they couldn’t find in their dictionaries; you may want to consider providing a translated copy for your students. [Read more →]