WHY SHOULD WE TEACH LITERATURE?

WHY SHOULD WE TEACH LITERATURE ?

autor Banias Ramona
a. Valuable authentic material

One of the main reasons might be that literature offers a bountiful
and extremely varied body of written material which is important in
the sense that it says something about fundamental human issues, and
which is enduring rather than ephemeral. Though its meaning does not
remain static, a literary work can transcend both time and culture
to speak directly to a reader in another country or a different
period of history. Literature is 'authentic' material. By that we
simply mean that most works of literature are not fashioned for the
specific purpose of teaching a language. Recent course materials
have quite rightly incorporated many `authentic' samples of
language- for example, travel timetables, city plans, forms,
pamphlets, cartoons, advertisements, newspaper or magazine articles.
Learners are thus exposed to language that is as genuine as can be
managed in the classroom context. Literature is a valuable
complement to such materials, especially once the initial 'survival'
level has been passed. In reading literary texts, students have also
to cope with language intended for native speakers and thus they
gain additional familiarity with many different linguistic uses,
forms and conventions of the written mode: with irony, exposition,
argument, narration, and so on. And, although it may not be confined
within a specific social network in the same way that a bus ticket
or an advertisement might be, literature can none the less
incorporate a great deal of cultural information.

b. Cultural enrichment
For many language learners, the ideal way to deepen their
understanding of life in the country where the target language is
spoken- a visit or an extended stay- is just not possible. Some may
start learning a language knowing that they are unlikely ever to set
foot in an area where it is spoken by the majority of the
inhabitants. For all such learners, more indirect routes to this
form of understanding must be adopted so that they gain an
understanding of the way of life of the country: radio programmes,
films or videos, newspapers, and, last but not least, literary
works. It is true of course that the 'world' of a novel, play or
short story is a created one, yet it offers a full and vivid context
in which characters from many social backgrounds can be depicted. A
reader can discover their thoughts, feelings, customs, possessions;
what they buy, believe in, fear, enjoy; how they speak and behave
behind closed doors. This vivid imagined world can quickly give the
foreign reader a feel for the codes and preoccupations that
structure a real society. Reading the literature of a historical
period is, after all, one of the ways we have to help us imagine
what life was like in that other foreign territory: our own
country's past. Literature is perhaps best seen as a complement to
other materials used to increase the foreign learner's insight into
the country whose language is being learnt.

c. Language enrichment
Language enrichment is one benefit often sought through literature.
While there is little doubt that extensive reading increases a
learner's receptive vocabulary and facilitates transfer to a more
active form of knowledge, it is sometimes objected that literature
does not give learners the kind of vocabulary they really need. This
objection to literature on the grounds of lexical appropriacy has
some validity, but it need not be an overriding one if teachers make
a judicious choice of the text to be read, considering it as a
counterpoise and supplement to other materials. On the positive
side, literature provides a rich context in which individual lexical
or syntactical items are made more memorable. Reading a substantial
and contextualised body of text, students gain familiarity with many
features of the written language- the formation and function of
sentences, the variety of possible structures, the different ways of
connecting ideas- which broaden and enrich their own writing skills.
The extensive reading required in tackling a novel or long play
develops the students' ability to make inferences from linguistic
clues, and to deduce meaning from context, both useful tools in
reading other sorts of material as well. In addition, a literary
text can serve as an excellent prompt for oral work. In all these
ways, a student working with literature is helped with the basic
skills of language learning. Moreover, literature helps extend the
intermediate or advanced learner's awareness of the range of
language itself. Literary language is not always that of daily
communication, but it is special in its way. It is heightened:
sometimes elaborate, sometimes marvellously simple yet, somehow,
absolutely 'right'. The compressed quality of much literary events
unfold, feeling close to certain characters and sharing their
emotional responses. The language becomes 'transparent' and so this
can have beneficial effects upon the whole language learning
process, as long as the reader is well-motivated, and as long as the
experience of engaging with literature is kept sufficiently
interesting and varied. Obviously, the choice of a particular
literary work will be important in facilitating this creative
relationship which the reader establishes with the text.

WHAT LITERATURE SHOULD WE TEACH ?

Teachers too often complain that their students do not read and this
is because students are very rarely accustomed to reading for
pleasure. They do not know how to read properly, why they should
read at all, what reading can give them. All these things are called
into question in a computer-dominated world. To read properly,
fully, with a deep and satisfying understanding of what a writer is
saying, is not an easily acquired ability, since it involves a whole
series of skills and capacities which go very far beyond the
traditional pupil's concept of reading. For a great many students to
read is to study. So, the reading that they do is limited in scope
and direction: it takes them as far as an examination, and very
often no further. The crisis of literature as a subject represents
only a small part of a universal cultural crisis because it is not
at all beyond the bounds of possibility that the next age will not
express itself in words. One solution to the problem may be given by
the teacher's having more faith in the extract, the representative
passage which, if carefully chosen, can stimulate students' interest
more than any long stretch of extensive reading. Therefore, a
sensible text selection, a theme-based approach, and a development
of interactional potentialities of texts can offer a valid and
practical solution to the problem.

Main Criteria of Selecting a Text
Much of the literature of the past can very usefully be recovered as
reading material for the present generation: the difficulty does not
lie in the literature, but in the methods and techniques used to
present it to the students.
a. Accessibility
To render a text accessible does not mean trivializing the text or
compromising it. Simply, it means finding the correct and apposite
point of entry for present-day students into texts which are not at
first sight directly relevant or interesting to them. Students enjoy
finding out how things work, they are taught how to read a passage
to see how it is constructed, to find out quickly the gist of text
how to bring out information from what they are reading.
Accessibility depends more on how the reading text is presented than
on any of the multiplicity of linguistic and cultural factors which
may render it inaccessible. Students will often react negatively to
a text because they have been understandably daunted by its
register, its syntax, unknown vocabulary, the culture gap-all blocks
which make it infinitely easier for a learner to give up on a text
than to make it thorough to the end. Therefore accessibility very
much depends on making the student capable of getting through the
text to the end. Listening while reading the text is very likely to
dispel the feeling that this kind of reading is somehow a variant on
reading comprehension: it is clearly neither listening comprehension
nor reading comprehension, simply the presentation of a text. In
addition, listening while reading means students have to follow the
text through to the end or to a stopping point determined by the
teacher. It also has the inestimable virtue of demonstrating to the
students that they can get through a text which, in other
circumstances, might have seemed inaccessible. Accessibility is
increased by careful instruction as to what the students should do
with the text. The students gain a great deal of confidence if they
can a)get through to the end of the text, then b)do the task, or
answer the question, set on it. So the readers must be clear from
outset what they have to do with this text: find the names of the
characters, decide where it is set, work out relationships, etc.
Basic "wh-" questions (who, where, what, and possibly-but usually
more problematic-why ) give the simplest and most basic of such
stimuli. Clearly the context in which any text is presented will
also have a lot to do with its accessibility to students. A text
must be seen as part of a course, or relevant to a subject under
discussion, rather than just produced out of the blue without any
clear point of reference.

b. Difficulty
It is very often asserted that literature is the province of only
upper-intermediate and advanced students who are felt more able to
cope with this kind of texts. However, students of all levels can do
that under certain circumstances. If the text is designed as reading
comprehension, it should be carefully attuned to the level of the
course the students have reached, probably stretching the learner a
little in terms of vocabulary, but giving them the possibility of
answering the questions which follow the passage. Literary
texts-purpose-written, simplified, or authentic-can be, and
frequently are, used for reading comprehension, although, especially
in ESP, the texts are likely to be more useful in the development of
reading skills if they contain some element of focus on the
students' specialization.