TEACHING LITERATURE

In Romania, as in many other countries around the world,literature has a high status.
Consequently, many students mayexperience a sense of achievement at using material which
is highlyvalued, particularly by native speakers of English. When the studentshave some
knowledge about the Romanian literature, studying someEnglish literature can provide an
interesting and thought-provokingpoint of comparison.
English literature can provide our students with access to theAnglo-Saxon culture. However,
the relationship between a culture and its literature is debatable, since literature cannot be seen
asfactual or as a realistic documentation of society. And yet, students doacquire cultural
knowledge from reading literature. Reading literaturein English raises the students awareness
of the social, political andhistorical events which form the background to a particular
literarytext.
Some teachers express concern that in reading literature, studentsare exposed to uncommon
vocabulary and unusual uses of languageand wonder whether literary language illustrates the
usual rules ofsyntax, collocation and cohesion. It is true that in literary texts, theusual rules
and patterns that we are trying to teach may be broken orbent by some authors.
In Romania, students have fairly limited access to spoken English,and much of their language
acquisition is stimulated by the writtenword. In this respect, literature provides meaningful
contexts forprocessing and interpreting new language. While reading a literarytext, the
students encounter unfamiliar vocabulary. As they are listeningto the text either read aloud by
the teacher or recorded on cassette,they may be able to formulate guesses as to the meaning of
newwords.
Literary texts are often unclear or ambiguous, and demand thereaders active involvement in
discovering hidden implications andassumptions. That is why literature may be seen as a
source ofmaterial used for developing students abilities to infer meaning and tomake
interpretations.
Besides the linguistic benefits of using literature, we may alsothink of its wider educational
function. Literature stimulates the studentsimagination; it helps to develop their critical
faculties and increasestheir emotional awareness.
Literature is also a valuable source of material, since it providesuseful opportunities for
helping your students to develop their readingskills, both intensive and extensive. Literary
materials can also beused to encourage the students to increase their vocabulary and to
stimulate their writing.
As many literary texts are rich in meanings, language andmessage, they can be effectively
used in promoting activities wherethe students need to share their feelings and opinions, such
asdiscussions, role-plays, group and pair work.
Teaching Context
Students needs
Before deciding whether it is appropriate to teach literature toyour students, you need now to
look more closely at your teachingcontext. Your decision about teaching literature will depend
on theneeds of your students and the type of syllabus you have to follow.
First you need to identify your students needs closely so as toassess whether using literature
will help them to meet their needs.
The syllabus

You may also need to have another look at the syllabus andyour timetable. How flexible is the
syllabus? Can you add to it? Doyou have enough time to add to the syllabus? Does the
syllabusalready include literature? If it does, do you have any choice as towhat literature to
teach? Do your students have to pass an exam at theend of the year or study cycle? Is there a
literature component in thatexam?
If you think of giving literature as extensive reading to be doneat home, ask yourself how
much available time the students have tostudy on their own. They may have very little time
available to do anyextra studying or reading. It may be more practical to confine anyliterature
teaching to classroom study and to short poems or literaryextracts.
The Selection of Literary Material
After you have clarified what the needs of your students are andwhat the syllabus allows you
to do, you may wish to consider theselection of material. There are two categories of criteria
used inexamining closely the materials for classroom use: (a) those referring
to the students and, (b) those related to the material itself.
a) student-related criteria
After considering the needs of your students (their overall goals inlearning English, their
linguistic weaknesses, their linguistic andaffective needs), you need to look at some more
detailed criteria forchoosing materials:
students age: Is the material chosen appropriate to the age ofyour students?
students interests: Are the themes or the topic of the text likely tofit in with the interests of
your students?
students intellectual maturity: Are your students intellectuallymature enough to cope with
the issues and dilemmas raised ina particular text?
students emotional maturity: How far will your students be able torespond to the feelings
or emotional complexities expressed ina particular text? Is the text likely to stimulate your
studentsinvolvement?
students linguistic ability: How advanced are your students? Istheir language ability
sufficient to cope with the text?
students literary competence: To what extent are the studentsalready familiar with certain
literary conventions? How much ofthis kind of knowledge do they need to cope with the text
youhave chosen?
students cultural background: How far will the students culturalbackground and their
social expectations help or hinder theirunderstanding of a text? How much of this background
will youhave to supply?
students motivation: To what extent are your students likely to bemotivated by studying a
particular text?
b) text-related criteria
When examining a text for its suitability, bear in mind thefollowing questions:
length: How long is the text? Do you have enough time to workon it with the students? Will
they be discouraged if the text is toolong or too demanding? Can you use only sections of the
text?How much background information is needed to make thechosen text comprehensible to
your students?
language: How difficult is the language in the text? Will yourstudents be able to cope with
it? To what extent is the language ofthe text deviant from the usual rules of English? Are your
studentsfamiliar with these rules so as to be able to analyse the effectthe deviances produce?

 exploitability: What kinds of activities or tasks can you deviseto exploit a text? Are these
likely to be interesting and useful toyour students? Can you devise activities similar to those
yourstudents are familiar with? Are there other resources (e.g. videofilm) from which the
students can view selected episodes or librarymaterials providing information about the
author?
syllabus fit: Is the text likely to fit in with the rest of yoursyllabus?
genre: What kind of genre will work best with your students poetry, fairy tales, drama,
stories?Your choice will be determined by the amount of time availableand the level of the
students. Students at lower levels can be encouragedto borrow graded readers from the library.
At higher levels you could use authentic texts.
Teaching Literature
During the reading of literature, like during the reading of anykind of text, the readers make
sense of what they read by decodingthe linguistic items (lexical and grammatical) and relating
thisinformation to what they already know the background information,acquired through
ones experience of the world. If the readerslinguistic knowledge is weak at any point, they
will compensate by drawing on background knowledge, and vice versa. During thereading
process the readers try to give the text a coherentinterpretation, making predictions and
searching for confirmations orrejections. What they bring to the text is as important as what
theyfind in it. The following principles of teaching literature attempt tocapture these insights
into reading:
activate existing background knowledge
Relate the content of the text to the students own culturalexperiences. This can be done as a
pre-reading activity, when studentsreflect on and discuss what they already know about the
topic of theliterary text. This helps them to relate what they read to what isalready familiar
and known to them.
encourage prediction
Allow the students to formulate hypotheses about the text beforereading begins. This helps
them utilise the background information they possess and arouses their interest in the text. It
does not matterif the predictions are incorrect as long as they are alert to whatfollows in the
text to see whether it matches their expectations.
fill in the background knowledge where it is missing
Make explicit presentations of the cultural, historical, and/orsocial context of the text.
explain the genre of the text
Explain what genre the text belongs to and the discoursestructure of the text, if necessary.
This may be a novel, a play, apoem, etc., and it may be organised as a description or as
anargument, etc.
assist word and sentence-level comprehension
You can do this using vocabulary exercises, glossaries, etc.
put the text together again
After you have discussed or analysed bits of it return to the textas a whole.
Ideas of activities used for teaching literature.
Pre-reading Activities

The aims of the pre-reading activities are to provide the studentswith any necessary
background information to understand the textbetter and to stimulate their interest. Here are a
few ideas for pre-reading activities:
Ask the students to write or tell their own stories from the title andthen compare these with
the actual story in the text.
Ask the students to recall the main points of a text previously readso that they can compare it
with a new text as they read it.
Let the students build free associations around an important wordin a text, and write down
as many words connected with it thatthey can think of. As they read the text, they can tick off
thewords that appear.
Organise a discussion of controversial (true/false) statementsabout the theme or topic of the
text, etc.
While-reading Activities
This type of activities increases the students confidence andinterest while they read the text.
Such activities may consist of:
listening to an accompanying recording of the same text;
providing notes about difficult vocabulary or unexplainedcultural information to which
students can refer while reading, etc.
While-reading activities can also assist students with basicunderstanding of the text. These
can take various forms:
Comprehension questions about the contents of the text. Thesecould be also true/false
questions, multiple choice questions orwh- questions.
The text can be divided into sections and the students are askedto answer comprehension
questions about each section beforethey move on to the next section.
Students are provided with two or three brief summaries of a text,and have to decide which
one is the most appropriate.
Students complete a map or diagram showing the events in thetext, etc.
Post-reading Activities
These activities are meant to encourage students to express theirown opinions and personal
responses to what they have read. Theymay also provide fluency practice. Such activities may
be:
simulations or role-plays in which the students take the part ofcharacters in the text they
have read, and interview each otheror improvise scenes from the book;
students discussing statements arising from the issues or themesin the text, etc.
Other post-reading activities may exploit the literary text tostimulate the students creative
writing abilities:
students write a few paragraphs about what happens after a poemor short story has ended;
students rewrite the story or poem in a different style e.g. as if itwere a paragraph from an
autobiography, etc.
Other post-reading activities have as goal to familiarisestudentswith new or difficult
vocabulary in the text:
Students match words or phrases in the text with their dictionarydefinitions;
Students match words in a text with a list of their opposites;
Students are divided into groups. Each group has a different list ofwords from the text, for
which they have to find the meaning byusing dictionaries. The groups then explain these
words to eachother, etc.

In spite of the little attention given to the teaching of literature inthe textbooks on the
international market, literature has always been recognised as an effective tool in learning
English in this country.Literature represents valuable authentic material whichprovides for the
more subtle and meaningful learning in depth of aforeign language. Literary texts, on the
other hand, represent a valuable source of civilisation knowledge. The very nature ofliterature
with its ambiguity can provide a stimulus for expressingdifferent opinions. In literature there
is no correct solution to howyou experience a text, and a class discussion will be
genuinecommunication.