What is literature?
Literature is a term used to describe
written or spoken material. Broadly speaking, "literature" is used to
describe anything from creative writing to more technical or scientific works,
but the term is most commonly used to refer to works of the creative imagination,
including works of poetry, drama, fiction, and nonfiction. Literature
represents a language or a people: culture and tradition. But, literature is
more important than just a historical or cultural artifact. Literature
introduces us to new worlds of experience. We learn about books and literature;
we enjoy the comedies and the tragedies of poems, stories, and plays; and we
may even grow and evolve through our literary journey with books.
Why use Literature
in classroom?
Motivating
material: Literature exposes students to complex themes and fresh,
unexpected uses of language. A good novel or short story can take the students
to foreign countries and fantastic worlds. A play or a poem can bring up
certain dilemmas and powerful emotional responses. All this can be transposed
to their real lives.
Access
to cultural background: Literature can provide students with access to the
culture of the people whose language they are studying.
Encouraging
language acquisition: Obviously, at lower levels, students may be unable to
cope on their own with an authentic novel or short story in English. Any
extensive reading we encourage them to do outside the classroom would probably
need to be of graded material, such as graded readers. But at higher levels,
students may be so absorbed in the plot and characters of an authentic novel or
short story, that they acquire a great deal of new language almost in passing.
*If recorded literary material is available (audio-books), then students can
practice their listening skills.
Expanding
students’ language awareness: One of the debates centre around literature
teaching in the language classroom is whether literature language is somehow
different from other forms of discourse in that it breaks the more usual rules
of syntax, collocation and even cohesion. Using literature with students can
help them to become more sensitive to some of the overall features of English.
Some examples of different uses of English in literature are: - Bubbles gargled
delicately, bluebottles/Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell. (‘Death
of a Naturalist’, by Seamus Heaney). - Who died, Daddy?"/"Nothing,
Lisa," Jane told the child. "It's just big people's talk. Now eat
your egg up, sweetie." (An Answer from Limbo, by Brian Moore). - Unthrifty
loveliness, why dost thou spend/Upon thyself they beauty's legacy? (‘Sonnet 4’,
by William Shakespeare) - I was out one night on the strict teetote, /Cause I
couldn't afford a drain;/I was wearing a leaky I'm afloat,/ And it started to
France and Spain. (‘The Rhyme of the Rusher Doss Chiderdoss’, by A R Marshall).
Developing
students’ interpretative abilities: Literary texts are often rich in
multiple levels of meaning, and demand that the reader/learner is actively
involved in ‘teasing out’ the unstated implications and assumptions of the
text. Thus, by encouraging our students to grapple with the multiple
ambiguities of the literary text, we are helping to develop their overall
capacity to infer the meaning, and this can beapplied in real life.
Educating
the whole person: Apart from all the linguistic benefits, we cannot forget
the wider educational function of literature. It can help to stimulate the
imagination of our students, to develop their critical abilities and to
increase their emotional awareness. If we ask the students to respond
personally to the texts we give them, they will become increasingly confident
about expressing their own ideas and emotions in English.
