Using Literature in the Language Classroom: An Integrated Approach

Carol Griffiths, Turkey

Dr Carol Griffiths has been a teacher, manager and teacher trainer of ELT for many years. She has taught in many places around the world, including New Zealand, Indonesia, Japan, China, North Korea and UK. She currently works as Associate Professor in the ELT Department at Fatih University in Istanbul, Turkey. She has also presented at numerous conferences and published widely, including her books Lessons from Good Language Learners and The Strategy Factor in Successful Language Learning. E-mail: carolgriffiths5@gmail.com. Website: www.carolgriffiths.net

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Introduction
Issues with using literature in the language classroom
Conclusion
References

Introduction

When considering using literature in the language classroom, we need first of all to ask: what is literature? As Lazar (1993, p.5) points out, “there is considerable controversy” about the answer to this question. The word derives from the Latin literare, meaning to write, and it came into English via the French lire, meaning to read. In its broadest sense, then (if we do not, for now, include oral literature, which takes us into a rather different domain), literature is anything which has been written and which can, therefore, be read. It can, therefore, technically be applied to anything graphic, from the graffiti written on subway walls, to proverbs, riddles, newspaper or magazine articles, short stories, novellas, novels, poetry (including songs), drama (including TV and movies), and all the variations of these genres. The question of whether it is “good” literature or not is a value judgement which rests with the individual.

As for the question of why we should use literature in the language classroom, there are a number of possible reasons which might be given. Firstly, literature is a bottomless resource: it is unlikely that any one individual could ever read all the available literature in one lifetime, meaning that literature can provide a limitless bank of material on which the teacher can draw. Literature is motivating (Ghosn, 2002): everybody loves a story, and learners who are caught up in a narrative will absorb language implicitly in a way that the same language would have been “boring” if presented in a vocab list or as a grammar exercise in a text book. It can expand vocabulary, knowledge of idiomatic usage and provide a model of how the language is really used. And, very importantly, it provides cultural background and helps to develop intercultural sensitivity (Collie and Slater, 1987).

From a teacher’s point of view, a lesson based on a literary work can provide an integrated approach to language development which few other approaches can match. A piece of literature can be used to develop all four skills as well as language awareness.

• Speaking in an unfamiliar language can cause a great deal of anxiety (e.g. Gkonou, 2014). Speaking skills can be developed by means of selecting a topic associated with the subject of the chosen piece of literature and getting students to discuss in pairs or small groups. This can be done at the beginning of the lesson as a “warm up” to introduce the theme and activate background knowledge; or at the end as a way of drawing the topic to a close; or at any appropriate place during the lesson.
• Listening: There are a number of ways that listening skills might be promoted (e.g. Vandergrift, 2003). One way might be to find some information about the author of the chosen literature and read this to the students before starting the literature itself. Questions can be true/false or short answer (the latter being more demanding), and the questions can be given to the students before they listen or they may be required to listen first and then answer questions (again, the latter is more demanding and memory-dependent). Alternatives might include reading part of the literary piece before the students receive the full text and asking questions on that. Another option might be to select part of the literary text or a related text and removing some of the words to create a cloze-type activity which students fill in while it is being read. The reading to which the students listen may be by the teacher, or recorded from an electronic source, or by some native speaker if one is available and considered desirable. One way or another, the important thing is that students should not be given the full written listening text before they hear it, as otherwise it becomes more of a reading activity.
• Reading: As with the other skills, there is more than one way of approaching the reading section of the lesson (e.g. Grabe and Stoller, 2011). One way is for the teacher to read the text aloud and for the students to listen. This gives the students extra listening practice and allows the teacher to pause for explanation at various points that s/he might think necessary. This option may, however, be hard on the teacher’s voice. Another way is for the students to do at least some of the reading. Some students may be nervous about this, but others may be very happy and enjoy the opportunity for some extra pronunciation practice. The important thing with this option is that any “mistakes” are dealt with sensitively and in such a way as not to cause embarrassment. Alternatively, students can read silently, which removes the opportunity for extra aural/oral practice, and also presents the problem that students read at different speeds, so it can be difficult to know when the class is ready to move on to the next activity. Which of these is more suitable for a particular class or occasion is a matter for the teacher’s professional judgement and inclinations based on knowledge of the students.
• Writing is often best done for homework unless there is class time available or the teacher has some particular purpose for doing it in class, such as observing and helping students as they write, being certain that it is the student’s own work, or teaching students to observe strict time limits (especially important for those preparing for major exams). Options for the writing task might include writing a different ending for the story, imagining what happens beyond the end of the current story, or, perhaps, carrying out some research into some aspect of the literary piece (e.g. Hyland, 2016).
• Comprehension: In addition to the four skills, literature can provide a way of developing language awareness, among which the ability to comprehend the new language is among the most important. It can be reasonably easy to write comprehension questions on a given text, and question types can range from the simple true/false/not given formula, to short answer, to longer answers. Especially with higher level students, teachers should try to avoid basing all questions on material directly stated in the text and aim for questions which require some inferencing on the part of the student; in other words, they have to think about the underlying meaning as well as what is on the surface of the text (Hu and Nassaji, 2014).
• Vocabulary development is often considered the most important aspect of language development, and it is beyond doubt that a large vocabulary is a major asset (e.g. Nation, 2008). Because of this, it is impossible to ignore the potential provided by a literary text for lexical expansion. A teacher will usually have a fairly good idea of the lexical items in a given text that students will find difficult, and these can be chosen and targeted for attention. Opinions vary over whether it is better to deal with the chosen vocabulary items before or after reading. If it is done before, it prepares the students for the text, which may then be easier for them to understand. At the same time, it can be useful to leave some unfamiliar words and get the students used to using context to infer the meaning, which is, in itself a useful skill. There is probably no right/wrong answer to this issue. Maybe a teacher should sometimes do one, sometimes the other to add variety to the approach, and to expose students to whatever benefits there may be from both approaches. Options for exercise types might include finding synonyms or antonyms, synonym matching, writing sentences using the chosen word so that the meaning is clear, and so on.
• Pronunciation: For some reason, although there is general agreement that pronunciation is important (e.g. Brown, 2008), it tends to remain near the bottom of the language teacher’s list of priorities, and is often simply neglected or forgotten. And yet beyond a doubt, the ability to pronounce a language clearly and intelligibly is important (e.g. Jenkins, 2000). As such, teachers should avail themselves of the opportunity presented by literature to focus at least a little on pronunciation. First it is necessary to identify items in the text that students are likely to have trouble with. These items may be the same as those in the vocabulary list, or they may be different. A clear model of the pronunciation needs to be provided, either by the teacher or from some other, perhaps pre-recorded source. Drilling may then be an option. A knowledge of phonetic script can also be very useful when trying to explain sounds. But teachers should be aware that that there may not always be just one “correct” pronunciation. There is, of course, the well-known British/American (banana/tomato etc.) divide, but also there are other words (such as “either”) that do actually have alternative pronunciations. Furthermore, students may not actually want to sound “native”, since this may conflict with their own sense of identity (e.g. Soruç and Griffiths, 2015). They may be happy to settle for being able to make themselves understood. All of these issues are for the teacher to judge based on his/her knowledge of the students involved.
• Grammar: Finally, a literary text can be used for grammar. The importance of grammar has been disputed over the years, and has sometimes been treated as the “Cinderella” of language teaching (Oxford and Lee, 2007), but in general, the importance of grammar in target language development is well recognized (e.g. Ellis, 2006). Probably the best way here is for the teacher to focus on something the class has been working on and to use the language in the text to construct exercises which require the student to manipulate the language to suit the target grammar. If the class has been working on past perfect, for instance, the teacher can write sentences with gaps which require the student to use verbs from the text in the required form. A similar procedure can be followed with adjectives which can be extracted from the text and written as comparatives or superlatives, and so on. Since these words are taken from a text that the student has hopefully enjoyed, it is to be hoped that such an exercise would be more meaningful than exercises just taken from a textbook without the associations that a literary text can provide.

In fact, the potential for using literature in the language classroom is limited only by the teacher’s imagination in view of his/her knowledge of the students, the student’s own preferences, and the time available

Issues with using literature in the language classroom

There are, nevertheless, a number of issues which need to be considered when thinking about the use of literature to teach language. These include:

• Simplification: There are now many examples of simplified texts available and opinions vary regarding how acceptable it may be to take, for instance, a novel, simplify the language and reduce its length. Certainly, simplification destroys the authenticity of the original, but, while it is undoubtedly better for learners to read the original, sometimes the original is difficult even for native speakers (e.g. Shakespeare, Dickens). As with many debates in this field, there is no right/wrong answer here. Obviously, the original is best. At the same time, there are some very good graded readers these days, and there are a number of top publishers who provide what many consider to be excellent simplified versions of longer and more difficult texts, and these can provide an easy entry point, especially for reluctant readers, who sometimes then go on to get “hooked” on reading. Certainly, it is better for learners to read a simplified version than to read nothing.
• Metalanguage: Experts disagree regarding the degree to which literary metalanguage (alliteration, onomatopoeia etc.) is useful or necessary. Again, there is probably no clear answer to this issue, except to observe that an awareness of, say alliteration, can help learners realize why a line like “While I nodded, nearly napping” (from “The Raven”, by Edgar Allan Poe) is memorable, when, if Poe had written “While I dozed, half-asleep” it would not have had the same impact, or have echoed down the years as it has. Analysis of metalanguage, however, should not be allowed to interfere with the meaning or the sheer fun of a poem or other piece of literature.
• Translation: It is a fact that many of the stories that English speakers read, often from an early age, were not originally written in English. Examples of this include Aesop’s and La Fontaine’s fables, the stories by Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm, novels by Leo Tolstoy, Jules Verne, Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo, Miguel De Cervantes, Boris Pasternak, Amy Tan, Jung Chang, Orhan Pamuk and many others. Does this mean that they should not be included in an “English” classroom? Again, there is, perhaps, no straightforward right or wrong answer to this question. The decision about which literature to include or avoid will probably depend a lot on the students in any given class. It might be, for instance, that a class with many Chinese students might enjoy an English translation of Amy Tan’s “The Joy Luck Club”. Then again, they might want a story which would expand their knowledge of English culture, and prefer to read Amy Tan in their own language. This is a decision that only the teacher on the spot can make based on his/her knowledge of the students involved.
• Copyright: The issue of copyright is a thorny one. The fact is that literature was written by somebody, and that “somebody” or the publisher actually owns it. We should perhaps, always try to remember how long writing takes and to behave ethically towards what writers produce.

Conclusion

As this article has attempted to demonstrate, there are many ways in which literature can be used in the language classroom, and a bottomless pool of literary resources on which to draw. If used judiciously, literature can be motivating, it can greatly expand language ability and cultural awareness, and, perhaps as important as anything else, it can be fun which in turn drives motivation and ongoing language development.

Over the next number of issues of HLTmag, a series of ready-made lessons based on literature will be presented. It is hoped that these lessons will provide an accessible source of material for busy teachers, that they will contribute to learners’ language development in an integrated fashion, and, at least as importantly, that they will be fun

References

Brown, A. (2008). Pronunciation and good language learners. In C. Griffiths (Ed.), Lessons from Good Language Learners (pp.197-207). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Collie, J. & Slater, S. (1987). Literature in the Language Classroom: A Resource Book of Ideas and Activities. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press

Ellis, R. (2006). Current issues in the teaching of grammar: An SLA perspective. TESOL Quarterly, 40/1, 83-107.

Ghosn, I. (2002). Four good reasons to use literature in primary school ELT. ELT Journal, 56/2, 172-179

Gkonou, C. (2014). The sociolinguistic paramaters of L2 speaking anxiety. In M. Pawlak, J. Bielak & A. Mystkowska (pp.15-32), Classroom-Oriented Research. Heidlberg: Springer

Grabe, W. & Stoller, F. (2011). Teaching and Researching Reading (2nd edition). Harlow: Pearson Longman

Hu, H. and Nassaji, H. (2014). Lexical inferencing strategies: The case of successful versus less successful inferencers. System, 45, 27-38

Hyland, K. (2016). Teaching and Researching Writing (3rd edition). New York: Routledge

Jenkins, J. (2000). The phonology of English as an international language. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Lazar, Gillian (1993) Literature and Language Teaching: A guide for teachers and trainers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Nation, I.S.P (2008). Teaching Vocabulary: Strategies and Techniques. Boston, USA: Heinle

Oxford, R. & Lee, K. (2007). L2 grammar strategies: the second Cinderella and beyond. In A.Cohen & E. Macaro (Eds), Language Learner Strategies, (pp.117-140). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Soruç, A. & Griffiths, C. (2015). Identity and the spoken grammar dilemma. System, 50, 32-42.

Vandergrift, L. (2003). Orchestrating strategy use: Towards a model of the skilled language listener. LanguageLearning 53/3, 463-496

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