LITERATURE AS A MEANS OF TEACHING ENGLISH: A CRITICAL ASSESSMENT

Abstract

It is an acknowledged fact that literature serve as a popular technique for teaching both basic language skills (i.e. reading, writing, listening and speaking) and language areas (i.e. vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation) in the contemporary era. There are various reasons why literary texts are used in foreign language classroom. The main criteria for selecting suitable literary texts in foreign language classes are stressed in order to make the reader familiar with the underlying reasons and criteria for language teachers’ using and selecting literary texts. Moreover, literature and the teaching of language skills, benefits of different genres of literature (i.e. poetry, short fiction, drama and novel) to language teaching and some problems encountered by language teachers within the area of teaching English through literature (i.e. lack of preparation in the area of literature teaching in TESL / TEFL programs, absence of clear-cut objectives defining the role of literature in ESL / EFL, language teachers’ not having the background and training in literature, lack of pedagogically-designed appropriate materials that can be used by language teachers in a classroom context) are taken into account. In this way, the place of literature as a tool rather than an end in teaching English as a second or foreign language will be unearthed.