Using literature in English teaching
...g. guessing the tenses or forms which are missed). A strategy designed to focus attention on the overall point or meaning of the story is to ask students to produce summaries of the text . The important thing is to limit a number of words which can be used during producing summaries and to indicate the most relevant points of the story. Otherwise, essays can be too long or to detailed and the most important facts can be omitted. Students can also rewrite the text in another style or register. It helps them recognize the discoursal patterns of texts and the styles appropriate to them ¡V the task could be for example to turn a lecture transcript into academic prose. The good idea is to make up an ending for the story, but these exercises are designed for advanced students. There is an apparent similarity between the methodological text of Ronald Carter and the second article written by Sandra McKay. At the beginning McKay points out two levels of linguistic knowledge: usage (knowledge of linguistic rules) and use (knowing how to use the rules in practice, for effective communication). The author writes that most present-day literary texts assume that literature can provide a basis for extending language usage , but it is also possible to find a perfect use of language in the text. McKay gives us some methods of discussing literary matters. Firstly, as far as the follow-up activity is concerned, it is a good idea to begin talking about the story (just after reading it) with asking comprehension questions. This exercise checks how the students understood what they had read (the questions are for example: ¡¥what did the character say when some event had happened¡¦, ;what is the main idea of the text¡¦ and so on). A second common activity is to use the text to promote language skills on the level of usage. Thus, the use of the present and past tenses might be explored. Students could be asked to underline all the verbs in the past tense, to list the irregular past tense verbs, and to explain why the present tense is used in some sentences. In terms of the language use (less frequent activity) students can list all the character¡¦s comments and then discuss why the character used words such as ¡¥Sir¡¦ or ¡§May I?¡¦. They can also guess what was the tone of the character¡¦s voice and how he could have behaved in some situations. It seems to the author that such tasks go much further toward promoting an interaction between the reader and the text than an exploration of the usage in the passage Fairytale for adults Children¡¦s literature has always been considered to be the easiest and the funniest one. Yet, this kind of texts represents models of good writing and illustrates the grammatical rules of the language. Emma Metcalf shows us three implications for using children¡¦s literature in the classroom. These are: ƒæ linguistic ¡V we can choose the text at any level of difficulty, style and type and adjust it to the readers. ƒæ methodological ¡V literary texts are open to multiple interpretation and therefore gives an opportunity to interaction between students. ƒæ motivational ¡V readings deal with matters that are non-trivial, close to our opinions and experience. The author of the article underlines the fact that children¡¦s literature is particularly good for teaching EFL to adults and gives the reasons for that. Firstly, the reader is usually familiar with the syntax and vocabulary which occurs in these texts. New structures are few and they are repeated several times so one can learn it automatically. Moreover, writers often make use of predictable plot features and develop our visual imagination. Metcalf concentrates mainly on the fairytales as they are well known in many different cultures. Secondly, fairytales are short, making them manageable to deal with in class: they are easy to prepare and students can finish reading the whole story . What could be done with the fairytale to use it in a best way? Apparently, lots of things. Discussing the fairytale, students can for example compare this traditional (original) one with the new version, indicate the differences and similarities. This method is called ¡¥parallel reading¡¦. Another type of reading is reading (listening is also possible if the teacher has got rhymes available on cassette) for detail ¡V students seek information in the text...