Approaches to Using

Literature with The Language

Learner

Approaches Used

A language-based

Literature as content

Literature for personal

enrichment

A language – based Approach

Studying the language of the literary text will help to integrate the language and literature syllabuses more closely. Detailed analysis of the language of the literary text will help students to make meaningful interpretations or informed evaluations of it. At the same time, students will increase their general awareness and understanding of English. Students are encouraged to draw on their knowledge of familiar grammatical, lexical or discoursal categories to make aesthetic judgements of the text.

Methodological Assumption

Selection and Organisational of material

Material is chosen for the way it illustrates certain stylistic features of the language but also for its literary merit

A language – based ApproachGoals How to use literature for

language practice

Literary texts

Resources

Provides stimulating language activities

A language – based ApproachOffer a wide

range of styles

&registers

Multiple interpretation

Excellent opportunity

for classroom discussion

Focus on genuinely interesting & motivating topics to explore

ADVANTAGES

A language – based Approacha language-based approach to using literature

includes techniques and procedures which are concerned more directly with the study of the literary text itself. The aim here is to provide the students with the tools they need to interpret a text and to make competent critical judgements of it. Here the method of stylistics or stylistic analysis is frequently adopted. Stylistics involves the close study of the linguistic features of a text in order to arrive at an understanding of how the meanings of the text are transmitted

Stylistics in the classroomfocus on a method which can guide students towards a more sensitive understanding and appreciation of the literary text itself

two main objectives: • firstly, to enable students to make meaningful interpretations of the text itself;

• secondly, to expand students’ knowledge and awareness of the language in general.

For the language learner, stylistics has the advantage of illustrating how particular linguistic forms function to convey specific messages. It uses terminology and a set of procedures reasonably familiar to students (those of grammatical description) to reach and justify literary intuitions. In this way it not only helps students to use their existing knowledge of the language to understand and appreciate literary texts, it also deepens their knowledge of the language itself. Stylistic analysis can also provide a way of comparing different types of texts (whether literary or non-literary) in order to ascertain how they fulfil different social functions.

Stylistics in the classroom

Analysing a text for classroom use• Step 1 While looking at a particular

text, note down any linguistic features which are particularly noticeable. These features may be noticeable because they recur with unexpected frequency in the text; because they deviate slightly from what might be considered more grammatically or lexically usual; or because, if these features were paraphrased or rewritten in a slightly different way, a very different effect would be created.

Step 2 Develop a series of

questions which alert students to these features, and encourage students to reach an interpretation or appreciation of the text bearing these features in mind.