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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:
[email protected]. 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, 3242.
Vandergrift, L. (2003). Orchestrating strategy use: Towards a model of the skilled language
listener. LanguageLearning 53/3, 463-496
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