Universität Hamburg

Fakultät für Erziehungswissenschaft, Psychologie und Bewegungswissenschaft

Fachbereich Erziehungswissenschaft

Einführung in die Englischdidaktik

Wintersemester 2008/09

Hausarbeit:

,, A pleading for Literature in the

foreign language learner′s classroom"

Daniela Schröder

23.02.2009

Content

1. Introduction 2

2. History of literature in the classroom 2

3. Criteria for selection of literature ­ a sketchy overview 3

4. Literature in the classroom ­ advantages 4

5. Arguments against literature in the classroom ­ a short analysis 6

6. Conclusion 7

Bibliography 9

1

1. Introduction

This work will deal with the question why and how literature is a reasonable and supportive

way for a student to learn a foreign language.

To make it clear from the beginning, all kind of reading is helpful in order to achieve

improvement in the foreign language. However, this text will only deal with the so-called

"real" literature, also known as "Literature with a capital-L". This definition is mainly based

on the language it contains. Therefore, when it is only written about "reading", the meaning is

always reading literature if not marked otherwise.

The role literature should play in the classroom today is highly disputed and contradictorily

discussed.

To start with, a very short overview of the development of literature in language teaching will

be given. Then the most common and important arguments for literature in the classroom will

be stated and analyzed, mainly focusing on (inter-)cultural and communicative competence.

In the following step some arguments against literature will be named and, after a detailed

analysis, be confuted or at least modified.

At the end a conclusion will be drawn, including the future of literature in a foreign language

learner′s classroom.

2. History of literature in the classroom

Reading literary texts has always been an aspect of foreign language teaching, however, the

role of literature underwent some enourmous changes over the last decades.

In the late 19th century, a canon of mostly white, male, dead British writers, dominated by

Shakespeare used to be taught. A special emphasis was put on the language, but the actual

piece was discussed in German.1 Today, this approach is labelled "upper-class" and "elite"

and strongly disapproved.

This period was followed by an efferent and aesthetic reading in the 1940s and then the New

Criticism in the 1960s with a special focus on linguistics and the idea of an objective view by

eliminating all contextual influences. These paradigms will be of no further importance for

this work and thus will not be analyzed in detail. A rather important approach followed,

however, namely the learner-centered view in the 1970s, which for the first time put the

1 Compare to Müller-Hartmann, Andreas and Marita Socker- von Ditfurth (2007): Introduction to English

language teaching, p. 121

2