© 1994 by Oxford University Press
Articles |
Teenage books for teenagers: reflections on literature in language education
teaches English and German at St. Olofsskolan, Åbo, a middle school for Swedish-speaking Finns.
Professor of English Language and Literature at Åbo Akademi University and Director of the Academy of Finland's Literary Pragmatics Project, to which Rönnqvist also belongs.
Foreign language learners benefit from reading target-language literature because it gives practice in the pragmatic contextualization of linguistic expression, and strengthens integrative motivation. For young teenage learners, however, the literary texts used are often simplified abridgements of canonical classics. It is better to use real teenage books. Teenage pupils positively like and want to understand these books, not least because they give access to the colloquial language used by native-speaker teenagers. This preference should be recognized and satisfied for both linguistic and educational reasons. Teenage books also meet teenagers' requirements in matters of genre, theme, and plot, and are a great asset in teaching which centres less on the text itself than on what the young reader is doing with it. A careful selection of teenage books can offer a broader and deeper understanding of target cultures than do traditional textbooks.