© 1994 by Oxford University Press
Articles |
Using literature at lower levels
freelance teacher trainer, materials writer, and lexicographer. She has worked in ELT for twelve years, and run training sessions on using literature with teachers in England, Ireland, France, Italy, and Spain. She has an MA in Language and Literature in Education (TESOL) from London University Institute of Education. Her book Literature and Language Teaching: A resource book for teachers and trainers (1993) is published by Cambridge University Press.
This article focuses on how literary texts can be used with elementary and lower intermediate students. Common difficulties with using literature at this level are considered, and the kinds of knowledge and skills which these students need to develop are briefly mentioned. A series of tasks and activities for exploiting three different poems is then presented. The types of task and activity aim not only to help teachers overcome the difficulties of using literature at this level, but also to extend the students' grammatical and lexical knowledge, and improve their overall language awareness. Many of these activities can also be used with prose texts, such as extracts from short stories.