Teaching Language Through Literature

Hello friends, 

     Here I would like to start my writing with a question. The Question is Can short stories be helpful to learning language ? If yes then How ? And also what sort of activities and tasks can be designed to teach language through short stories?

           So let's start thinking about interesting activities and tasks which lead students to learning a particular language. 

       Teaching language through literature is an interesting one because as we know that as a second language teacher we can provide a natural flow of English language in the classroom. But other then their  not such an atomosphere. So learning language skills from literature that is more helpful to students.

 Short Stories and Language Skills Development :-

            The idea  that short stories are the most suitable literary genre to use in English  teaching due to its shortness is The idea that short stories are the most suitable literary genre to use in English  teaching due to its shortness. Short stories are helpful for teaching language. Short stories allow teachers to teach  the four skills to all levels of language proficiency.  

Murdoch  (2002) indicates  that “short stories  can, if selected and exploited appropriately, provide quality  text content which will greatly enhance ELT courses for learners at intermediate levels of proficiency” (p. 9).

         According to him, short stories could be very beneficial materials in ELT reinforcement by using them in learning activities such as discussion, writing and acting out dialogue.

       The use of storytelling in the L2 classroom creates a good learning environment and provides meaningful and comprehensible input. Through stories, the language acquisition device is activated And it is easy for children to induce the language elements from the data provided by the stories (Krashen, 1981).

     So let's see which type of task or activities can be done in teaching language through Short stories. 

Writing activities :

a. Write new words which you find interesting for your vocabulary.

           Short  stories  can be used  to improve students'  vocabulary and reading.  Lao  and Krashen  (2000)  present the  results of a comparison  between a group of students that  read literary texts and a second group  that read non-literary texts at a university in  Hong Kong. The group who read literary texts showed  improvement in vocabulary and reading.

 b. What you learn from the story.

 c. Summarize the story in a few sentences, including the main character, setting, conflict, climax, and resolution. 

d. Write three and four sentences on the theme of the story.

 e. Write a paragraph on what should not happen in the story.

d. Choose  the word/phrase  that best fits each  sentence, drawing upon  the list under column A in the previous activity.  You may need to add -s to a plural word or to a third person singular of a verb in the present tense, -ed to the past tense of regular verbs, etc.  In activity c, students practice using the words that they already understand the meanings of.

Speaking and listening activities :

followings are some activities teachers can assign to develop students speaking skills by using short stories.  

1. The students read the story aloud as a chain activity. The first student reads the first sentence. The second student takes the second sentence, the third student,  third sentence, and so forth. Such activity will enhance students‟ pronunciation and fluency in an interesting way. It is suitable for elementary class. 

2. In  an upper  intermediate  class, the students  retell the story as a  chain activity in small groups.  Each student will have a lot of opportunities  to practice the relevant connectors or other discourse markers in a meaningful context. (They certainly should have been given a list of the connectors and discourse markers beforehand.) 

 

 Using Short Stories to Teach Language Skills   

 3. In an advanced class, the  students are grouped into two groups. Using A Long Walk Home, the first group is assigned to prepare arguments that the father‟s  decision to punish himself is appropriate. Another group should prepare arguments that the decision is not appropriate. 

4. An extending activity useful to develop students‟ speaking skill and to make students more involved in the story is role-play. This can be carried out by asking  students to play the role of several characters, i.e. by instructing them the followings:

 a. Imagine you are Jackson. Tell your partner (acting as  his father) why you were late coming from the garage. Make sure you are convincing. 

b. Suppose you are the receptionist of the garage in which Jackson took the car. Tell Jackson‟ father about the car.   To develop listening skill using a short story, teachers can do the followings: 

1. Read the story out loud so students have the opportunity to listen to a native speaker of English (if at all possible); or 

2. Play the story if a recording is available.  The activity can be carried out for

The activity can be carried out for fun or for students to find answers to questions given and explained to them before the listening activity starts. For students to understand the story when they  listen to it for the first time, the questions can be based on literary structures, such as:  

1. Who is the main character of the Short Stories ?

 2. Where/when does the story take place?

 3. What is the problem (conflict) in the story? 

4. How is the conflict resolved

Short Stories and Language Skills Development :-

          Can you  believe that films are helpful to learning language ? In our traditional classroom don't allow watching of films in the classroom. But this is the modern era. So let's see what we can do.  Film can bring variety and flexibility to the language classroom by extending the range of teaching techniques and resources, helping students to develop all four communicative skills. For example, a whole film or sequence can be used to practise listening and reading, and as a model for speaking and writing. 

            Film can also act as a springboard for follow-up tasks such as discussions, debates on social issues, role plays, reconstructing a dialogue or summarising. It is also possible to bring further variety to the language learning classroom by screening different types of film: feature-length films, short sequences of films, short films, and adverts.

Motivation is one of the most important factors in determining successful second-language acquisition. Films and TV shows are an integral part of students’ lives so it makes perfect sense to bring them into the language classroom.

Basic ‘Tell Me’ question examples:

• Was there anything you liked?

 • What caught your attention?

 • Was there anything you disliked? • Was there anything that puzzled you?

 That you’d never seen in a film before? 

That surprised you?

 • Were there any patterns?

1. Guess the dialogue :

Play a short clip with the sound off. Choose a clip which includes a range of facial expressions. Ask students to imagine what the characters are saying and create a script. Students can then act out their dialogue in sync with the visuals. Finally, play the video again for students to compare their ideas to the real thing.

2. Translate and order (for a monolingual class)

Choose an interesting dialogue or conversation with some useful colloquial expressions in it. Translate a few of the sentences into L1 and put them in the wrong order. Ask students to work in groups to translate the sentences and guess the correct order. Students then watch the clip and check their translations and the order of their sentences.

3. Say what you see

Choose a scene in which there is a clear succession of events. Write the events onto pieces of card and ask students to read them and ask you about any difficult vocabulary. Put students into pairs. One person from each pair should face the screen. The other should have their back to the screen. This student should hold the cards.

Play a short clip from a video with no sound. The students facing the screen should explain what’s happening to their partner who then puts the event cards in order. Finally, let all students watch the clip, with sound, to check the order of their cards.

4.  Soundtracks

Choose five songs from different films. They should all be different genres of music and should not be well-known songs.

Tell the students you’re going to play them some songs from films and while listening to each one they should imagine the type of film it’s from and write down exactly what they imagine to be happening in the scene. Stop after each extract and give them two minutes to explain their ideas to their partner. Allow them to watch the original scenes afterwards.

5.  Shadow-reading

Once your students are familiar with the content of a particular clip – perhaps any of the above activities – you might like to do some pronunciation work. Shadow reading is where students attempt to speak in time with the characters on screen. They’ll need the script to be able to do this. Put students into small groups (you’ll need the same number of students in a group as characters in the scene) and have them choose roles, or do this as a whole-class activity with all of the boys playing the male role and all of the girls playing the female role. You’ll need to repeat this several times – students will get better each time. By trying to speak in sync with the characters on screen, they’ll be replicating key features of connected speech. ( Cambridge.org )

Resources :

Lao,  C. Y.  and S. Krashen.  (2000). The impact  of popular literature  study on literacy development in EFL: More evidence for the power of reading. System, 28, 261-270.

Krashen, S. D. (1981). Second language acquisition and second language learning. Oxford: Pergamon Press.