The question that arises is how and why literature survives and has still its unique weight in the 21st century. This work is structured in several parts discussing what influence literature has on pupils in the EFL classroom. This seminar paper begins by giving a basic overview of the use of literature and why literature remains so successful. This is followed by the criteria of why certain literature is chosen and the challenges that may occur when teaching literature. After that, it will be discussed which influence literature has on the reading and writing skills of pupils in the EFL classroom.
The young adult novel “The Hate U Give” by Angie Thomas will serve as an example, which will firstly be presented briefly in its outline and its fundamental themes. Later on, this novel will be analysed regarding the impact it has on pupils in the EFL classroom and to what extent this example might or might not help them to understand America’s society concerning recent themes as racism, police violence or identity.
The aim of this term paper is to develop an appropriate answer to the question why literature is still so prominent and popular nowadays. The other important aspect and the aim this paper lays its focus on is how literature is used to reconstruct social values and norms or to understand a foreign society.
Table of Content
1 INTRODUCTION 3
2 THE USE OF LITERATURE IN THE EFL CLASSROOM
2.1 Criteria of choosing literature
2.2 Challenges of teaching literature
2.3 Influence on pupils’ reading and writing skills
3 AN EXAMPLE: “THE HATE U GIVE” BY ANGIE THOMAS
3.1 Impact on pupils’ view of topics discussed in the novel
4 CONCLUSION
5 BIBLIOGRAPHY
1 Introduction
With the progressive digitisation the daily routine in school has changed drastically. The ordinary chalk board has been substituted by a multimedia whiteboard which is an allrounder regarding its technology. It is not only used to write on it, but also use as television or CD-player. Everything is digitised but there is that one teaching tool that lasts forever - literature. Literature, which in this context, is considered as novels, poems or dramas has made its way through the centuries and still plays a significant role in today’s technology-based society. Novels or tragedies are still pinned in the current curriculum in subjects as German or English. Every student who passed or is about to pass his or her A-Levels has read or reads Shakespeare, although his tragedies are more than 300 years old. Nevertheless, it records an enormous success and is one of the favourite teaching aspects. Despite of its age it seems that it is never going to be old- fashioned.
The question that arises is how and why literature survives and has still its unique weight in the 21st century. This work is structured in several parts discussing what influence literature has on pupils in the EFL classroom. This seminar paper begins by giving a basic overview of the use of literature and why literature remains so successful. This is followed by the criteria of why certain literature is chosen and the challenges that may occur when teaching literature. After that it will be discussed which influence literature has on the reading and writing skills of pupils in the EFL classroom. The young adult novel “The Hate U Give” by Angie Thomas will serve as an example, which will firstly be presented briefly in its outline and its fundamental themes. Later on, this novel will be analysed regarding the impact it has on pupils in the EFL classroom and to what extent this example might or might not help them to understand America’s society concerning recent themes as racism, police violence or identity. The novel can be used with beginning of the 8th grade, because there are many violent scenes described. At the end I will be drawing a conclusion based on the knowledge I have gained during this term paper. The aim of this term paper is to develop an appropriate answer to the question why literature is still so prominent and popular nowadays. The other important aspect and the aim this paper lays its focus on is how literature is used to reconstruct social values and norms or to understand a foreign society.
2 The use of literature in the EFL classroom
The latest PISA survey revealed that girls have less difficulties while reading a text.1 On the contrary boys from a lower socioeconomic class face the most difficulties. Moreover the survey shows that reading as an activity decreases in comparison to previous years.
Editor's note: The illustration has been removed for copyright reasons.
Picture 1
(https://amp.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article203997800/Pisa-Deutschlands-Schueler-stehen-besser-da-weil-andere-schlechter- werden.html)
From the bar chart it can be extracted that more than half of the fifteen-year-old children only read when they have to. This chart shows that reading is not as important as teachers would like it to be. Notwithstanding teachers love to work with literature, because it is the most famous teaching tool to improve students’ reading skill and subsequently the writing skills. (Common Reference Levels) The question that now arises is on which basis teachers choose literature in a very widespread canon besides the curriculum. This is described in the following subchapter.
2.1 Criteriaofchoosingliterature
A very important question in the literature classroom is on which basis teachers should choose literature. There are three main aspects2 which every teacher or lecturer should consider before working with literature. They will be named and described in the following.
Firstly, you should be aware in which type of course you want to introduce for example a novel or a poem. This includes for example the students’ reason for learning English and which English is used in the classroom e.g. Academic English, Business English or General English. Moreover, the intensity of the course should be factored in the choosing process as well. It makes a huge difference whether a teacher has a lesson with his/her pupils once a week or three times a week.
Secondly, the type of students has to be reflected. A teacher has to be aware of the suitability of the chosen literature in the pupils’ context which also includes the age of the students. The novel “The Hate U Give” which is mentioned in the introduction can serve as an example. The novel presents a lot of violent scenes which can be disturbing for children of a younger age. So you should choose wisely whether certain literature suits the pupils. In addition there needs to be a close look regarding the cultural and ethnic backgrounds of the students. Using the example novel again, as a teacher you should know how much knowledge the pupils already have on the certain topic discussed in the novel. Accordingly someone’s cultural background can hinder but can also promote the comprehension of the text. If literature is too remote for students it makes it harder for them to understand and cope with the text, while having certain knowledge and cultural background makes it easier to deal with a text. Besides, the relevance of the text is significant. This means it should be approved whether the text fits this group of people. It contains factors as the students’ linguistic level. As a teacher you should not choose a text which is too elementary but the other way not too advanced for their linguistic level. In addition, there is an emotional level of the students which can be engaged too, when you choose or do not choose a text. This means that students can be too immature to relate to the text or that they can too be developed to deal with the engaging text.
Thirdly other text-related factors are relevant. The text should link to the rest of the syllabus, and it should fit to the time you have in class, so it should have manageable in length. Next the teacher should be interested in the chosen piece ofliterature too.
To put in a nutshell you see how important the different aspects are and that you should distinguish within the certain aspect too. It is for example not enough to be an advanced English linguist, if you are too immature to cope with a text. The given process shows how complex it is to choose appropriate literature in the EFL classroom. This process provides a guideline for a homogeneous group of people but there many different individuals in one class in reality. In the next step I would like to go further by sing the challenges that might occur regarding a heterogeneous classroom.
2.2 Challenges of teaching literature
Teaching literature in the EFL classroom is not easy at all. This subchapter concentrates on the challenges the teacher might face while teaching literature. Literature is not made for everyone. Teachers are convinced that it has a positive effect on scholarship, but the harder challenge is to convince the students that it has. The criteria of choosing literature stated clearly that a teacher is always in a heterogenous class. On the one hand there will be students who enjoy reading a lot and love to engage with texts, on the other hand there will be students that experience literature as exhausting. Mostly the students who do not enjoy reading are the ones who face the most difficulties. To illustrate that “The vicious cycle of the good reader” and the “The vicious cycle of the bad reader”3 will shortly be explained. “The vicious cycle of the good reader” assumes that if a person enjoys reading, the person will read faster and more and understands the text better than a person that does not like to read (in this case a bad reader). Accordingly the first challenge of a teacher is to animate a bad reader to become a good reader. As the cycle shows it means to completely change the interest of a person. This can only be successful if the teacher chooses the right materials and motivating tasks, which the students love to participate in. Nevertheless it might be very elaborate, but it if it succeeds it is very useful for the whole class. While teaching literature it should be always kept in mind that choosing literature always involves both the teacher and the learners. When a teacher does not like the literature, he/she teaches, it will cause difficulties on the learner’s side. Children are at a certain age able to notice and identify different moods. For instance, if there is a teacher that unfortunately chooses literature, he/she does not like, it will directly affect the children in class. The other way round a teacher who portrays that he/she likes the chosen piece of literature, can have a more positive effect on the children and activate motivation. Another challenge of teaching literature is to make the literature lesson interesting. Literature is still compulsory and that is the perspective many students take. Hence a teacher should create an atmosphere within the classroom, that makes it feel less compulsory.
2.3 Influence on pupils’ reading and writing skills
In this chapter the focus lays on the pupils’ reading and writing skills they perceive while working on literary texts. First of all it should be emphasised what it means to read from a didactic perspective. There are two models which are now explained in greater detail. On the one hand there is the bottom-up model. The bottom-up model focusses on the text itself. The model is more about decoding words and phrases. So it relies more on the linguistic knowledge the students have. “(...) The reader has to reproduce meaning - going from one syllabus to word to phrase to clause to sentence to paragraph to text”4 On the other hand there is the top-down model which focusses more on the reader. The focus clearly lays on the reader’s background knowledge and cognitive schemata. This causes a problem if the schemata are incomplete, which hinders the student to understand the read text properly. Comparing these two models the bottom-up model is more about form and structure, while the top-down model is more about students’ personal comprehension. These opposite models illustrate well that making use of only one of the models makes it very hard to understand a text. If a student knows very much about the context of a novel for example, the student will still not understand the novel without being aware of the linguistic features of the target language. Another example is reading in your mother tongue. If someone is fluently using his/her mother tongue and is aware of its linguistic features, it will not be enough to understand the context of a literary text. To understand a text both models should be included. Consequently, the students’ recognition that one model is not sufficient to understand a text can be described as the first major influence on their reading skills.
Another key influence is the reading style the children develop while working with texts. There will always be passages when skimming makes more sense and there will be passages when scanning is more useful. In school there will be no reading without exercises. On the basis of these exercises students should be encouraged to choose an appropriate reading style. Pupils should knowingly learn how to choose when and how to use the right reading style. In addition the different reading skills have different benefits. For example, reading out loud helps to improve the pronunciation and therefore features a fluency. Silent reading centres more in understanding the text and helps to improve the accuracy of the reader.
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1 (Reiss, Weis, Klieme, & Köller, p. 5-9)
2 (Lazar, 1993, p. 5-15)
3 (Mo, 2020)
4 (Thaler, 2008, p. 47)