Using Literature in teaching linguistic, cultural and personal -growth aspects in EFL Classroom

Abstract

This Final Master Project, framed within the Educational Improvement modality, focuses on the effects of introducing an authentic piece of literature in an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) high school classroom. The aim of the work is to explore the fundamental role of reading literature as to enhance the students' learning of the English language while going over linguistic, cultural aspects and nowadays life-related issues. In order to carry out this work, a teaching proposal has been created, and it was addressed to a group of 4th ESO students in order to put the main objectives into practice. So, literature was implemented through the reading of the small short story of The Librarian of Basra, a True story from Iraq by Jeanette Winter. There were also some activities and tasks in which this group of students was guided to learn some values and morals of good citizens, to discover some cultural aspects about books in Iraq, to understand some historical changes in the world, and to work together on some linguistic tips in the text. The work in the present paper confirmed that the implementation of literature in the EFL high school classroom is much better than the mandatory course books. Hence, this group of students showed that reading literature can improve their overall language learning as well as their background knowledge. All in all, the results of this experience were satisfactory except for some points, which needed to be reformed so that reading literature as a fundamental fact should be taken into account when dealing with learning English as a Foreign Language.