Implementation of Literary Material in a 2ºESO ESL Class: Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

Abstract

The following paper describes the design and implementation of an ESL didactic unit for a 2ºESO Spanish classroom that makes use of literary material as the core text around which the entire unit revolves around. Firstly, the pros and cons towards implementing literary texts in the classroom are provided, whether these texts should be authentic or simplified, what features should be taken into account when selecting what literary material will be used in the syllabus, and what were the methodologies used that inspired the design of this didactic unit. Ultimately, the book chosen was ‘‘Percy Jackson and The Lightning Thief’’. This unit is made up of four different sessions that use different fragments of the literary text to teach the appropriate usage of modal verbs ‘‘will’’, ‘‘going to’’, as well as permission modal verbs ‘‘can’’, ‘‘could’’ and ‘may’’, and ability modal verbs ‘‘can’’, ‘‘could’’ and ‘‘able to’’. The unit was implemented in the 2ºESO B class at Torre del Rei high school, made up of 22 pupils of Spanish, Romanian and Moroccan nationalities. Students were also provided with three surveys: one survey handed in before the implementation process questioned students about their literary tastes and reading habits, and two others were handed in post-implementation, asking students about both implementations and how they would rather learn English. Only two sessions were permitted to be implemented because of time constraints, and due to technical difficulties encountered during the implementation of the first session of the didactic unit, this first session had to be repeated for a second implementation. Both implementation processes are described, recording both flaws and improvements encountered during both implementations, afterwards, proposals for improvement in accordance to the feedback received are provided. Due to lack of implementation, there is ultimately not enough data to decide whether this didactic unit could be considered successful, and further application is required. Nevertheless, since most students seemed thrilled and excited about using authentic literary material, and of learning through innovative tasks and exercises, initial impressions regarding this didactic unit appear to be positive. However, complications such as student refusal towards interacting using the target language, and time control issues are matters that require attention in future implementations.