Individual essay: Final version

Appropriate use of Literature in English Teaching

Literature is an art movement that allows people to express their thoughts in a free way. Also, it can be said that “literature is a term used to describe any written material” Lombardi, (2004). The importance of learning how to read gives literature a good place in the educational field. Teachers around the world take advantage of famous literary works in order to encourage their students to have a good appreciation for reading. But when somebody is learning a foreign language, like English, does literature helps? Reading a complex book can be either an obstacle or a great tool, it depends on the level of the students. Literature might be a good element to teach English, but there are several points to take into account before deciding to use it.
The first point is the purpose. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2006) defines this word as “an anticipated outcome that is intended or that guides your planned actions”; so, it is very important for the teacher to state the reason why he is going to apply a literature resource in his class. He needs to know what are those students to learn through that resource, is it pronunciation? Is it a specific grammatical structure? The purpose is the most important point of the class, is where everything starts and through it, the class will take its course.
As soon as the teacher knows the purpose of including a literary material in his class, it is time to look for a suitable one. There are many kinds of literature that can be applied in an english class such as, poetry, essays, newspaper articles, narrative books and others. What will determinate the kind of literature to use, are the purpose of the class and the level of the students, since those who are 10 years old have not the same comprehension level than students of 20, also, the topic is an important issue. A student of 15 years old is likely to be attracted to a magazine article that talks about a famous rock band, while a 30 years old student can be interested in a newspaper article that talks about economics. So these two points must be in the teacher’s mind when he is searching for a paper that is adequate to his students.
Another important point is how interesting the resource is. If is a very long work without an interesting fact, the students will lose interest in the class because that kind of literature requires more time and concentration; therefore, they can be considered boring by the students. Of course, the length of the material is a point to think about, if the class lasts 2 hours, the reading cannot be a 10 pages essay, because the students will need more time to read than the provided by the teacher. The idea of using new materials in a class is to make it more interesting and interactive for the students, so it can be a 15 lines paragraph and will be an excellent resource since there will be time left for the discussion and the class itself.
In simpler terms, teaching English through literary works can be easy and useful. As with other resources, there are things that must be taken into consideration before using it in the classes, but when it is use by the teachers in a proper way, it is an excellent tool.