English, being an international language, has a pivotal significance in disseminating knowledge skills and attitudes to both teachers and students at all levels. In Ethiopia, on top of being taught as a subject in its own right at all grade levels, English has been used as medium of instruction in secondary schools and higher education institutions. This makes English Language learning and teaching in the country needs a serious attention due to such reasons.
Of the inputs needed to teach and learn languages, including English, literature is one. Literature is a primary material of teaching a target language, providing authentic and real contexts of communicative situations. It also provides the pleasure of learning a new language with and through interesting stories. Students can extend their knowledge and experience of the world by interacting through literature. A language teacher could encourage students to make discourses in literature to extract their own meanings, bringing their experiences into play. Instead of being forced to perceive a text only the teacher’s way, students will explore it in light of their experiences..Literature also shows students new ways to view the world around them by constructing
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Many teachers consider the use of literature in language teaching as an interesting and worthy concern (Sage 1987). According to Collie and Slater (1990:3), there are four main reasons which charm a language teacher to use literature in the classroom: authenticity of material, cultural enrichment, language enrichment and personal involvement. In addition to these, universality, non-triviality, personal relevance, variety, interest, economy and suggestive power and ambiguity are some other factors which make literature a powerful resource in a language classroom
English is the New Ethics The values of each individual person are formed by what they have been taught and experienced. One of the simplest ways to make a person experience situations that can shape their values and morality is through books. In the essay, “I Know Why The Caged Bird Cannot Read,” by Francine Prose, she challenges the practice of teaching students values through books designated by teachers. She explains that the books for students are being taught only as moral lessons and not something worth examining closely.
The twenty-fifth chapter of How to Read Literature Like a Professor is where Thomas C. Foster exposes the importance of freeing oneself of their preconceived notions and fulling submerging oneself into the time and situations that literature can hold. He discusses how meaning can be lost upon those who fail to clean themselves of their time period and setting and how it hinders their ability to fully understand what’s going on in between the lines. Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird perfectly exemplifies why someone would need to step into the shoes of the characters. It’s not especially shocking that a story about a small southern town in Alabama in the early 1930’s would be heavy with racial tension but to be able to understand the
In this article “ Why literature matters” by Dana Gioia explains that American art has changed. It points out the fact that literary knowledge is declining. Some of the changes that were pointed out is that most people no longer read. His main purpose is to encourage people to begin to read again and that will help them improve their intellectual level. In the article Gioia expresses reasoning and includes evidence of the importance of reading.
She believes the syllabus provided to students do not include any challenging books, and her belief toward high school teachers becoming too lazy to examine thoroughly if the book the education system provides them with represent any true and significant value is a recurring concern of hers’- therefore ineffective to students. All in all, Prose used ethos, pathos, logos and the usage of specific words to help her argument. She successfully persuades her point of view and makes it clear that if schools want their curriculum to improve, they must change their way of teaching and push their students to view literature in a new
Introduction “Every school day in the United States for the past decade, more than 3,000 students have dropped out of high school (Joftus), 2000).” This is becoming an epidemic because literacy is simply not just being able to read or write your name. The rigors for the literacy curriculum have become much more complex and require students to be able to comprehend and state their input on different reading texts from a variety of sources. A vast amount of the funds from the federal government has been targeted towards the reading for primary grades. Secondary students such as high school students may find it difficult to transition to a higher reading level because of the complexity.
We learn how to read and write from books, we practice skills and teach ourselves from books. Not a year in my education has gone by without a book or several being part of the curriculum. In ninth grade I read Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. The novel changed my view of the importance and need for books, because it showed the horror and devastation of a world without them.
To be successful in life, it is required to know how to read. Reading brings knowledge and knowledge brings intelligence, wisdom, and understanding. People learn from many different forms of literature. One of the most important kind of literature is children's literature. It is responsible for teaching children things like vital knowledge that are required for school and life.
The author elicits the emotions of his readers through his personal narrations, careful choice of words and phrases among others. Right from the start, the author describes his traumatic experience in English writing class and ways he felt misunderstood in order to emotionally appeal to the audience. He intends to persuade the audience to acquire his position by triggering their emotions of sympathy. In addition, his soft tone has equally earned him pity. Concisely, Bruce Ballenger’s article on the importance of poor writing helps unravel several issues in effective English teaching practice.
As a child, I was very interested in books. If you saw me it was safe to assume that I had a book with me. I attribute my love of reading to my grandparents, who have encouraged and supported my reading habit since I was a child. If I even hinted that I wanted to read a certain book they would get it for me. Avid readers their selves, they recognized the impact literature can have on one’s life.
A novel such as How to Read Literature like a Professor brings joy to the reader because it awakens the senses he or she has become numb to in reading. This novel brings fun and irony back into reading literature and makes the reader remember why literature is important. In the eyes of non-professors, books are just a way to keep records and entertain the few. This is true, however, in reality, books serve the eternal purpose to expand communication between humans and bring
This shows that great things, like culturally significant books and other kinds of literature, can come from the comfort of one's
Being one of the largest humanities subjects, literature should be valued, as well as, studied to embrace the true philosophy that is provided. Literature cultivates an improbable amount of abilities that make it an indispensable part of education (The Value of Literary Study). Studying literature involves reading, thinking, writing and analyzing, and while stimulating those abilities, general empathy and sophistication in vocabulary increase. Literature not only provides pleasure and relaxation, but it builds experience for further comprehension in other academic areas. History and literature are inextricably intertwined (Why Study Literature par.
In Gillespie’s article “Why Literature Matters” he states that “Literature does offer inexpensively a vision of other lives and other vistas. One of its potential benefits is to enlarge a reader's sense about the many possible ways to
As the digital age comes upon us, more and more Americans become dissatisfied with the state of literacy in this generation. Because the Internet paves the way for shorter and shorter interactions, namely articles versus novels and six-second viral videos versus films, many people that grew up in the age of the Internet have a preference for this condensed form of entertainment. Dana Gioia of The New York Times asserts in his essay “Why Literature Matters” that the decline of reading in America is destined to have a negative impact on society as a whole. Gioia opens his essay with a bittersweet account of which trend is occurring in the twenty-first century America arts scene. He notes that as college attendance rates blossom, the interest
It is like this that books expand our knowledge, conception and consciousness of the world around us. You may say that nowadays there are other ways to do that, like the TV or Google, but books allow you to experience the same story form your own perspective, values, ideas and from your own feelings. Through reading, you introduce yourself to new things, new information, and even new ways to solve a problem. Secondly, reading helps us to