Language Through Literature: Language Through Literature

Language through literature is a highly effective way of knowing, learning and mastering any language. Instead of enhancing the skills oflanguage like listening, speaking, reading and writing through exercises, like gap filling, multiple-choice questions. matching the words etc., it would be appropriate to provide a literary text to acquire the language skills. That is, instead of filling in the blanks which would only provide the clue about a particular language skill or concept, it would be better to provide a literary content which would convey the usage of that particular concept. So what makes the difference is the interest of the reader or the learner; he would be more interested to read the literary texts and so the language concepts would get into his mind very easily rather than filling in the blanks. This study of learning a language through literature is dealt in Sidney Sheldon’s Are You Afraid of Darkness? (2004).

Introduction

Language is an art or skill which can only be learnt through practice. The basic purpose of learning any language is to communicate in that particular language to its native speakers. The reason for learning a language varies from person to person. A person may learn a language for existence in a new place, for studies, business etc Hence the sort of conversations, vocabulary, grammar and the sense that a reader come across a literary text is basically known to him and actually practiced by him, and this practice would help him to converse