"HOW TO USE LITERATURE IN ENGLISH LESSONS, an approach"

Beyond all  doubt,  literature is an essential part of our society and our own perception. It’s been said that literature not only describes reality but also adds to it. What does  it add? It adds values, beauty, imagination and creativity. It makes a person grow as an individual and understand reality. From Shakespeare to Rowling, many great contributions have been made to the world of literature which, at the same time, has modified lives and behaviours. But, what is literature? stories, poems, and plays, especially those that are considered to have value as art and not just entertainment. A broader definition can be: any text (in all its formats) that reflects different aspects of society, and I personally think this is a more down-to-earth one. 

Literature  is treated as a source of information about the target culture so it can also be very useful in esl lessons, but texts must be carefully selected. Otherwise, we take the risk of provoking a  hostile reaction in students. So, they should also be included in the process of selection, within some limits, as obvious. Widdowson pointed out two levels of linguistic knowledge: usage and use. According to him, usage involves a knowledge of linguistic rules, whereas use involves how to use these rules for effective communication. Do the literary texts which we have selected contribute to a knowledge of both skills? The end of teaching literature in English lessons must be, not only the admiration of literature but the transfer of imaginative energy from literature to the students. 

They can also become authors. One example is digital storytelling, a computer-based approach to writing and storytelling and it is basically a recorded audio narration supported by images, music,etc. British photographer, educator and digital storyteller, Daniel Meadows defines digital stories as "short, personal multimedia tales told from the heart." He maintains that the beauty of this form of digital expression is that these stories can be created by people everywhere, on any subject, and shared electronically all over the world.

The steps are described by Carmen Gregori Signes (Univ. Valenciana) as follows: 

a) Script development: they write the story, often with a group called a story circle to provide feedback and story development ideas. Here linguistic and literary instruction is necessary (e.g. on genre characteristics) while at the same time collaborative work is fostered. EFL students will be asked to focus mainly on the production of a good script which implies consulting and reviewing academic articles on genre production, genre impact and the linguistic and literary devices which turn a text into an example of a particular genre; a task which demands a lot of effort on the part of the students. If they do it in groups, they can split the work up and come to conclusions about how to develop the script. The research previous to the script design will make them more self-critical about the product they are designing.  

b) Record the author reading the story (audio recording and editing). Previously, we would work with  the students reviewing intonation patterns and the correct pronunciation of for example function vs. content words to avoid incorrect stress placement; which is one of the major causes of intelligibility for foreign learners (Roach 1983, 1991:91) [30]. Reading out loud, recording one's voice and publishing it on the internet can be very intimidating, thus one can safely predict that the student will increase his/her effort. Dewey (1913) [12] already pointed out the relationship between effort and interest and ow these interacted in producing good results. Digital storytelling has the advantage of being a new genre for most students, it raises interest, and therefore it is probably a good way of promoting student effort. 

c) Capture and process. Images are captured and processed to further illustrate the story. The student will be practicing with image scanning and editing, working therefore towards improving his/her visual and technological literacy; 

d) Combining different types of media such as  audio and images (and any additional video) onto a timeline, add music tracks (video editing, so developing their visual literacy. Visual literacy is the capacity that someone possesses to be able to evaluate, apply or create visual concepts and meaning. This is even more necessary for business and engineering students who will necessarily need to develop these skills to be competent in their work, since they are often asked to present their ideas with images rather than words; 

e) Present or publish the finished version of the story. This is the final step which obviously gathers together all the previous ones and at the same time demands good knowledge of presentation skills. Reviewing some pragmatic and rhetorical concepts, intonation and pronunciation would certainly help them to do a good job. This part certainly invites a review of certain pragmatic funtions of utterances in spoken and written texts  as well as a formal introduction to the grammar of spoken English (discourse markers, tails, heads, word order etc.).  A possibility would be to work on the first draft of the digital story and correct the possible mistakes so as to improve the final version, an exercise that would certainly enrich the students. (See some examples in http://www.storycenter.org/stories/)

“ The teacher is like a hard-working farmer, battling the unpredictable elements, knows the input but also knows that the output is unpredictable.  The farmer’s work is non-linear” (Fitch O´Connell, Porto 2008). There are three different players on the stage, the teacher, the learner and the language and, regardless of status , they have an equal effect on each other, they interact in a non-linear way. However, this interaction is not always ideal, If we as teachers want to succeed and be “good farmers”, we must know that no two people read the same book (Edmund Wilson), as no two seeds grow the same way. We, teachers or learners, contribute to what is being read. In that three-factor model  language has been substituted by literature, it is a basic language learning tool that contributes to a non-linear classroom. A teachers-learners partnership creating a non-fixed list of attractive readings - this includes teachers working together. 

Pre-reading activities are important and must involve the students from the very beginning. As stepping stones, pre-reading activities lead to a previous building-up of the story and encourages imagination. In conclusion, reading must be a joy, not a drudge. If  completing the coursebook or the syllabus checklist is the only important thing, then that is our only option. If we want to make language alive, we must include live literature, although this might mean sacrifice some pages from textbooks.