Teaching English as a Foreign Language, Second Edition
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Literature
There is one final matter related to the teaching of English as a foreign language and reading and that is the place of literature in the scheme of things. Traditionally one of the major reasons given for learning English at all has been that the learner might read Shakespeare in the original. There are those who might deny the importance of this reason for learning the language today but it still carries considerable weight. Clearly learning a language and studying the literature written in that language are different activities, but this is not to say that they are unrelated. Much of what has been written above about reading with understanding, and appreciating stylistic and tonal differences has clear relevance to literary study, and is indeed a basic prerequisite to it. Similarly the ‘best writing’ is clearly a proper object of study for anyone who wishes to know a language well; the memorable quality of much good literature must surely be one of the contributing factors in the foreigner’s building up of a native speaker—like intuition. Literature does not have to wait for advanced knowledge of the language, though clearly some literature is not accessible to the beginning learner. Even the most elementary learner can derive pleasure from traditional rhymes and riddles which are fundamental to a great deal of literary reference, or from linguistically simple but aesthetically complex poems like Christina Rossetti’s ‘Who has seen the wind?’ or some of Blake’s Reading 115 ‘Songs of Innocence and Experience’. What appears to be much more important than a solid and extensive knowledge of the language itself is that students of English literature should share the cultural assumptions which determine what kind of a thing it is and what it is for. The conception that literature is one of the roads to wisdom, that it enriches the spirit and provides deeper and more significant insights into the human condition is one that really must be appreciated before the colourful patchwork of Pickwick Papers or the dark agonies of King Lear make sense. Conceptions like these arise out of maturity and that literary sophistication which grows from knowledge of literature in the mother tongue as well as in English. Once such conceptions are gained the linguistic difficulties of reading the literature become manageable, without them the undertaking involves Herculean efforts. Once again there is a considerable amount which has been written on the question of teaching English literature to foreigners, the English Teaching Information Centre has a specialist bibliography on it, but probably the most useful introduction is The Teaching of Literature by H.L.B.Moody. Download 0.82 Mb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
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