Using literature in language teaching

System, Vol. 17, No. 3, pp. 421-445, 1989 Pergamon Press pk. Printed in Great Britain

REVIEWS Scholars who would like to publish in this section of System are requested to contact the Review Editor before submitting a paper. As a rule, all contributions should be in English. French and German will, however, be considered. The Review Editor may be contacted at his home address: Sprachenzentrum der Universitat Bayreuth Postfach 101251 D-8580 Bayreuth Federal Republic of Germany

System, Vol. 17, No. 3, pp. 421-426, 1989 Pergamon Press pk. Printed in Great Britain

COLLIE, JOANNE and SLATER, STEPHEN, Literature in the Language Classroom. A Resource Book of Ideas and Activities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987, 266 pp., f20.00 hardback, f6.95 paperback (Cambridge Handbooks for Language Teachers). HILL, JENNIFER, Using Literature in Language Teaching. London: Macmillan, 1986, 119 pp., E3.65 (Essential Language Teaching Series). SAGE, HOWARD, Incorporating Literature in ESL Instruction. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1987, 92 pp., $9.33 (Language in Education: Theory and Practice 66). The number of books dealing with the use of literature in the EFL-classroom that have recently been published leave no doubt as to the renewed interest in literature teaching. Alongside Brumfit and Carter’s Literature and Language Teaching (1986), Carter and Burton’s Literary Text and Language Study (1982), Brumfit’s Language and Literature Teaching (1985), Holden’s Drama in Language Teaching (1982) and Dougill’s Drama Activitiesfor Language Learning (1987), teachers can now make use of three further equally important publications by Collie and Slater, Hill and Sage. Basically, all three studies echo Wilhelm von Humboldt’s very thought that we cannot teach language, we can only create conditions under which it can be learned-Hill even cites this idea of Humboldt. Thus the authors share a positive estimate of the linguistic importance of literature in the EFLclassroom; likewise they recognize the cultural and educational value of literature. The reasons they gather in order to support this view may not be particularly new, still it would be unfair to say that the authors labour the obvious, for each publication shows the effort to transmit a detailed, precise, and convincing analysis of the functions that literary texts may assume in the EFL-classroom. 421

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After her introductory chapter Hill proceeds by considering the problem of selecting appropriate texts. Apart from naming the familiar criteria “age”, “interest”, and “students’ goals” Hill justly stresses that the chosen texts for beginners in literature must contribute to the learners’ ability to read fluently and to respond appropriately. As to the first Hill points out: “The ability to read at higher speeds is crucial to the students’ understanding of the text overall; they must be able to see a passage as a complete unit, not just a collection of sentences with individual meanings. Students reading at the lower speeds common in EFL/ESL classes often lose the thread of the story and completely miss the point of any figurative language” (p. 16). Equally crucial with regard to a lively discussion in the classroom and to efficient language teaching is what Hill writes about the students’ reactions, to which a literary text should enable them: “They (students) should . . . be able to: visualise mentally what is described in words, respond emotionally to the text and identify with, or feel sympathy for, the hero or heroine . . . , understand the characters’ motives, make critical and moral judgements . . ., detect the relationship which exists between author and text . . .” (p. 17). Hill, and Collie and Slater here obviously proceed from the same assumption; the latter, however, appear to be more outspoken when they stress what they feel is the primary factor when selecting a literary text, namely, whether it is able to stimulate the student’s personal involvement. Books, they argue, that offer “enjoyment; suspense; a fresh insight into issues which are felt to be close to the heart of people’s concerns; the delight of encountering one’s own thoughts or situations encapsulated vividly in a work of art, (and) the other, equal delight of finding those same thoughts or situations illuminated by a totally new, unexpected light or perspective” (6 f.) will help the student to overcome those linguistic obstacles that are often troublesome for them in less involving material. According to Collie and Slater such books will also have a lasting effect on the learner’s cultural knowledge, a knowledge-one should add here-that Collie and Slater do not necessarily connect with the traditional list of canonized English and American literature. Sage, too, takes an impartial view here (cf. 76 f.). The information Hill gives when she talks about the criterion “linguistic and stylistic level” may be skipped since it contains the familiar arguments. The last point in her chapter on “Choosing texts” is the amount of background information required for a true appreciation of the literary text. This is a consideration one should emphasize since it touches upon the teachers’ preparations and uncovers positive and negative factors of the students’ understanding process. After these two chapters Hill-and likewise Sage after his introductory chapterimmediately enters the microcosm of the EFL-classroom. Hill and Sage provide their readers with detailed practical ideas, approaches and techniques. Regrettably, it is only in the process of reading Hill’s approaches to “Content”, “Character”, “Structure”, “Style and Purpose” and “Figurative Language and Poetry” and studying Sage’s chapters on “Teaching Poetry in the ESL Classroom ” , “Teaching Short Stories in the ESL Classroom” and “The Place of Literature in the Teaching of ESL” that the reader reaches a recognition of the authors’ principles of teaching literature to non-native learners. Thankfully Collie and Slater present their principles in advance, thereby marking their methodological point of departure. As much as they dismiss the teacher who merely imparts information, the “exegetical exercises” Ied by the teacher, the metalanguage of critical discussion, and the edging of students to particular answers the teacher has in mind, Collie and Slater favour a variety of student-centred activities, an exploitation of the emotional dimension of a literary text, the use of pair and group work and a teacher supporting the learner’s

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exploration of his own responses to literature. The overall aim, they state, is “to let the student derive the benefits of communicative and other activities for language improvement within the context of suitable works of literature” (p. 10). In her chapter on “Content” Hill correctly pleads for a thorough classroom discussion considering the “bare bones of the plot” or “main point of the poem”, respectively, the unfamiliar vocabulary and the understanding of the characters. The reader will find detailed suggestions-too many to be dealt with fully here-for this content-orientated approach. It appears puzzling that Hill, on the one hand, talks of “early stages of a literature syllabus” and on the other chooses Golding’s highly symbolic and complex novel Lord of the Flies to exemplify her approach. Analogous to the preceding chapter Hill then turns to the analysis of “character” in prose fiction and drama. Again, not content with just theoretical suggestions she demonstrates her way of considering literature by means of the smallest teaching items. Once more she uses literary examples when discussing “character” in relation to “theme”, “structure” and to “language”. Hill’s next “line of investigation” is that of structure. How to make the students acknowledge the arrangement or ordering of a “ideas and preoccupations which run work is depicted via aspects like “sequencing”, throughout a text”, and “foreshadowing”. A large number of suggested students’ activities leave no doubt as to the practicability of Hill’s ideas. Considerations concerning the structure of drama and poetry conclude this chapter and lead to a further approach, which focuses on “style and purpose”. Since a writer’s style reflects subject, anticipated audience and purpose in writing, students “will need to consider the various techniques they (writers) have used to attain their ends and make judgements on how well they have achieved them” (p. 84). Hill admits that this approach is problematic on account of “the amount of subjectivity that enters into any assessment of another person’s command of the language” (p. 87). Nevertheless she is convinced that, by way of analysing “lexical features”, “figurative language”, “internal structure”, “tone” and “discourse situation”, teachers can enable second language learners to fulfill the task of a stylistic analysis. Hill’s final chapter, apart from a brief summary, is devoted to “figurative language and poetry”, here dealing with this aspect in more detail than in the foregoing chapter. The explanatory remarks that are more dominant here than the teaching suggestions are obviously addressed to the layman. This also explains the glossary at the end of the book giving the most common figures and tropes. A passage headed “The poetry lesson” first gives a few general principles for teaching this genre and secondly offers two sample texts followed by some practical ideas for teaching these poems. After his above mentioned introductory chapter on the value and importance of literature in EFL, Sage opens the main part of his study with “Teaching Poetry in the ESL Classroom”. First he collects pros for the use of poetry; these culminate in the author’s words that “poetry is neither additive nor a side dish” but “a staple on the menu for learning English” (p. 15). Sage’s ensuing effort to define the essence of poetry cannot really satisfy since it ignores (has to ignore?) the diversification that belongs to this genre over the past centuries. The author then considers the problem of accessibility that so often discourages teachers and students from entering a poem. Five major starting points are then introduced: Sage thinks that the analyst needs to know (1) “what, if anything, happened”, (2) “who was involved” , (3) “the sequence in which it occurred or is perceived to have occurred”,

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(4) “the sensory environment”, and (5) “if possible, what it (poem) amounts to-what, in short, it means” (p. 18). With the help of an exemplary poem Sage demonstrates the dynamic process of teaching ppetry and illustrates his basic principle of encouraging a multidimensional discussion and understanding of a poem with several practical suggestions. The depiction of a possible classroom discussion shows that Sage includes other entries to a poem than just the above mentioned five. Once the students have enlarged the space of a poem “so that their imaginations can move freely within limits” (p. 19), the teacher will have to leave the mere story line for other topics, such as “point of view”, “persona”, “form”, “language”, and finally “meaning” and “theme”. Next Sage presents seven principles for teaching poetry in the EFL classroom, then continues by giving a detailed model of how to teach a poem (including a worksheet referring to Robert Hayden’s Those Winter Sundays), and concludes the chapter with “Criteria for Choosing Poems”-which teachers should take to heart-and a description of “Classroom Activities during and after Discussion of a Poem”. In the following chapter on the use of short stories in the EFL-classroom Sage justly reminds the reader that the “communication essentials” of a short story for EFL students “are not identical to those used with a story intended for literary study by native English-speaking graduate students or teachers of literature” (p. 44). When selecting a story the teacher has to consider whether the story’s components will facilitate the learner’s entrance into and experience of the narrative, and evocate interest in the, story and whether the plot may engage and hold the learner. Choosing Stephen Crane’s The Open Bout as a recommendable example, Sage then enlarges on further “communication essentials”: structure, theme, voice, language, and character, each time referring to Crane’s story. A passage that once again enumerates noteworthy criteria for selecting stories follows. At the end of it Sage puzzles the reader and almost destroys his preceding argumentation by writing: “Teachers should simply choose their favorite stories and begin to teach them” (p. 56). Similar to the chapter on poetry Sage next offers a model worksheet for Crane’s story, then principles for teaching fiction in the ESL setting, and finally highly interesting remarks on classroom activities following discussion of a short story. It is here that Sage considers in greater detail than before the use of fiction in developing students’ language competence. Sage’s penultimate chapter, the before-mentioned discussion of “The Place of Literature in the Teaching of ESL”, deserves an enlargement and a more appropriate place in his book. The final chapter, which gives “Guidelines for Selecting and Editing Literature for the ESL Classroom”, contains several repetitions and does not apparently offer ideas that have not been discussed before in this field. Having declared their above-mentioned “Aims and Objectives” Collie and Slater begin their second chapter on “Practical Activities in Outline” with a collection of really brilliant so-called “first encounters”. The ideas developed leave no doubt on the part of the reader that they will indeed draw the student quickly into the text, above all that they will make the learner want to read the text. Speculating about a book via its cover design, using visual prompts corresponding to the central situation of the story, biographical montage or “jigsaw ordering activity” with exchanges from the beginning of a play are only a few of these first encounters which are suggested. Equally well contrived and applicable to the various genres are the ideas presented under the heading “Maintaining momentum”. Throughout

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this and the following chapters Collie and Slater continue their effort to introduce teaching activities that help learners to understand and enjoy literary texts and provide practice in language skills at the same time. Although the literary texts sometimes function merely as contexts for writing, listening and speaking activities and are deprived of their aesthetic quality, the majority of the exercises keep the balance between a work with texts that respects the demands of literature and teaching a foreign language. However, since the students in mind are non-native learners, it is acceptable that the approaches might not lead to profound, deep interpretations. The reviewer can only advise to study the writing, listening and reading, and oral activities depicted in the chapters “Exploiting Highlights” and “Endings”, for even a small selection of these would be beyond the scope of this article. Collie and Slater complete their practical guide-in the true sense of the word-by choosing works from four different genres to demonstrate the range of activities that have so far been outlined. The literary and dramatic texts examined are Golding’s Lord of the Flies (as with Hill), covering 69 pages, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, 32 pages, a number of short stories by R. Dahl, A. Gray, R. K. Narayan, Saki, G. Kersh, and M. Atwood, 29 pages, and poems by E. Sitwell, Th. Roethke, W. Soyinka, H. Williams, D. H. Lawrence, and R. McGough, 20 pages. Besides Appendix 1, an introduction to a simulation game of less relevance to teaching practice, Appendix 2 offers a “resource bank of titles”, with information about level, language difficulty, length, contents, and general character of nine novels and eight plays. If only because of their extremely different lengths a ranking of the reviewed books is difficult. The greatest strength of Collie and Slater’s publication is its impressive multitude of classroom activities. On the other hand Hill has to limit her guidance on how to tackle the study of literature to approximately a third of Collie and Slater’s volume. Still, the amount of relevant thoughts and ideas expressed in Hill’s booklet is by all means worth considering. It might be fair to say that (a) Hill as well as Sage seem to concentrate on possibilities to increase an EFL student’s literary sensitivity, that (b) in this respect Hill’s study appears to be more comprehensive, sometimes more subtle in its differentiation of problems than Sage’s book, that (c) among all three guides Collie and Slater emphasize most of all the strengthening of students’ second language command, leading the authors now and then to a problematic “employment” of aesthetic products. Unquestionably practising teachers will profit from each study.

REFERENCES BRUMFIT,

C. J. (1985) Lunguage und Literature Teaching: From Pructice to Principle. London:

BRUMFIT, Press.

C. J. and CARTER,

CARTER,

R. A. and BURTON,

R. A. (eds) (1986) Literuture and Lunguuge Teaching. Oxford: D. (eds) (1982) Literary Text and Language Study. London:

Pergamon

Press.

Oxford University Edward

Arnold.

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DOUGIL, J. (1987) Drama Activities for Language Learning. London: Macmillan. HOLDEN, S. (1982) Drama in Language Teuching. Harlow: Longman.

Erhard Dahl University of Paderborn Warburgerstrage 100 D-4790 Paderborn Federal Republic of Germany System, Vol. 17, No. 3, pp. 426-428, 1989 Pergamon Press plc. Printed in Great Britain

RUTHERFORD, WILLIAM E., Second Language Grammar: Learning and Teaching. Harlow: Longman, 1987, 195 pp., f6.95 (Applied Linguistics and Language Study). I recommend this book to readers involved in applied linguistics for ELT. The author demonstrates his wide knowledge of contemporary approaches in linguistics and language acquisition research and deploys this knowledge consistently towards a pedagogic end. To facilitate use as a textbook, there are activities at the end of each chapter and review/discussion questions for each of the book’s five sections. The breadth of treatment itself provides a difficulty for the reviewer, but a brief characterization of the author’s position can be based on his view of language, of the role of grammar, and of language learning. Rutherford sets out initially to replace the metaphor of language as machine which underpins the view that language is made up of separate bits and pieces and that language acquisition is a question of accumulating these various items. He substitutes the metaphor of language as organism and thus treats language as an essentially relational phenomenon rather than as a collection of autonomous components. Grammar remains central to Rutherford’s scheme of things, but grammar is here a processing strategy answerable to the demands of discourse. This is one of his own examples of how discourse, semantics and syntax interrelate in linguistic realization: (la) On stage appeared a man and a child. (1 b) sing-child-song, (2a) Last on the programme were a song and a piano piece. (2b) sing-child-song Notice that although (lb) and (2b) are sketched out in identical fashion, their rendition as normal English will be different. That is, the context of (lb) would lead to The child sung a song, that of (2b) would lead to The song was sung by a child. Context, then, has determined here the arrangements of the verb and its arguments (agentive, objective), and these two factors in turn have determined the form (passive or active) and the status of the assigned articles (definite or indefinite). (P. 167)

This concept of grammar as the on-line processing strategy of discourse is perhaps best known from the work of Givbn (1979), who suggests that one can see the processes of grammaticisation at work in diachronic language change, in the development of creoles from pidgins, in the child’s progression towards adult language, and in a comparison between planned and unplanned adult speech. To this list Rutherford adds second language