Literature to Enrich Yourself

Trying to learn a new language has always been a routine for people as much as it has been hard for both learners and the teachers. There are thousands of ways to teach a language, but it is still a debatable context to decide on which way is the most practical, effectible, interesting and not confusing for every learner. Even though we born into a society using our mother tongue, it takes our years and years to learn our language wholly. There are still words of which we don’t know the meaning, whether at what age we are. Thus, it is this hard to learn a language as much as it is hard to teach it to people. Teachers must have the focus of the students on them and make it fun and interesting to learn a language. Living in the era of technology, there are dozens of sources for us to find ways of teaching language through different tools. However, even class management is hard thing to achieve all alone, while teaching a language, we must have concentrate of every student on the context we are talking about. So, we should make our choices wisely and carefully, before deciding on the path we are going to follow with the whole class. Both language and culture has effects and traces of each other on themselves, so we should find the way which include both language and culture. Since literature has the elements of the culture it is written into, characteristics of the era during which it was created and has lots of types, it might be the handiest way to teach language, but how? 

First of all, there are literature works written about every kinds of topics so it is easier to find an interesting one for each student, or for the whole class, to have their attention on the studies. Literature has rich vocabulary, not only uses mostly used nouns or verbs, but also phrasal verbs, adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions, idioms, proverbs and more. They would help students to encounter various types of words and literally helps them to enrich their vocabulary, as much as it helps students to see grammar, set of rules, and examine the structure of the sentences they read. For example, McKay (1996) said that, “since our purpose is to teach the grammar of language, literature contributes little to this goal because of its structural complexity and unique use of language.”. I have mentioned that, language has culture in it and culture has impact of language. Reading literature works doesn’t only help students to learn basics of language, but also helps them to observe how the native speakers use words, the language. Addition to all these, some literature works use same words or grammar structures over and over which help student to learn those words because of seeing them usually. Moreover, an observation was done by Horst, Meara and Cobb (1998) at the University of Oman with thirty-four students in order to highlight the importance of using literature works while teaching a new language. All students ended up improving their vocabulary though stories they read. Literature helps students to widen their perspective for the language they aim to learn and become huge source for them.

Language is made of four skills, reading, writing, speaking and listening. Studying literature works during classes not only teaches students vocabulary and grammar, but also helps them to improve their all four skills. First of all, reading a text helps you to improve your ability to understand the paragraphs you read easier and after being able to understand the text, you can even make right guesses about the words you don’t know the meaning of. Since you are studying it in class, you are going to discuss about it with your classmates and teacher. It is going to activate your speaking skills, because you not only read it but also think, speak in that language and reply to the questions related to the topic. Reading it in turns out loud would help you to improve your listening skill because you are going to hear the pronunciation, see the word and going to associate them with each other.

On the other hand, teachers are one of the main elements to make this road enjoyable for students. Teachers decide on the literature works, they are going to study on and discuss in the class. Since they must have the attention of all, they should choose a topic which would be enjoyable to study, analyse and discuss about for hours. There are genres of literature such as short story, poetry, dramas and novels. Firstly, poetry would help students to improve their pronunciation through finding the rhyme and emphasis and help them to spot implies under the sentences, but it would also be hard for the ones who are not interested in poetry because poetry is written in embellished language that makes it way harder for everyone to understand. Secondly, dramas would help you to observe the period they are written in, but they are also like poetry. They are written in fancy language, mostly include jargons related to the period they are written during. Both would help students to enrich their vocabulary, but for the first stage learners, it would be hard to observe. Thirdly novels, written in long form and in hundreds of pages, they are literally bank of vocabulary. They give you traces of culture, manners, language of its era and more, but also they are not easy for everyone to read. So it would be hard to discuss it in classes, as well. On the other hand, good choice of short stories for classes would be the most helpful way to teach language. If teachers achieve to pick the interesting one for the students, it is going to be easier for them to observe and discuss about the story. If the right short story is chosen, students would also improve their analysing skills, such as finding the theme of the story, finding symbols and motifs, thinking thoroughly about the quotes, analyse the dialogues and learn more about the structure of grammar. However, McKay (1996) says that “selecting the text is the only first step, equally important is that how to deal with such texts in classroom” which means that teachers also must be studying on the literature works to make every part of the discussion and the short story clear for everyone. Teachers must be sure about that the short story they chose for the students must be interesting for them and must have critical parts to be discussed in order to make speaking practices.

Lastly poetry, drama and novels would be useful for the students who study language academically. Beginners aim to learn the basics of the language and short stories are suitable for them to observe the words and grammars for the first stages of the language. However, the ones who study in language department, must improve themselves about the culture, society, history of the language. Since they have to analyse poems, dramas and novels, they must know about the background of that language, in where it was used, in order to be able to make comprehensive research of those literature works. Working on literature works of poetry, drama and novels not only would be hard for young learners, but also would be boring for them. Young learners, elementary school students, aim to learn language for fun, but grown up people, who study of its department, learn it in order to build their future and career. So it is a must for them to learn, they don’t have the chance to get sick of it, but enjoy it and use every aspects of literature to help them to enrich their knowledge about the societies, language itself, culture, history and background stories of these all.

To sum up, there are lots of new learners for every language and it is difficult to learn as much as to teach them. Teachers must find the best way to have their attention, make it enjoyable not unbearable and be helpful to them in order to make it easier for them. Literature has lots of diverse works, from short stories to dramas, from written in BC to written just yesterday, has rich vocabulary and plot that would make the road they take up both entertainment and instructive. It’s hard to even master our mother tongue, so learning a new language would be harder. Genres of literature help you to improve your four skills of language which are speaking, listening, reading and writing. However, short stories are the most impactful way to improve these four skills because of being way more interactive and understandable, when compared to other genres. Yet it is up to teachers to make it interesting for students to enjoy learning a new language. Ways of teaching language may differ from young learners to adults. Young learners are elementary school students who aim to have fun while learning a new language, meanwhile adults make it compulsory for them to learn a new language through literature, not only for studying in its department but also for their future. However, let it be university students or third grade students, it is literature that helps them to not only enrich their language but also enrich their future.