The Roles of Literature in ELT

Literature plays important roles in the English Language Teaching.  It has been used in English Language Teaching classroom for increasing the language knowledge. There are three roles of literature in ELT. They are to enable student to grow personally and socially raising cultural awareness, to encourage imagination and increase appreciation in literature, and to improve psycholinguistic aspects of language learning.

The first role of literature in ELT is literature enables student to grow personally and socially raising cultural awareness. Literature brings into the picture as regards the understanding and appreciation of different cultures and ideologies together with the developing of one’s perception of feelings and artistic forms.  Lazar (1993: 11) asserts that literature should be seen as a bridge to provide access to cultural background. Students can see the world through different writes from different cultures and learn the ways to deal with things happening around them. Furthermore, they can explore the human condition. Literature also educates the whole students’ personality since it includes a lot of cross-curricular and cross-cultural relations.

Second, literature encourages students’ ability and imagination in literature and to increase their appreciation of literature. Literary works have several of meanings which encourage the students’ imagination. Moreover, they can share their feelings and opinions. Students will get opportunity to explore the world imagination. At advanced levels, for example, students are given literature in its original form so that they can develop their imagination  and appreciation of literature. They are able to observe how characters in a play or a short story and  identify themselves with the characters in the stories they read.

Last, it is further stated that literature improve the psycholinguistic aspect of language learning because it focuses on discourse processing skills and enhances the expansion of vocabulary and reading skills. Literature, in addition, has experienced revival with the advent of the communicative approach in language teaching because it provides learners with authentic material, fun and culture (Hall, 2005:47-57).

In conclusion, literature in English Language Teaching provides students with an incomparably rich source of authentic material. If students can gain access to this material by developing literary competence, then they can effectively appreciate the literature at a high level. using literature in a foreign language class serves for creating a highly motivating, amusing and lively lesson. Literature is not only a tool for developing the written and oral skills of the students in the target language but also is a window opening into the culture of the target language, building up a cultural competence in students.