Literature in EFL (an #eltchat summary)

On Wednesday 8th June at 21.00 BST teachers from around the world met on Twitter for #eltchat to discuss “Creative and effective ways of bringing literature into the EFL/ESL classroom”. I wasn’t able to join in, but I did get to write the summary [and add my own ideas]!

If you want to read the whole conversation, click here.

Why?

• A language is its literature too – a very important part of its culture (@Marisa_C)
• I think lit is one of the most powerful tools to increase a student’s language ability, & I’m amazed it isn’t used more often. (@theteacherjames)
• The fun aspect is absolutely crucial. I want to build a reading habit that will lead to a love of the language. (@theteacherjames)
• The great thing about literature is the way language is used so well. It’s very satisfying to read well turned phrases for students too (@hartle)
• Using literature in class positively encourages active reading – sometimes reading is passive (@pjgallantry)
• I like to believe students can become “better ” people if they read. Opens their world + learn English at the same time. (@mkofab)
• Literature is a real key to higher level language skills… playing with language seems to help (@pysproblem91)

General

• Use it to build critical skills (@theteacherjames)
• “Change endings” of well known pieces by substitution followed by guessing games (@Englodysiac)
• We have also used local folk tales and stories translated into English with our refugee classes – better than Johns and Marys (@Marisa_C)
• Use it as a springboard: reviews, role-plays, change endings, etc. (@rliberni)
• Use cartoon makers to predict the end of a story (@helen100463)
• Sometimes students could read aloud, especially younger learners taking turns (@smaragdav) Most of mine enjoy doing that,they hear their own voices,know when they’re not stressing properly (@vickyloras) They could also read aloud in pairs (@fuertesun) You could pretend it’s for the radio / a podcast (@Marisa_C) It did wonders for @helen100463’s teens.
• Show videos (example) of a person’s book choices and ask students what these choices say about the owner (@hartle) [you could also do this with photos of bookshelves]

Novels

• Encourage students to read outside class.
• Look at some comprehension, some vocab but also theme motif and literary devices too (@Marisa_C)
• Ceri Jones’ activity on translating an Isabel Allende text
• Use exam set texts: “I think the strongest groups of C2 level Ss I have taught are those who took the set text option for the CPE exams” (@Marisa_C) Should ss watch the film based on the book they read or be encouraged to read parts of it again ? (@smaragdav) – many chatters answered they should watch it
• Use clips of the film as part of the pre-reading and prediction for reading (@Marisa_C). You could also use the blurb from the book/DVD jackets for this (@hartle) Show comprehension by discussing what’s not in the film (@Shaunwilden)
• Students can/would never read the same number of pages in just “texts”. It is great confidence boost that they can read novel. (@mkofab) I’ve seen sts beaming because they’ve finished their first ever novel in Eng. I was proud of them too! (@theteacherjames)
• Send the characters to be interview for specific jobs (@Marisa_C) or create fakebook profiles for them (@hartle)
• Have groups summarise, present and order a story (@Marisa_C)
• Making a front page of a newspaper from a book or short story is also a great idea for a class project (@Marisa_C)
• Give students the titles of books and they have to guess the plot (@fuertesun)

Examples

• The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
• The Winter Ghosts by Kate Mosse (@hartle did an extensive reading project with this)
• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
• The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan: “One year we experimented and did all our FCE exam prep through 39 steps – Wild success!” (@Marisa_C)
• Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie (If anyone wants to use Peter Pan, I’m recording it for my kids. First 3 audio chapters on my website. http://tinyurl.com/4k5rcpv – @tarabenwell)
• Bridget Jones’ Diary by Helen Fielding

Short stories

• Cut up the stories, students rearrange it, play with the structure and create new links (@divyabrochier): playing with words and structures is how language is learned and enlivened (@pjgallantry)
• Use them for ‘double’ translation. Take a piece of text, get stds to translate it into L1, then translate it back to English. In trying to recollect the original piece while translating back sts learn chunks (@englodysiac) – could be seen as to much of a specialized skill though (@Marisa_C)
• Use a timeline and a feelings line together to help students enter a short story. (@12mandown)
• Animate the story (@Marisa_C) – some classes might not like comics, so give them a choice (@naomishema)
• Students work together to tell stories they know from their own culture, with the teacher listening (@nutrich)
• Mixed texts: 2 versions of one extract with mixed up parts of text . Students sort out the original (@hartle)
• Use a story with a moral for discussion. Then students write a modern version themselves (@nutrich)
• Reveal a story line by line and make SS think of the rest of the story (@toulasklavou)

Examples

• ‘Thank you Ma’m‘ by Langston Hughes
• Frederic Brown – very short sci-fi stories, tales with a twist, e.g. ‘The Weapon’
• Katherine Mansfield – ‘The Singing Lesson’, ‘Bliss’
• Kate Chopin – ‘The Story of An Hour’
• Brothers Grimm
• Aesop’s Fables (including podcast versions) – over-familiarity could be a problem, but could help too – start with the ending and predict the story (@hartle). Also useful with weaker students. Or try ones that aren’t as popular as the well-known ones. Or get them to guess the moral. (@tarabenwell) Examples of Tara’s online learners reciting Aesop
• Greek/Roman myths
• Bible stories
• Nasruddin stories

Poetry

• Use powerpoint to make slideshows illustrating lines of a poem. (@naomishema)
• Show students limericks, then get them to write their own (@helen100463/@Marisa_C) – although can be frustrating when trying to think of a rhyme for someone’s name (@pjgallantry)
• Use haikus to raise syllable/pronunciation awareness (@Marisa_C). A Haiku is a Japanese poem of 3 lines, with a set number of syllables in each (5-7-5)
• Use the web to find rhymes (@helen100463), for example @flocabulary’s “What rhymes with orange?” or Rhymezone
• Saw a lesson once where T gave ss only the final (rhyming) words of each line of poem – ss had to complete it – worked brilliantly! (@pjgallantry)
• Expression through poetry is very satisfying for learners too, it’s real and can be done at low levels. Grammar poems reinforce too. (@hartle)
• Poetry is expression and can be sparked by all kinds of things: music, images, words… the brain just needs something to set it off (@hartle)
• Use a poem as a dictogloss, then discuss it. I read the poem, they had to listen and write then get into pairs and re-construct and listen again and then again (@fuertesun) I’ve also used mixed up texts , 1 group with nouns, another with verbs etc. They reconstruct text & read (@hartle) More on dictogloss
• I use a lot of poetry: short, we can stop every now and then and comment; even those who “don’t like it” love it in the end & learn! (@vickyloras)
• Use rhymes to teach vocabulary – ‘Word Up‘ from @flocabulary
• Poems are great for seeing word relationships and collocations (@rliberni)
• You can come back to a poem or story later and see what the students remember (@divyabrochier)
• Encourage students to learn a poem by heart (@fuertesun) – espeically good for stress and intonation (@nutrich) @divyabrochier’s Arabic teacher makes them learn something by heart every week ” I am learning a lot of words and remembering them!”
• Practise rhythm /stress by making them do them as a kind of modern rap (@mkofab)

Examples

• Langston Hughes ‘Dreams‘
• Shel Silverstein
• “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost – SS had to discuss a dilemma they had before reading poem. (@naomishema)
• Grammar Jazz Chants by Carolun Graham
• A list of poems and activities from BBC Bitesize (aimed at British 14-16 year olds)
• Tension by @pjgallantry
  
• Sylvia Plath
• Humpty Dumpty – lots of infiniteeltideas
• [Anything by Janet and Allan Ahlberg, especially Please Mrs Butler and Heard It In The Playground – two books of poems about schools. There’s even a schools resource book for the first.]

Plays

• Did an exercise with Romeo & Juliet which looked at using the two families in the play. Students had to spread rumours about the other group. (@rliberni)
• Carry a story forward into our times and change the setting (@Marisa_C)
• Modernize the text (@flocabulary)
• Enact roles, then debate and write from the characters’ viewpoints (@pjgallantry)
• Get them to create own keyword cues for dialogues (@divyabrochier)

Examples

• Shakespeare – including Macbeth, Romeo & Juliet
• Oscar Wilde – quite a few on youtube too

Readers

• Build a reader into each term of your classes (@pjgallantry)
• Turn a short reader into a comic book (@smaragdav)

Other sources #eltchatters have used

• Graphic novels
• Cartoons
• Translated poems/stories from different cultures (not only English poets/writers) – ind English language writers from India, Singapore, Africa, Malaysia etc.. there are many (@rliberni) – for example the OUP reader Land of my Childhood has stories from South-East Asia
• Sometimes they like buying the audiobook too and listen to it on their way to work,works wonders for their language (@vickyloras)
• Such Tweet Sorrow on Twitter

Getting literature to your students

• Share your novels/books with them. Start a private library
• Use a book box.
• Use poetry and short story excerpts if longer sources are not available.
• Use e-books
• Encourage students to exchange books among themselves
• Use Google reader to select reading and listening and then do a project presenting and swapping links on class wiki (@hartle)

Problems

• We have to teach literary concept and thinking skills with the literature. (@naomishema)
• Be age appropriate – “I had an early put-off experience with literature in EFL class: tried teaching some 14-yr-olds some William Blake!” (@pjgallantry)
• It’s important to set the tasks right for literature: just an overview can be enough or select bits (@rliberni)
• What level should extensive literature reading by introduced?
• Do students already read literature in their L1? Even if they don’t, you should still teach them reading skills. (@Marisa_C)
• Be careful of the ‘cultural imperialism’ thingy – some lit can be controversial! (@pjgallantry) But can be avoided by presenting a range of global literature which the sts can choose from. (@theteacherjames)
• Some topics can be controversial: “My teaching Richard Cory sparked a huge eng. teachers debate about if it is o.k to teach a poem that has suicide in it. Scared me” (@naomishema) – “Taught Richard Cory to 10th-12graders. They actually related to seemingly perfect guy on the outside is unhappy inside”
• I worry that it is hard to ‘justify’ using literature in Further Education’s utilitarian view of education as skills training (@pysproblem81): Is being able to appreciate literature, theatre, film etc.. not also a life-skill? (@rliberni)
• Mistakes (used deliberately) in the source text: you can use them to show non-standard use (depending on level of students): noticing this type of thing can reinforce the normal rules (@hartle) I used “Of Mice & Men” which is full of mistakes. Great practice for reading skills & they could check with peers & me. (@theteacherjames)
• Students have trouble with higher-order thinking skills (HOTS) if they’re not taught them in L1 (@naomishema): personally think literature is a real key to higher level language skills… playing with language seems to help (@pysproblem81)
• A lot of teachers have come to ELT from other disciplines and not familiar with literary tradition (@Marisa_C). The teacher must feel enthusiastic and communicate that feeling for any literature work to be really effective (@pjgallantry)
• Very few coursebooks promote literary text – it’s all journalese (@Marisa_C)

Links shared

• Paper about using literature in ESL/ ELL teaching from the Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies http://t.co/I1RnUov
• Creative writing and poetry by David C Byrne
• BBC Bitesize English Literature pages – aimed at 14-16 year old Brits
• Website for folk tales
• 60-second recap – fun introductions to literature
• Fakebook – use it to make fakebook pages for characters from stories etc
• Classic English Reading (3 levels)
• Toondoo – a cartoon maker
• Songs specifically for ELL students from @flocabulary, cinlduign ones that summarize stories
• Human Library: a game to play in class from esl library
• [A collection of bookmarks of poetry and short story videos I made and an example of the students performing one of the stories]
• [Children’s Poetry Archive – poets talk about their poems and read them]

Resource Books

• Literature in the Language Classroom by Joanne Collie (on Amazon)
• The Inward Ear: Poetry in the Language Classroom by Alan Maley (on Amazon)

And to end with, here’s one of my favourite poets of all time, performing one of my favourite kid’s books: