The use of literature for language teaching purposes has always been a

controversial issue in different contexts all around the world. It is still being

discussed whether it is a good idea to include literary works in the course material

list of language classrooms because even though literary works enable learners to

see authentic samples of the target language, give them a chance to understand

the culture of the target community better and to practice the target language in

different aspects, the complexity of the language presented to readers and the length

of books make it difficult for teachers to use them with learners of different levels.

With the new curriculum suggested by Turkish Higher Education Council

(YÖK) in 2018 for Faculties of Education, 2 courses, ‘Literature and Language

Teaching I-II’, were replaced by 2 other courses, ‘Teaching Language and Literature

I-II’ including some slight changes which were added to the course lists of English

Language Teaching Departments in Faculties of Education in Turkey. These

courses aim to train prospective teachers of English with a good command of not

only theoretical information about different literary genres such as short stories,

novels, plays and poems but also ideas related to their practice in the language

classroom. After a series of discussions with colleagues from different universities

in Turkey, we agreed that we needed a course material that would facilitate the

duty of teachers teaching this course and that would give students a chance to go

further than a simple analysis of literary works. For this reason, the aim of this

book is to provide students with theoretical information about the main literary

forms and some practical ideas for using them in the language classroom. This

volume is composed of the following parts:

Chapter 1 tries to explain the concept of “literature” in general and its

contribution to the field of language teaching. It also lists some different approaches

to the study of literature in the language classroom based on multiple activities.

Chapter 2 deals with “short story” as a literary form, starting with its

definition, its historical development and main elements. The second part of the

chapter discusses the advantages and possible challenges of using short stories for

language teaching purposes and suggests variousactivities based on a short story

by a well-known author.

Chapter 3 focuses on novels, which is a very popular course material in

language classrooms and it suggests a variety of tasks which are applicable in the

classroom while using novels.

Introduction v

Chapter 4 focuses on plays as course materials which might serve serve many

different purposes in the language classroom. After giving brief information

about what it refers to and its historical development, this chapter suggests some

classroom activities that might be used to improve students’ language skills.

Chapter 5 explains what poetry is, along with types and characteristics of

poems. It also deals with different types of literary devices and how to use poems

in the language classroom.