Review

Book Review

Title: Literature in the Language Classroom: A Resource Book Of Ideas and Activities

Author: Joanne Collie and Stephen Slater

Publishe: Cambridge University Press

Year: 1987

Pages: 266

A. Contents of the Book

It is divided into three sections: Part I discusses the questions: Why teach literature? The author provides four reasons why we should teach literature. The first reason is literature is valuable authentic material. The second is it is good for cultural enhancement. The third is it is fruitful for language enrichment in which students are exposed to variety of linguistic advantage and it provides students memorable way of learning new vocabulary. Finally, the author says that literature is good for personal involvement because students will not only learn the rule based-system but also the socio-semantic system of the language. In addition, literature can also engage students imaginatively into the situation of the works they read, for example novels, short stories and poems.

What should we teach? Here, the author gives some suggestions on what literary works can be used as instructional materials. The advices are to choose the literary works that suit to the learners’ need, interest, cultural background and language level.

How should we teach it? The author says that literature can be taught both by applying teacher-centered approach in which the teacher explains the literary works and by applying student-centered approach which adopts communicative competence.

The second point he discusses in this part is the solution that the writer gives to the teachers who want to teach literature but face difficulties such as how use long literary works such as novels in the classroom which of course need long time to do it.

Part II outlines and illustrates a wealth of student-centred class and homework activities appropriate to each stage of the study of a literary work, for example how o use the title and the cover design to intrigue the students’ interest and curiosity. The detailed descriptions of the activities are accompanied by numerous sample worksheets.

Part III demonstrates techniques for working with complete texts, and shows how the activities outlined in Part II can be applied to particular novels (Lord of the Flies), plays (Romeo and Juliet), short stories (The Hitchhiker, The Star and The Spread of Ian Nichol, The Edge, The Open Window, Destiny and The Bullet, Sredni Vashtar and The War in the Bathroom) and poems (The King of China’s Daughter, My Papa’s Waltz, telephone Conversation, The Couple Upstairs, To Women, As Far As I concerned and You and I). All activities described have been used successfully with a wide range of classes from intermediate level up

B. Critical Comments

This is a practical guide for practising teachers of English and teachers in training. It offers teachers a rationale and a variety of imaginative techniques for integrating literature work with language teaching.

The book proves that literature is not only for literature appreciation for those who devote their life in literary works but also for everyone includes language teachers and students. Innovative teachers will see that using literary works in language teaching will be very useful and interesting.