[ELTWeekly Volume 7, Issue 8 | March 23, 2015 | ISSN 0975-3036]
For many English teachers, love of the language and love of English literature go hand in hand. But is it the same for our students? Sadly, most teenage learners of English do not seem too excited about the topic of literature, associating it with dusty texts and tedious book reviews. In this article, we will look at some tips for using literature in simple and motivating ways in the EFL classroom.
- Do judge a book by its cover!
Having a large collection of graded readers, short stories or novellas in your classroom is a great way to make literature available to your students, but in itself it does not guarantee that students will be fighting to get their hands on the titles. Many of them may not even take the trouble to look at the books. That is the first thing to tackle. Design simple quizzes that get students to make predictions about a book’s content based on the cover.
Example: The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The book tells the story of a scientist who discovers that some dinosaurs are still alive and living in…
- a) Africa
- b) Asia
- c) South America
(Oxford Dominoes / Literature Insight, Insight Pre-Intermediate p.92)
In these activities, the students do not have to read anything – in fact they do not even have to open the book.