#90, Research Article: ‘Using Fiction (Novel) To Improve The Sentence Structure Of Graduate Level Students (Esl/Efl Learners)’ by Shabnum Iftikhar

ELTWeekly Newsletter Vol. 3 Issue#90 | June 20, 2011

Introduction

This research article aims at emphasizing the use of fiction (novel) as a resource to improve the sentence structure of students. Sentence structure is also called “Syntax”. In the dictionary definition, syntax is a grammatical arrangement of words in sentences, but in a broader sense, the structure of a sentence is a unifying relation also. The words combined with one another must form a cohesive relation in a sentence. In order to write with correct sentence structure, a deep knowledge of grammatical aspects and a clear understanding of syntactic cohesion are indispensable. In recent years, the role of different genres of literature as a basic component and source of authentic texts of the language has gained currency to a great extent. There has been a continued debate on this issue as to how, when, where and why fiction should be incorporated in the ESL/EFL curriculum. This research by providing a pragmatic approach explores various strategies of using fiction to teach grammar/syntax in the language class.

The novel has a great capacity to catch the attention of the reader due to its story-telling method and its linguistically rich environment helps learners in acquiring competency in different areas of language. So far as the sentence structure is concerned, novel can be proved a powerful pedagogical tool in relation to the target language. Novels provide real life-like settings and characters and characters speak to each other, therefore, variety and versatility of sentence structures are copiously found in novels.

People have a natural tendency of story-telling and listening both. This tendency can be exploited more effectively by including interesting novels, keeping in mind the abilities and mental faculties of students. In this way, not only their interest in fiction can be enhanced which enables them to become life-long readers, but also can be provided them a platform, where they would be able to grasp the technicalities of a target language. Every language has its own linguistic levels and grammatical or sentence structure patterns, the internalization of these patterns is an essential prerequisite for language learning process. For L2, meaningful learning occurs, when meaningful methodology is adopted in the class, appropriate to students’ cognitive levels. In this perspective, in order to get the knowledge of sentence structures and to understand their usage, students are greatly required such academic environment, where their attention must be focused that they read novels deeply, concentrate on how different characters speak and react and what different sentence structures they use in order to express them in various situations. The reading of authentic literary texts will be helpful to improve students’ sentence structures in an authentic way. This improved sentence structure will enable them to create good piece of writing and good writing requires the use of parallel sentence structure. Parallel structure adds impact and balance to what one writes. It allows the learners to better understand the ins and outs of a language structure. Without getting an explicit knowledge of a variety of sentence structures, language cannot be explored.

During the 80’s and early 90’s, it was a hot topic in the pedagogical circles of the countries, where English was taught as a second language, how to teach English so that students must gain proficiency and fluency in order to overcome their weaknesses of grammar and sentence structure. There was found an element of dissatisfaction with conventional and prevailing methods of the time of language teaching. English teachers and language researchers put forward and applied various techniques and strategies including introducing literature to the language classroom. So in the 90’s there was an awakening of interest in literature. This gave much rise to the debate of placement of literature. However, the interface of literature and language teaching resulted in the students’ responses to the text; therefore, this approach got much acceptability that if various genres of literature (novel, drama, poetry, short story) are taught to students, their deficiencies of L2, especially those concerned with sentence structure can be removed. Since then, this methodology is being applied successfully all over the world and attention is being focused on the mastery of sentence structure which is an essential element of a language.

Linguists and scholars support the value of teaching literature and consider it a powerful approach for non-native speakers. The popularity of this approach lies in the fact that this approach lends itself well to the repertoire of strategies needed for language teaching. Consistently with the spreading of this idea, several books have been published and countless articles have been written which attempt to bridge the gap between literature and language studies, introduce students to some of the finest exponents of literature, help them understand the target language through reading of the literary texts and encourage them to analyze the usage of different grammatical and syntactic structures.  The purpose of preferring this method to other methods is that through this approach, students must be able to understand language with the variety of sentence structure patterns (simple, complex, compound, etc) and then be able to write by applying their acquired knowledge of these structures.

Being a global language, English is now considered a key to success in every field of life. To be successful in this competitive world, students are compelled to learn this language. If we take a look of this matter in the context of Pakistan, English as a language and subject has the same significance for us also. In our educational institutes, English is taught as a compulsory subject up to graduate level, but the proficiency of our students in this language still is a question mark. Notwithstanding, special importance is being given to English subject in our academic domain but facts reveal that even at graduate level, students are unable to write with correct sentence structure. They encounter plenty of grammatical problems, which is the biggest hurdle in their writing behavior.

Sentence structure is a foundation of a language on which other pillars of a language stand. To write English grammatically perfect is the basic ability which is greatly required by students. Due to the intense lack of strong writing skill, students cut a sorry figure while given them a writing task. The reason is their lack of knowledge about sentence structures, without making students’ sentence structure strong; it is entirely useless to expect from them a native like competency in writing.

As novel has proved to be a practical medium for ESL acquisition, therefore, by integrating novels and/or by teaching already prescribed novels in the course effectively, appropriate study behavior towards writing can be fostered in students. For this purpose, the selection of a novel keeping in mind the cognitive and emotional capacity of students is a crucial step towards the primary goal of teaching novels. How to evaluate literary qualities of a novel depends upon the teacher’s ability. The teacher must know which type of novels can be selected to impart linguistic benefits to students. The teacher should check whether the novel chosen to teach, has the ability to capture students’ attention in a sense that it arises their curiosity for reading.

Novels present a realistic picture of human life with a vast variety of characters from all backgrounds of race, color and class. These characters meet each other, interact, and express their emotions by conveying their sentiments and their behavior, gestures and feelings are expressed through dialogues, and because each character speaks according to his/her status, this is the reason why novels are considered fertile in the matter of sentence structure. Hence, novels with interesting story, fast-paced plot and having memorable, well-sketched characters, if are taught will prove very beneficial, so it could be said that novel is a useful tool in the hands of a language teacher. The teacher should keep the concentration of students on how different characters speak in different circumstances. The language they use, the dialogues they speak, must be noticed by students. Once students’ interaction is established with the text, the teacher can motivate them easily to note various sentence structures used by characters. This exposure to language is the basic need of students for which novels should be explored in the language class.

The main objective to adopt this method is to create an authentic native like situation, this situation can be created if novels are taught through language-based approach, where students don’t feel themselves alien to English language but be capable to discover their weaknesses in the area of sentence structure and to view language in different perspectives in order to enhance their writing skills.

Significance of the Study

As a matter of fact, to learn a language is a gradual and systemic process; it cannot be done overnight. The best way to learn a language is to thrust learners into an environment in which it is being spoken and novels provide exactly the same environment, where students will be able to discover a language like a growing up child, to absorb the knowledge of various forms/functions of a language and to build up their sentence structure. Besides it, appropriate methodology is essential. Methodology is not merely to adopt randomly and to deal with the defined tasks haphazardly. Its goal must be to improve language teaching and to enhance student’s skills in the desired and required area. By giving meaningful exposure to language through novels, students’ abilities to understand complex sentence structures can be developed to a greater level, subsequently, how do students give new slant to their writing by using their acquired knowledge of various sentence structure; this study revolves around it.

Literature Review

To what extent fiction (novel) is helpful in the language class to improve the sentence structure and how novels can be exploited by language teachers to facilitate learners to achieve deeper and clearer comprehension of grammatical patterns in order to write correctly; it is easy to assess when the opinions of the following people are juxtaposed.

According to Collie and Slater,

“Different genres of literature (poetry, drama, and novel) provide learners with a wide range of individual lexical or syntactic items. Students become familiar with many features of the written language, reading a substantial and contextualized body of text. They learn not only about the syntax and discourse functions of sentences, but also the variety of possible structures, and the different ways of connecting ideas, which develop and enrich their own writing skills. Students also become more productive and adventurous when they begin to perceive the richness and diversity of the language; they are trying to learn and begin to make use of some of that potential themselves.” (3)

Hismanoglu writes in his journal,

“The use of a novel is a beneficial technique for mastering not only linguistic system but also life in relation to the target language. In novel, characters reflect what people really perform in daily lives. Novels not only portray but also enlighten human lives. Using novel in a foreign language class offers the following educational benefits:”

• Develops the advanced level readers’ knowledge about different cultures and different groups of people.
• Increases students’ motivation to read owing to being an authentic material.
• Offers real life / real life like settings.
• Gives students the opportunity to make use of their creativity.
• Improves critical thinking skills.
• Paves the way for teaching the target language culture.
• Enables students to go beyond what is written and dive into what is meant. (Vol.1,No.1,)

V. Sakthivel and N. Kavidha strongly emphasize in their journal that

“Literature is one of the best tools to master a language. People have an inherent ability to understand the basic story-telling conventions, irrespective of age, religion, caste and creed. This helps us to enjoy literature and appreciate the meaning it conveys. It is this implicit competence that we try to take advantage of using literature to teach language. The same can be experienced by reading a novel, because it provides real life situations, where one character meets other characters and they interact. The language used by these characters should be noted by the reader. While reading, a conscious reader should allow his heart to go for details and his mind to collect the usage of a language. It’s the duty of the language teacher to show the right direction to the learners and motivate them to take note of the language used by the characters. While teaching, grammatical aspects of a text should be explained by the teacher apart from concentrating on the story. Learners can understand the diverse use of words, phrases, phrasal verbs, multiple meanings, idioms, etc. They learn use familiar words in new contexts with new meanings. Students get absorbed in the story and the language (sentence pattern and words) is understood and mastered without much effort in the process. They further suggest, while reading text of the novels, one can divest a lot of information regarding language usage and word power. The students in the third world countries have only a limited access to spoken English. Face to face communication with the native speaker is a rarity. So, we need to select materials, which match the interests of our students and which will at the same time bring more exposure to the English of Americans or any other western country.” (Vol. 10)

Carter and Long have given another approach to teach fiction in the EFL classroom, which refers to as the “language-based approach”. It is the most common approach which enables learners to access a text in a systematic and methodical way in order to exemplify specific linguistic features like grammatical aspects of a language. The strategies used in this approach are cloze-procedure, prediction exercises, jumbled sentences, summary writing, creative writing as well as role-plays. All these form a part of EFL activities used by teachers to deconstruct literary texts in order to serve specific linguistic goals.”

Gwin has pointed out that it is only through literature that learners are exposed to the “subtle elements that go into the creation of what is called good writing”. (10)

In the similar manner, Chin elaborates that

“Since literature exposes learners to a variety of writing styles, it would unconsciously help learners develop their own writing style.” (63)

Ibsen says that

“Authentic materials such as timetables, newspapers, letters and menus being used in the communicative classroom represent survival English without meaningful learning and knowledge of the target language. On the other hand, he argues in the favor of fiction that fiction is often said to represent the use of authentic materials in language instruction. Therefore literary texts can be seen as a valuable complement to authentic materials, which provide genuine and undistorted language that can be managed in the language classroom. This ‘comprehensible input’ can only be obtained from literary texts.” (2)

Anne Burns has also given emphasis on

“Redefining the classroom goals in English teaching in such a way that the tasks and the texts given to the students must be appropriate to them and should not follow the native speaker norms. The learners and the teachers need to be made aware of the content and the context in second language education.” (3)

Savvidou has supported the integration of linguistic as well as the literary components and says that

“It develops a learner’s understanding and increases his knowledge about the lexical and the grammatical structures. The learners can use their learning strategies to analyze and interpret language in a specific context and come to know why and how of the language manipulation. Moreover, learners get opportunities to develop their linguistic as well as communicative skills and various types of discourses. A useful technique of teaching literature is to open questions to the textual structure and identity. This can be done by studying two contrasting texts together. In this way the features of both the texts are revealed and the meaning of the textual status can be worked upon.”

Helton, C.A, J.Asamani and E.D.Thomas expound the educational benefits of novels as follows:

• Stimulates their imagination.
• Helps students to identify the emotions of the characters so that they can learn how others cope with situations and problems similar to their own experiences.
• Helps them master the skills that will enable them to acquire information, process this knowledge, identify problems, formulate alternatives, and arrive at meaningful, thoughtful, effective decisions and solutions.
• Develops oral and written language skills.
• Serves as a springboard for a multitude of holistic learning and critical thinking activities beginning with basic comprehension and writing.
• Presents a unique way of teaching reading by getting students involved and excited about the reading process.
• Motivates students to become lifelong readers.

“When selecting a novel to be used in the foreign language class, the language teacher should pay attention to whether the novel has an intriguing story that will be of interest to the entire class. Themes and settings captivating their imagination and exploring the human condition should be included in the nature of the selected novels. Novel should have a powerful, fast-paced plot and interesting, well delineated, memorable characters. The content of the novel should be suitable to students’ cognitive and emotional levels. Specific themes and concepts being developed in class should also be incorporated within the novel. (1)

P, Padmini elaborates the same issue in her journal,

“What is lacking in most of our English classes is the integration between language and literature. So, what we need is not the abolition of Literature teaching but the right choice of the texts and a change in the methodology adopted.” She further says,

The Role of the Text: As far as the choice of text is concerned, it is the key to success in using literature in a language classroom. A text which is extremely difficult in linguistic or cultural levels will reap very few benefits. It is always worthwhile to use simple texts. There is a vast corpus of simple texts available within the body of literature in English. In Indian contexts, texts from the large body of creative writing in English by its non-native user from former British colonies such as countries in the Indian subcontinent, in East and West Africa and in the Caribbean can be used. The works of these non-native writers are unique in the way in which the English language has been extended, modified and elaborated to serve the purposes of revealing local, national individual sensibilities. These literatures also manifest a cultural context that an ESL/EFL learner can identify with. The simplicity in their works is a positive aspect of their literary merit and makes the works apt for the language classroom.

The next key to success in using literature in a language classroom is the methodology adopted. Any literary work can be read and discussed on three levels, namely, the denotative, connotative and the evaluative. At the denotative level what is said, or what happens to whom, for what reasons, where and when in a literary text is discussed. At the connotative level, what is meant by what the characters say or do is pondered over. And at the evaluative level, how does the reader regard what is said or done is dealt with.

Problems Faced by Our Teachers: However, the problem with many teachers is that they fail to discuss a prescribed literary text at these three levels. The teachers just read and interpret the literary text. To put it otherwise, only the first level, that is, the denotative level of interpretation is done. This is a wrong method. Instead of reading what is said, or what happens to whom, for what reasons, where and when, literature should be used as a resource for teaching language. Literature should not be taught for literature’s sake in a language classroom. Instead it should be used to engage students in activities that will lead, in the first place, to language development. (Vol.9,)

Obediate states,

“Literature helps students to acquire a native like competence in English, express their ideas in good English, learn the features of modern English, learn how the English linguistic system is used for communication, see how idiomatic expressions are used, speak and write clearly, precisely and concisely and become more proficient in English as well as become, creative, critical and analytical learners.” (32)

Conclusion

This research provides a rationale for the exploitation of novel as a language resource and proves that the use of novel is a helpful and beneficial technique in relation to the needs of students as it provides an environment which stimulates learners to discover a language on their own, instead of making them the passive receivers of information. Novels not only present a distinct literary world which widens the horizons of learners but also offer learners the opportunities to reinforce their grammatical structures and various discourse types. The reading of novel is an effective way to build sentence structure and to develop writing comprehension skills because it is through reading that students become familiar with the target language. As a result of integrated approach, the students will be able to concentrate on the nuances of English language, because grammar/sentence structure can never be taught and understood “out of context” or in “isolation”, thus the teaching of novel is compatible with a focus on the development of sentence structure of students.

In the ESL context (prevalent in Pakistan), the method of English language teaching needs to be based on a practical approach. It is imperative that objectives must be defined to cope with the problem, students face in the process of writing. The present study, therefore, attempts to provide a comprehensive in-depth description, how the novel in the language class can be exploited in the light of learner-centered approach.

References

• Burns, Anne. “Teaching English from a Global Perspective” Washington D.C TESOL. (3-145) 2005 press.
• Carter, R & Long, M.  “Teaching Literature,” Longman  1991 press.
• Chin, M. “Literature in the Language Classroom. In Compendium: A Handbook for ELT Teachers.” Kuala Lumpur: Malaysian Ministry of Education, (63-72)  1991 press.
• Collie, J. and S. Slater. “Literature in the Language Classroom: A Resource Book of Ideas and Activities”. Cambridge: CUP. (3)  1990 press.
• Gwin, T. “Language Skills through Literature.” FORUM XXVIII (3)  (10-13)  1990 web.
• Helton, C.A, J.Asamani, et al.  “A ‘Novel’ Approach to the Teaching of Reading”. Tennessee State: Tennessee State University, (1-5)  1998 press.
• Hismanoglu, M. “Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies”: Teaching English through Literature. Vol.1, No.1,  2005 web.

• Ibsen, E. B. “The Double Role of Fiction in Foreign Language Learning: Teaching a Creative Methodology.” English Teaching Forum XXVIII (3),  (2-9)  1990 web.

• Obediate, M. “Language Vs Literature in English Departments in the Arab World” in English Teaching Forum.  1997 web.

• P, Padmini.  “Why” and “How” of Literature in Language Classroom” Vol.9, ISSN 1930-2940,  2009 web.

• Sakthivel, V. & N, Kavidha. “Is Literature a Viable Medium for ESL Acquisition?” Language and Literature: An Exposition, Vol.10, ISSN 1930-2940,  2010 web.
  • Savvidou, C.  “An Integrated Approach to Teaching Literature in the EFL Classroom.”2004 web.

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