This paper is a review of literature on how literature can be integrated as a language teaching material in EFL/ESL classes. First, it tracks down the place of literature in language classes from the early Grammar Translation Method (GTM) to Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) era. The paper then discusses the reasons for the demise and resurrection of literature as an input for language classes. After that the reasons for and against the use of literature in EFL/ESL classes are enumerated and discussed. For so doing, the researchers draw upon recent ideas on language teaching practice and theories. Finally in a practical move, this paper reviews the past and current approaches to teaching literature in language teaching classes. Five methodological models for teaching literature are proposed.
In this essay, I propose that EFL teachers within a collegiate setting possess a two-fold mandate: Most obviously, they must present language lessons throughout the course of the term that are appropriate for the level of their students. But if student experience in their English courses is limited to language training exercises, then they have missed a valuable opportunity to cultivate their capacities for critical and independent thinking.A most predictable retort would be that students can hardly be expected to display critical thinking prowess in a language in which they have attained only rudimentary facility. Indeed, in English departments throughout Japan, there is a widely held assumption among both students and teachers that many students, particularly at the lower levels, will gain little or no facility in using practical, day-to-day English, much less academic English.This argument rests on the assumption that students, within the context of the English classroom, lose their facility for addressing their own confusion through formulating questions, drawing inferences, and stating hypotheses because of a limited grasp of English. Given the larger mandate of the university, it is most appropriate that students enhance their abilities to think critically as a result of how they are being asked to train in their new language, regardless of their demonstrated ability, and regardless of the extent to which they depend upon Japanese for understanding the full breadth of their classroom experience.A key assumption of the argument being put forth is that critical thinking is a pragmatic set of behaviors connected to or arising out of specific contexts. Making systematic and strategic attempts to inch toward the completion of a goal might serve as a succinct description of what critical thinkers do, and one might therefore isolate and describe what counts as critical thinking in any given context. We might say that in every context of scholastic endeavor there exists both a goal that the student pursues as well as a range of possible strategies for pursuing it. Critical thinking, in this sense, is comparative. This of course implies that it would hardly be appropriate to say that at 17 some levels of study students are engaged in activities befitting critical thought and that at other levels they are not.It ought not to be assumed that critical thinking is relegated to so-called "higher" functions, such as those at work in the synthesizing of large amounts of complex data according to what would be seen as a daring and original hypothesis. Arguably, most critical thinking activities, the ones we most rely upon for organizing our lives, are quite mundane. Within a scholastic context, such activities consist of major study skills, which include responding to instructor cues, planning daily tasks, and managing data flow within the contexts of both single and multiple assignments.When students possess very minimal abilities in their chosen language subject, some aspects of study skills management become less easy t...
In the realm of language teaching, error correction has a long and contentious history. Some schools of thought like nativism refute error correction while others firmly adhere to error correction and regard error as a sin that should be avoided. This dilemma bewilders TEFL practitioners and teachers how to treat errors. Due to the controversial nature of this issue, whether and how to correct errors have spawned numerous celebrated publications in this area in the domains of first language acquisition (FLA) and second language acquisition (SLA). In this vein, lots of studies have probed the role of corrective feedbacks in language classrooms. This paper reviews the main surveys on corrective feedback, providing the theoretical rational for and against error correction, shedding light on different types of corrective feedbacks, and encapsulating the theoretical and empirical studies conducted to investigate corrective feedback and its impact on different aspects of language, offering issues for further directions to cast away all the doubts in this domain.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.