Literature in Language Education Evolving Language Pedagogies and Text Preferences in Contemporary Russia

Abstract

The use of authentic texts, including literature, as an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) resource has gained wider currency in classrooms, notably in Europe and Asia, where this integration is being encouraged as linguists acknowledge the vital importance of lexical knowledge to foreign language acquisition. The adoption of communicative language teaching (CLT) methods, pointing to a shift away from teacher-centric models of language pedagogy, has also led to a greater emphasis being placed on the use of authentic texts, including literature, which has, in turn, given rise to debates regarding appropriate teaching techniques, methodology and text selection. In terms of foreign language education in Russia, literature has a storied history of use,

Comics as a multimodal resource and students’ willingness to communicate in Russian

“…Based on the findings, Marya's approach to using comics could be described as combining language-focused, reader-response, art critique, and visual story-telling approaches (for a discussion of these approaches, see Calafato 2018a;Cary 2004;Issa 2018;Serafini 2011). Her approach bears a slight resemblance to that employed by other language teachers in Russia when using authentic, if not necessarily multimodal, materials in the language classroom (Calafato 2018a).…”

“…Selecting appropriate authentic content is complicated by the fact that individual and group interactions have become increasingly multimodal, with text meshing with images, symbols, video, and other semiotic sources across multiple languages (Ntelioglou et al 2014). This multimodality can render some types of authentic content used by language teachers (Calafato 2018a), for example, novels and short stories, less than ideal for developing students' ability to interpret and engage in communication multimodally (Coccetta 2018) given their purely textual nature. Some writers have pointed to comics as a potentially effective multimodal resource for learning languages (Gallo and Weiner 2004;Issa 2018;Leber-Cook and Cook 2013;Schwarz 2010) and a limited number of studies have explored their use by language teachers, mostly those teaching English (Mystkowska-Wiertelak and Pawlak 2017; Shirvan et al 2019).…”

Essays in Middle and High School in Russia: Historical Background

“…What the scholar means by this is that many English instructors try to employ learner-centered approaches to teaching and choosing literary texts. For example, some university instructors employ modern literary texts from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries to teach English (Calafato, 2018). Yet, Calafato argues, "literary works that were popular during Soviet times [ Jerome K. Jerome, John Galsworthy, Somerset Maugham, and others] continue to be used, although contemporary American students, might not know them" (2018, p. 95).…”

“…Yet, Calafato argues, "literary works that were popular during Soviet times [ Jerome K. Jerome, John Galsworthy, Somerset Maugham, and others] continue to be used, although contemporary American students, might not know them" (2018, p. 95). As for the practices of teaching literature, they still include sentence-completion exercises, summary writing, etc., namely, exercises aimed at improving language proficiency (Calafato, 2018). Overall, Calafato concludes that even though the use of literature in the EFL context evolved after the collapse of the Soviet Union, traditional Soviet practices have continued to influence language classrooms.…”

Policies, textbooks, and curriculum constraints to integrating literature into language education: EFL teacher perspectives from Russia

“…Studies show that Russian teachers of English generally hold positive views about incorporating literature into their lessons and use it to improve learners' vocabulary knowledge, reading skills, and intercultural competence (Calafato, 2018;Calafato & Paran, 2019;Belkina & Stetsenko, 2015). At the same time, Calafato and Paran (2019) indicate that younger Russian teachers of English are using literature to a lesser extent than older teachers; they, moreover, do not enjoy reading literature in either English or Russian as much, and were exposed to literature to a lesser extent throughout their FL education.…”