Importance Of Literature In English Literature

The use of literature in English class has been consolidating itself as an important part in teaching English as a second or foreign language, and in some countries has already spread to programs of Elementary and Early Childhood Education. This growing trend is evident in the increase of publications, seminars, workshops, etc. that have turned their attention to the possibilities of using literary texts for teaching and improve learning a second language. A little more than a decade, McRae (1991: 29) pointed, “in this product-led world of language teaching and learning, it is literature (with a large and a small ‘I’) that over the past few years has made a widely heralded comeback”. However, despite the large number of publications on the relationship between language and literature, it appears that the role of literature in the mainstream of teaching and learning English is not yet established in a firm way, perhaps because of the fear that still exists of using it as a learning strategy, to the detriment of attention to the text as an inexhaustible source of activities for language

Benton and Brumfit C., eds., 1993) where various institutions in different countries submit proposals for the use of the English language and literature through reading extracts, tales and short novels. Countries such as Sweden, Germany, Denmark and Italy propose programs carried out in Secondary Education, while Spain contributes with two articles focusing on the teaching of literature in universities (Onega, 1993 and Alcaraz, 1983). It seems to indicate that in our country the systematic development of the exploitation of literary texts in programs of teaching English has been reduced to the tertiary level, where English literature is offered to specialized students, who generally have had little contact to it