Value of Literature in Language Teaching

Abstract

In view of the conflicting views about the traditional literature based vs. authentic materials in teaching English as a second and foreign language as well as English for academic and specific purposes, a brief survey about the benefits of the materials reveals that the literature based materials can capture the attention of the learners by connecting the content to the real time situations more impressively and artistically than authentic materials and can make the learning more meaningful. The information required has been collected in the form of questionnaires and oral interviews and an analysis of the data has been presented in the narrative form in combination with the accounts of analyses of the review of similar literature.