Literature In Modern Times :: essays research papers

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1.0 Presentation From the very beginning of human species, literature existed side by side. Human life, in the form of human passions, feelings, loves, sufferings, and human history existed in the literatures. Human legends started with the very stone age, recorded in the stone scripts. It was a human need to communicate the past to the future generations. Poetry, as an art form, has been for many centuries praised, contemplated and has continued to affect man. Man has used poetry to express love and grief, birth and death, innocence and guilt, heaven and hell in a more effective way. In order to achieve such a way of expression the poet does not have any other material at his disposal except language. However in poetry, this language itself, turns out to be the goal of the poet rather than only an instrument for communication. Her/his way of expressing ideas and emotions summarises the poets craftsmanship and creativity. What the poet does is that he/she illustrates and exemplifies how language can be used to achieve the most effective way of expression. Poems deal with universal themes such as love and hate, birth and death, innocence and guilt, heaven and hell, which are familiar to all readers. For this reason, believing in the importance of literature and the contribution of poetry to language teaching and learning, we have decided to use poetry to act as a means to enrich the language awareness of ELT majors. 1.1 Background of the problem Until the late 60’s and early 70’s the teaching of literature in foreign and second language classes was an activity whose justification was assumed to be obvious. Poetry and literature in general became the â€Å"forgotten† man since then, and this can be ascribed to the advent of communicative language teaching. With the shifting emphasis of the study of English for practical purposes, technical or otherwise, as well as an emphasis on the spoken language more than on written language, the role of literary texts in the language classroom and the relationship between language teaching and literature teaching in the EFL context seemed to be totally neglected. Looking through TEFL/ TESL writings in the 70’s and 80’s, one can find little about the teaching of literary texts and hardly anything controversial. Although poetry has been the focus of interest for ages, it has not got its deserved place in English language teaching.