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PREFACE

Dear students,

Welcome to EEd 19 –Teaching English in the Elemen-

tary Grades through Literature!

This module focuses on Children‟s Literature in Eng-

lish to include riddles, poetry, stories, drama, and oth-
er written works as an avenue to teach English lan-
guage. It also emphasizes the teaching methodologies
in the use of literature. With the tremendous potential
literature can offer for your increased linguistic, cul-
tural, and aesthetic knowledge and appreciation, it is
hoped that you can get the best from your exposure to
this module.

As other literary enthusiasts confirmed, “literature of-

fers a unique aesthetic and intellectual experience that
provides perceptive insight into man‟s existence with-
in the artistic and intellectual boundaries of a literary
framework.”

The literary experience fosters cognitive and aesthetic maturation, develops the ability to make
critical and mature judgments, and develops a feeling and appreciation for language. I earnestly
hope that this module will be of great help and benefit not only to those who intend to be teach-
ers of English but also to the students taking up Teaching English in the Elementary Grades
through Literature, and this will be the time when they can freely express their reaction to the
work‟s literary themes and inherent cultural issues.

Children‟s literature is an important means of creating opportunities for communication and

language development through listening, speaking, reading and writing activities. It exposes
students to real-life values and stimulates sustained interest in literature. It presents collabora-
tive and interactive activities to promote literature appreciation and language proficiency. The
activities in this module will give you strategies to connect literature to students‟ lives and the
world at large.

Love,
Ma‟am Mikee
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UNIT 1: INTRODUCTION TO THE COURSE

1.0 Learning Outcomes:

a. Recognize the importance of literature.
b. Enhance the students‟ competencies in the use of literature in real world contexts.
c. Provide a comprehensive knowledge of literature.

1.1 Introduction
Literature can be deemed as a rich source of „authentic material‟ since it promotes two
characteristics in its written text: one is „language in use,‟ that is, the application of linguistics by
those who have excelled it into a fashion intended for native speakers; the second is an aesthetic
representation of the spoken language which is intended to represent language within a certain
cultural context. „Language in use‟ penetrates the fixed nature that is set up by the artificial
grammar of a classroom provided by textbooks. It is significant to put English learners in mind
that these reconstructions are no more than aesthetic recreations that in some cases incorporate
a momentous reflection about the use of language, and not direct samples of language from
those contexts (Cruz, 2018).

1.2 Viewpoints on Literature

1.2.1 Why teach literature?

While history records past events, it does not include among its pages, the spirit of the na-
tion. It is in literature where no one can see the dreams, anxieties, joys and problems of the peo-
ple in a certain country. Filipino literature in English is part of the literature of the world. Just
like other nations, it started in its crude nature and slowly underwent refinement in the course
of time. The history of every nation bears relevance to a great extent in the development of the
nation‟s literary form (Ambon, 2016).

Linguistic. In terms of language acquisition and learning, literary texts offer samples of a
very wide range of styles, registers, and text types at many levels of difficulty.

Methodological. Since literary texts are open to multiple interpretations, readers can have
different opinions and ideas about a variety of topics. This provides learners an opportunity to
engage in genuine interaction. The learners can even be taught to develop critical thinking.

Motivational. Literary texts are non-trivial since they deal with matters which concerned
the writer enough to make him or her write about them. In this they are unlike many other
forms of language teaching inputs, which frequently trivialize experience in the service of peda-
gogy. Literary texts touch on themes to which learners can bring a personal response from their
own experience.

All Filipino literature would be next to impossible. Such being the case, only a few writ-
ings representing each literary type or genre and period should be taken up. However, before
doing so, there is the need to be familiar with the essentialities and importance of literature.
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The two definitions of literature which served as the criteria for choosing the representa-
tive writings in Filipino Literature in English are the following:

According to Serrano and Ames:

Filipino Literature regardless of the language in which it is written expresses the Filipino
soul, national traditions, customs and cultural values which are so in-grained in a people that
no super-imposition of foreign cultural patterns can completely eradicate them.

According to Webster‟s Dictionary:

Literature covers all the writings of a particular country, time, kind, etc. especially those
valued for excellence of form and expression.

Some viewpoints on Literature include the following:

1. We can get the meaning of a piece of literature by having lived it because literature is a
product of and about life.
2. Life illumines literature just as literature illumines life.
3. Literary forms (which refer to a writer‟s way of saying things) exist because writers have
fashioned them to serve their needs.
4. The distinguishing marks of literature are humanization and vivid concretization and some
adjectives that would describe it are imaginative, creative, interpretative and selective.

1.2.2 What are the processes involved in studying literature?

 Description. Students can talk or write about what they read in

their own words.
 Discrimination. Students can discriminate among the different
literary types. They can identify them by type, author, or
theme.
 Relation. Students can relate several elements of a literary text
to each other or to other texts.
 Interpretation. Students can figure out what they think the au-
thor is saying and defend their interpretations.
 Generalization. Students can draw out the main idea of a piece of literary work or an au-
thor‟s style.
 Evaluation. Students can evaluate the worth of a piece of literature using a set of criteria.
 Valuing. Students can indicate the importance of literature to their own lives or to the
world outside of the text.
 Creation. Students can respond creatively by making art projects, composing a musical
medley, producing an MTV, writing another stanza for a poem or another chapter to a
novel, etc.

The total process of learning a second-language involves far more than simply learning
the forms of the language; it also involves knowledge of the culture of those who speak the lan-
guage. Effective communication in a second-language depends not only on knowledge of how
things are said but also on what is said (Cruz, 2018).
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A thorough mastery of a language for practical communication with real understanding

demands a systematic observation and recording of many features of the precise situations in
which the varied sentences are used. Such a systematic observation and recording must be mi-
nute and sympathetic, not for the purpose of evaluation in terms of one‟s own practices, or of
finding the quaint/attractive customs, but in order to understand and to feel and to experience
as fully as possible (Fries, 2001).

For many years foreign language study...has been justified on the ground that proficiency
in the language constitutes a key to the understanding of the culture of a country and the psy-
chology and personality traits of its people (Marckwardt, 1998).

The study of English as a second-language is strengthened as a result of satisfactory cul-

tural orientation on the part of the student. Such an orientation becomes easier through a read-
ing of the literature in the language; for the language in which the literature is written reflects
and reinforces the cultural patterns and value system of those who speak the language.

According to John F. Povey the following are some of the general aims of the teaching of litera-
ture:

1. Literature will increase all language skills because literature will extend linguistic
knowledge by giving evidence of extensive and subtle vocabulary usage and complex and
exact syntax. It will often represent in a general way the style that can properly stand as a
model for students.
2. Literature is a link towards that culture which sustains the expression of any language.
American literature will open up the culture of country (America) to the foreign student in
a manner analogous to the extension of the native speaker‟s own awareness of his own
culture.
3. We must acknowledge the indefinable, though all-important, concept that literature gives
one awareness and human insight.
4. Literature may guide a few more gifted students towards their own creativity by example
derived from their reading of successful writers. There is already fascinating evidence of a
second-language literature in English from several countries across the world.

Certainly, reading literature with interest and pleasure should be within everybody‟s
reach. Everyone studying English as a second-language should be encouraged to take an inter-
est in its literature in the language.

1.2.3 Importance on Literature

1. Material progress and political power may vanish; the spirit of nationalism may wane; but
the true glories of literature with stand the forces of decay and decline.
2. Literature is an eternally burning flame, exuding light that renders significance to civiliza-
tion.
3. In literature, likewise, there is conserved a heritage which gives meaning to a people‟s ide-
als. It molds the mind of a people by preserving the experience of the past in a cohesive
and beautiful manner.
4. Literature mirrors the depth of a culture and manifests the truly creative genius of the
race.
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5. Literature, though seeming to hide timidly between the covers of a book, has frequently
generated ideas that have had a tremendous effect. It has exhibited the potency of an ex-
plosive in its capacity for upsetting the social order.
6. Literature helps us grow both personally and intellectually.
7. It helps us to connect ourselves to the cultural context of which we are a part.
8. It helps us to develop mature sensibility and compassion for the condition of all living
things, human, animal and vegetable.
9. Literature is one of the things that shape our lives; it makes us human.
10. It encourages us to assist creative talented people who are in need.

The entire literary bulk comes in the form of narration, which is a discourse which tells a
story factually or imaginatively. Narration is the oldest form of discourse which has been prac-
ticed longer than any other form and it is the most widely used. The major divisions of litera-
ture are poetry and prose.

Of all the languages in the world today, English deserves to be regarded as a world lan-
guage. It is the world‟s most widely spoken language. It is the common means of communica-
tion between the peoples of different nations (Maramba, 2015).

Randolph Quirk points out: “There are now something like 250 million people for whom
English is the mother tongue or „first language‟.”

“If we add to this the number of people who have a working knowledge of English as a
second or foreign language (many Indians, Africans, Frenchmen, Russians, and so on), we raise
the total to about 350 million,” Quirk added.

It is true that English is the mother tongue of the people of Great Britain, but they are not
the only native speakers of the language. Americans (citizens of the U.S.A.), Canadians and
Australians too are native speakers of English. So, English is not the mother tongue of the peo-
ple of Great Britain only. That is to say, the native speakers are not confined to Great Britain,
but are spread over three continents of the world, namely, Australia, Europe, and America.

To quote Quirk again, “...most people who speak English are not English and were not
born in England. Not only has the „national‟ sense of English no official political meaning: the
„language‟ sense of „English (importantly, as we shall see) has no necessary link with the genetic
sense either.”

Activity In India, for instance, Eng-

lish continues to be the medium
Answer the questions which will be counted towards your class of instruction in colleges and
participation. (15 pts)
universities, and is also the lan-
guage of administration.
1. Has English literature a place in the teaching of English
as a second-language?
The importance of English
2. How do readers respond to literature?
has been fully realised by the ad-
3. How can we make our students respond to literature?
ministrators and educationists of
India.
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One of India‟s Education Commissions has emphatically asserted: “For a successful com-
pletion of the first degree course, a student should possess an adequate command of English, be
able to express himself with a reasonable ease and felicity, understand lectures in it and avail
himself of its literature.”

Adequate emphasis will have to be laid on its study as a language right from the school
stage. English should be the most useful „library language‟ in higher education and our most
significant window on the world. English is the medium of instruction as well as the language
of administration in a number of Asian and African countries today.

A very important reason for regarding English as a world language is that the world‟s
knowledge is enshrined in English. Countries in Asia and Africa that were until recently under
the British rule get their scientific knowledge and technological know-how from English books.
Today the compulsions of learning English are no longer political but scientific and technologi-
cal. English is the language required by the world for greater understanding, it is the most inter-
national of languages (Maramba, 2015).

Another and far more important consequence of the use of English was that it stimulated
new consciousness among the people.

Indish (Indian English)

Indish – a common language as the medium of communication and government work in

the country – a language having the alphabet, the framework and basic structure of English, in
the Roman script, an organic language growing freely and assimilating new words, new ideas,
new constructions, new idioms, even, if necessary, new letters of alphabet, from each one of the
regional languages of India.

Braj B. Kachru who has made a study of Indian English in his paper entitled “Indian Eng-
lish: A Study in Contextualisation” says: “In spoken medium Indian English has by now estab-
lished itself into an Indian variety of English. We might call the Indianness of Indian English, in
the same way as we speak of the Englishness of British English.”

Kachru‟s emphasis is on Indian English as a creative medium and not as a medium of or-
dinary communication that has legitimised syntactical and grammatical mistakes.

According to Gokak „Indian English‟ represents “the evolution of a distinct standard – a

soul the body of which is correct English usage, but whose soul is Indian in colour, thought and
imagery, and now and then, even in the evolution of an
Indian idiom which is expressive of the unique quality of
the Indian mind while conforming to the correctness of
English usage.

Gokak stresses here the point that our English differs

from British English or American English but conforms to
the correctness of English usage. Indian English is simply
good English, English that differs a little in pronunciation,
word choice and idiom from good English as written in
New York or London.
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ASSESSMENT

A. Agree or Disagree: Elaborate your answer. (5 points)

“English deserves to be regarded as a world language.”

B. What were his thoughts about English language? (5 points)

-Randolph Quirk

C. What is the essence of studying Indish/Indian English? (10 points)

-Braj B. Kachru
-V.K. Gokak

1.2.4 Analyzing Literature

Defining the literature of an era entails much more than looking at publishing dates. To
say that 21st Century Literature refers to “all works written from 2001 onwards” is vague and
inadequate. As with all literary periods, it must be seen as part of a broader context. The new
millennium has seen massive events such the terrorist attacks in New York (9/11) and other
parts of the world, the Arab Spring, the global recession, the legalization of same-sex marriage
in some regions of the US and Europe, the election of the first Latin American Pope, among oth-
ers (Ambon, 2016).

These events have no doubt distilled into the themes of recent literary works. But when a
mere fifteen years of a century has passed, it is difficult, if not futile, to state definitive parame-
ters for what constitutes the world‟s literature of the era. At most, we could only examine what
the 21st century has produced thus, far and form our own observations.

From the moment of his birth, the child is exposed to the sounds of the language. He is
thus in constant contact with these sounds for most of his waking hours. Objects and actions in
the surroundings are described to the child in an oversimplified language at first, and later in
explanatory utterances. All this results in his „producing‟ the language.

In other words, it is natural speech with all its distortions, omissions and inconsistencies
that he hears. A very important aspect of language acquisition is that the child learns whatever
language he is expected to. Normally, a child is exposed to one language only. If he is exposed
to two languages because of his growing up in a bilingual environment, he acquires both lan-
guages simultaneously.

The exposure to language enables the child to internalize the grammar of his language.
The child‟s exposure is to situations evoking his behaviour, his motivation, instant rewards for
success, etc. Also, the world of the child is a linguistic world unhampered by the kind of dis-
tractions to which adults learning a second language are subject.

Geoffrey Broughton and his colleagues are right when they say:

“Adults learning English bring to the task a mature personality, many years of educational
training, a developed intelligence, a determination to get what they want, fairly clear aims, and
above all strong motivation to make as rapid a progress as possible. These are formidable quali-
fications which far outweigh any disadvantages, and make teaching adults a challenging and
satisfying experience.”
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Both children and adults learn languages when exposed to them. One of the important
conditions of learning a second language is abundant exposure to the language. The learners of
a second language are not as much and as constantly exposed to the language they attempt to
learn as a child acquiring his mother tongue (Cruz, 2018).

Variable Factors which are great im-

Activity portance in Second-Language Learning:
Write your answer in the space provided—
True or False. (5 pts) 1. Duration of Exposure to the Language

___1. Literature can be found in history. It is the most important factor in second
___2. All writings must be narrated as literature. language learning. The long period of exposure
___3. There is a two-way action between to English enables our students to have a cer-
literature and life. tain degree of familiarity with sentence pat-
___4. Literature can be interpreted and imagined. terns, words, and phrases in the language
___5. History plays a role in the refinement of a which, with some more continuous contact
nation’s literary works. with the language strengthens his ability to
write it though not to speak it.

2. Classroom Conditions

These conditions include the number of students in a class, the physical arrangements for
the class, teaching materials such as chalk, blackboard, audio-visual aids, library etc. It is very
important that second-language classes are of the right size. Students need to develop their
English language skills through exposure to the language of literature. As it is mentioned, there
are various genres of literature such as poetry, fiction and drama to develop students‟ vocabu-
lary and mastery of grammatical structures. This approach to the study of literary texts, leading
to language-literature integration, sees literature classes as laboratories or practical workshops
for the development of students‟ language and communicative competence. Below are crucial
words to be used in the study of language and literature:

 Discourse patterns. Text arrangements beyond the sentence level, including paragraphs,
connectors, etc.
 Genres. Types of literature such as poetry, drama and prose.
 Language competence. Language proficiency that includes the ability to communicate ef-
fectively in a language.
 Communication skills. The ability to use the language skills of listening, speaking, read-
ing and writing to effectively perform various language functions such as greeting, agree-
ing, requesting, exchanging social niceties and so on.
 Communicative competence. The ability of speakers of a language to know what to say to
whom, and when. In other words, communicative competence includes the knowledge of
the vocabulary and structures of the language as well as the social norms of speaking.
 Integrated approach. This suggests using literature to teach language skills and the re-
sources of language (words, collocations, sentence structures, paragraph connectors, meta-
phorical expressions, etc.) to teach literature.
 Literacy skills: These include the ability to read and write in a language.
 Critical thinking: This involves the ability to reflect on a piece of spoken or written dis-
course (of at least one paragraph) and to evaluate its strengths and weaknesses in terms of
both conceptual and language clarity.
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The child learns to speak first; then only does he learn to write, and that too when taught;
speaking he does without being formally trained. The history of human language shows that it
came to be spoken first and written afterwards. This primacy of speech makes linguists argue
that the language learner has already learnt his mother tongue and has reached an age at which
he can learn what he sees and hears; we may make use of both modalities – speech and writing
- simultaneously in our scheme of second-language learning (Ambon, 2016).

The rise of social media and digital technology has altered the modes of literary produc-
tion and consumption altogether. The Internet has made it possible for new genres to emerge,
gain global following at a rapid pace, and receive public critique almost instantaneously. Since
no genre or style is born in a vacuum, these new forms are oftentimes the offspring of existing
genres. Some of the genres that are popular in the early years of the 21 st century are still those
that have already been around in the 20th century. Literature remains fluid. The absence of a de-
finitive canon is what actually makes the subject exciting. We are no longer passive students
reading from a prescribed list of works deemed as “representative” of the literary period. In-
stead, we are encouraged to actively explore, to create, to participate, and by doing so we con-
tribute to the growing body of work of this era (Cruz, 2018).

ASSESSMENT
A. Agree or Disagree. Explain your answer. (5 points)
“Children acquire a better mastery of pronunciation system than adults.”

B. Determine whether the following statements are true or false. If each states a fact, write
true at its end. If it tells false information, write false and justify your answer. (10 points)
1. Demonstration nearly always gets better results than evaluation.
2. Exact teaching is essential; therefore, exposure of the learner to good English should
be made possible.
3. Systematic teaching should be reinforced with the help of well-written texts.
4. The golden rule for the teaching of speaking is for the teacher to do nothing for the
learner that the learner can safely do for himself.
5. A well-designed motivation is a powerful incentive to good teaching and learning.

C. Answer the questions below. (5 points)

On the analogy of the child‟s language acquisition, should the second language-learner be
taught speech first and writing next? In other words, is it psychologically necessary or benefi-
cial for speech to be learnt before writing? Elaborate your answer.

1.3 References
Cruz, I.R. (2018). Teaching Literature: A Manual of Readings. Manila, PH: REX Book Store.
Ambon, F.M., et al (2016). 21st Century Literature from the Philippines and the World.
Malabon City, PH: Mutya Publishing House, Inc.
Maramba, R.E., et al (2015). Elements of Literature. Makati City, PH: REX Book Store.

1.4 Acknowledgment
The images, tables, figures and information contained in this module were taken from the
references cited above.