Current Issues in Teaching Literature

The article that I have chosen is entitled ‘Teaching Literature through Language: Some Consideration’ by Abraham Panavelil Abraham (Ph D) who is an English Professor at University of Nizwa, Oman. This research article mainly discusses on why teaching literature in language classroom is important, how to choose an appropriate literary text and also some strategies for teaching literature by creating an awareness of linguistic possibilities and sensibility.
In the introduction, Abraham pointed out that commonly teachers will use ‘the traditional method’ such as ‘lecturing on topics like theme, characterization, plot, motif etc directly’ without giving much attention on the language aspect of the literary texts. This phenomenon seems to depict well our own Malaysian classroom. Most of the time teachers in schools focus more on completing the prescribed texts by providing all the information about the text and they rarely pinpoint the stylistic or the linguistic features of the texts. In my opinion, the stylistics and linguistics features of the text are the ones which make the text as an art. Rather than pinpointing these features, some teachers would find it easier to grab the commercial study guide that are easily available in book shops which has simplified version of the literary elements as mentioned above and photocopy the whole chapter for the students. Some teachers consider that they have completed the text when they manage to cover all these elements with the students without bothering much about the students’ understanding on the particular text.
In the same paragraph, Abraham mentioned that ‘learning literature through language demands active involvement of both’ parties. Therefore, our teachers should promote active involvement in both sides as well. This means that the teacher should not be the sole information provider but the students should do the exploration on their own with the support of the teacher for the students to build ‘intensive