A study of the integration of literature and communicative language teaching

Since the early 1980s, attitudes toward literature in English language teaching (ELT) have undergone two major changes. First, after a long period in which literature was essentially excluded from ELT, it began to be seen in a more favourable light. Second, literature began to be viewed more as a tool in ELT, rather than as the end towards which ELT students should be led. These changes in attitude have led to a surge of interest in literature in ELT, particularly in the context of Communicative language teaching (CLT). This study examines, in several ways, the nature and the extent of this renewed interest in literature. The study explores the evolution of these changes, and puts them in perspective by creating various classifications for current types of approaches to literature in ELT and CLT. It also investigates the degree to which interest in literature in ELT has moved from research and scholarship to actual practice among teachers. In addition, it attempts to extend literature's applications in CLT by experimenting with the use of literature in a domain of CLT generally regarded as unsuited to literature-based teaching: English for Specific Purposes (ESP). The study also offers a series of proposals through which further integration of literature and CLT can take place

Undergraduate ESL students' engagement in academic reading and writing in learning to write a synthesis paper

As an important and a challenging source-based writing task, synthesizing offers rich opportunities to explore the connections between reading and writing. In this article, we report findings from a qualitative study of two Chinese students’ learning experiences with academic synthesis writing in a university ESL composition course. Specifically, we discuss how the two students’ understanding of synthesis and sources influenced their synthesis writing practices and how they perceived the connections between their reading strategies and synthesis writing processes. Our results reveal that the students’ understanding of synthesis and the functions of sources played a crucial role in learning to synthesize, as did their ability to use rhetorical reading strategies to complete this new literacy task. We argue that whether second language (L2) students understand the complex reading-writing relationships underlying synthesizing is crucial for their successful textual production. These findings carry valuable implications for understanding reading and writing connections and teaching L2 source-based writing

ESL student attitudes toward corpus use in L2 writing.

Abstract In recent years, there has been growing interest in the use of corpora in L2 writing instruction. Many studies have argued for corpus use from a teacher's perspective, that is, in terms of how teachers can develop instructional materials and activities involving a corpus-based orientation. In contrast, relatively little attention has been paid to investigations of learners' actual use of corpora and their attitudes toward such use in the L2 writing classroom. This paper describes a study of corpus use in two ESL academic writing courses. Specifically, the study examined students' corpus use behavior and their perceptions of the strengths and weaknesses of corpora as a second language writing tool. The study's qualitative and quantitative data indicate that, overall, the students perceived the corpus approach as beneficial to the development of L2 writing skill and increased confidence toward L2 writing