Teaching English through Literature

For those of you who have an idea of my personality, you must know by now how much I care for literature. Now that I am discovering all this new ESL world that was somehow hidden before I started these classes to become a proper English teacher, I have been trying to figure out a way of combining the use of literature to stimulate reading in my future ESL students and at the same time, I would like to make them fall in love with all the styles of writing, vocabulary and cultures that English language authors can offer.

I surfed the net looking for tips and recommendations on how to use texts in the ESL room. Fortunately, I came across a section at the British Council website giving pieces of advice on how to take advantage of literature to teach English. I had not realised of the guidelines that must be followed before using extracts of literature (poetry, novels, etc) in the classroom.

Before using any piece of literature, we as teachers must respect first of all copyrighting. Chosen texts must be free of any copyright limitations imposed on them. Then if we only choose texts that can be perfectly used for they are old enough to be free from any copyright issue, we can fall into this little problem: presenting only classics that could not be as interesting for students as contemporary literature. It is our task to look for ways to solve these issues. We also must take into consideration preparing students to face the texts before we hand them to them. It's our job to introduce the author, the context and the repercussions of the literature piece in the society and in English language so they are more comfortable with the reading. This way they will be more eager to reading the texts and will achieve the goals we have set with the activity.

I cannot wait to find the perfect activity to use a book I read a decade ago. It is called "Animal Farm" and it was written by George Orwell. This book addresses very serious political issues in the form of a fable and set for me a milestone in terms of politics and the extent of human ambition and power.