Short Stories in English Language Teaching

Abstract

Being an important part of culture, literature should be included in foreign language teaching programs. As it is written for the native users of the language, it is an authentic material and presents good examples of target language. Reading literary works gives students great opportunities to improve their language. Nevertheless, students believe that literature is difficult to understand, boring and unnecessary. Therefore, teachers who want to use literature in language classes face a strong resistance of students against studying literature. It is possible to break the resistance of the students by choosing suitable materials to use and finding enjoyable activities. In ELT departments, students are taught how to use literature in EFL situations. This is a descriptive study which shows the ideas of 40 junior students of ELT department of Akdeniz University about the contributions of studying short stories. They were given a questionnaire to learn their ideas about the benefits of short stories. The data were examined through SPSS and the results were interpreted. Their answers showed that they didn’t find it boring, difficult or unnecessary any more. They also become aware of the fact that reading short stories has contributed to them in many ways. In the light of the findings, some suggestions were made related to the use of literature in EFL classes. Key words: short stories, teaching literature in EFL classes, English language teaching