Literature and Language Teaching: A Classroom-Centred Study

Abstract

#Teachers of literature seem to use their intuitions in chalking out the plans, aims and objectives of teaching literature. The existing syllabi at the Departments of English, Yemeni Universities, do not offer clear aims and objectives to solve the problem of random selection of texts, teaching methods, marking schemas, etc. Since the aims are vague, there is no agreement on the portions to be covered for each course. This leads some teachers to teach summaries of works of literature, saying that it is difficult to teach the original works. Others teach a fragment of a text, saying that students cannot study the whole work. Some go to far to write a short summary of a literary work for exam-taking. This paper has brought together some ideas and observations about an area (various components of teaching literature) that has been much neglected and little work has been done on this topic, at least at Sana'a University. It hopes to generate topics for investigation and prepare the ground for group exploration on the nature of change and innovation in teaching literature, particularly in Yemen. To improve teaching literature, this paper considers the existing condition of aching literature for Yemenis, attempts to formulate concrete aims and objectives for teaching literature, discusses criteria for choosing a text and proposes a formula for marking exams of literature courses.