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1) what sort of activities or tasks can be designed to teach language using a 'novel' or a 'short story'.
A short story is basically shorter than a novel. Novel is a complete book covering a single story or fiction.
When selecting a novel to be used in the foreign language class, the language teacher should pay attention to whether the novel has an intriguing story that will be of interest to the entire class.
Themes and settings captivating their imagination and exploring the human condition should be included in the nature of the selected novels. Novel should have a powerful, fast-paced plot and interesting, well delineated, memorable characters. The content of the novel should be suitable to students' cognitive and emotional levels. Specific themes and concepts being developed in class should also be incorporated within the novel. When assessing comprehension, teachers may employ novel tests requiring students to develop the sub-skills of written language like spelling, handwriting, grammar, and punctuation. Essay type tests written by teachers help students to gradually improve their skills in writing and organizing material into paragraphs with acceptable sentence structure. The tests are made up of not only fact-based questions serving as a basis of evaluating comprehension but also open-ended questions developing critical thinking abilities. The open-ended questions enable students to predict outcomes, make comparisons and contrasts, and draw conclusions. Class discussions of each novel event should comprise the main idea and supporting details, including who, what, when, where, and how. Details of various social issues such as sexual harassment and abortion, which are often an integral part of the plot, can provoke interesting debate. Discussions can also facilitate vocabulary development .
In sum, the use of novel is a very beneficial technique in today’s foreign language classes. If selected carefully, using a novel makes the students’ reading lesson motivating, interesting and entertaining. Though many students find reading a novel written in a target language difficult, boring, unmotivating, novel is a very effective way of building vocabulary and developing reading comprehension skills. It is through reading that students broaden their horizons, become familiar with other cultures, and hence develop their intercultural communicative competence, learning how to view the world from different perspectives. The result will be the possession of critical thinking and writing.
Short fiction is a supreme resource for observing not only language but life itself. In short fiction, characters act out all the real and symbolic acts people carry out in daily lives, and do so in a variety of registers and tones. The world of short fiction both mirrors and illuminates human lives . The inclusion of short fiction in the ESL / EFL curriculum offers the following educational benefits makes the students’ reading task easier due to being simple and short when compared with the other literary genres. enlarges the advanced level readers’ worldviews about different cultures and different groups of people, provides more creative, encrypt, challenging texts that require personal exploration supported with prior knowledge for advanced level readers, motivates learners to read due to being an authentic material,offers a world of wonders and a world of mystery,gives students the chance to use their creativity,promotes critical thinking skills,facilitates teaching a foreign culture (i.e. serves as a valuable instrument in attaining cultural knowledge of the selected community,makes students feel themselves comfortable and free,helps students coming from various backgrounds communicate with each of the because of its universal language, helps students to go beyond the surface meaning and dive into underlying meanings, acts as a perfect vehicle to help students understand the positions ofthemselves as well as the others by transfering these gained knowledge to their own world.
In brief, the use of a short story seems to be a very helpful technique in today’s foreign language classes. As it is short, it makes the students’ reading task and the teacher’s coverage easier. An important feature of short fiction is its being universal. To put it differently, students all over the world have experienced stories and can relate to them. Moreover, short fiction, like all other types of literature, makes contribution to the development of cognitive analytical abilities by bringing the whole self to bear on a compressed account of a situation in a single place and moment .
2) what sort of activities or tasks can be designed to teach language using a 'poem'.
Poetry can pave the way for the learning and teaching of basic language skills. It is metaphor that is the most prominent connection between learning and poetry. Because most poetry consciously or unconsciously makes use of metaphor as one of its primary methods, poetry offers a significant learning process. There are at least two learning benefits that can be derived from studying poetry: The appreciation of the writer’s composition process, which students gain by studying poems by components.
Developing sensitivity for words and discoveries that may later grow into a deeper interest and greater analytical ability. Sarac (2003) also explains the educational benefits of poetry as follows: It ‘s provides readers with a different viewpoint towards language use by going beyond the known usages and rules of grammar, syntax and vocabulary.
It triggers unmotivated readers owing to being so open to explorations and differenti interpretations It evokes feelings and thoughts in heart and in mind.It makes students familiar with figures of speech due to their being a part of daily language use.As Cubukcu (2001) mentions, poetry is a rewarding and enjoyable experience with the properties of rhyming and rhythm both of which convey “love and appreciation for the sound and power of language.” At this juncture, it can be stated that students become familiar with the suprasegmental aspects of the target language, such as stress, pitch, juncture, intonation by studying poetry. Moreover, poetry employs language to evoke and exalt special qualities of life, and suffices readers with feelings. It is particularly lyric poetry which is based on feelings and provides still another emotional benefit. Poetry is one of the most effective and powerful transmitters of culture.
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