Can Literature Teaching Be Functional for Students?

• Main Author: Meta Grosman
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Znanstvena založba Filozofske fakultete Univerze v Ljubljani (Ljubljana University Press, Faculty of Arts) 2004-12-01
• Series: ELOPE
• Subjects: literature teaching; discourse analysis; curricula
• Online Access: https://revije.ff.uni-lj.si/elope/article/view/3287

The essay discusses the dilemmas of literature teaching as first raised by student unrest towards the late 1960s because of the inefficiency and lack of interest of the established forms of literary studies and literature teaching of the time, and the later resolutions of these dilemmas towards the end of the century. The process of long-term experimental examination of the existing alienating forms of studies and teaching started when the criticism of students came to be supported by some of the most distinguished professors of literature. The second section centres on some more successful efforts to surpass such inefficient old forms of literature teaching with the major shift from teaching data about literature to the discoursal analysis of texts and to promoting students’ competence of critical understanding of literary texts and the functioning of language. The third part deals with trends in literature teaching within the framework of English literature as anticipated by the new Slovene curricula for English as a foreign language and the preparation of teachers for it. It emphasises the importance of the intercultural dimension of teaching according to the new curricula and the rich possibilities for the understanding of intercultural contacts in the process of reading literature in English.