The use of short stories in English language teaching and its benefits on grammar learning

In foreign language teaching, teachers generally depend on course books but many of the course books that are used by Turkish Ministry of Education do not contain authentic materials. However, literary texts are also authentic materials and they can be used to teach English. This study is conducted at a private school in Kütahya, in order to highlight the effectiveness of the use of literary texts in English teaching. The study examines the use of Short Stories with beginner levels studying at Middle School. To do so, a sample of 57 Turkish students were selected. The research design is two-sided, both descriptive and experimental. The experimental part is conducted for 3 weeks and a grammar test was administered to search the grammar improvement of students. In the descriptive part, a belief questionnaire was administered towards the inclusion of short stories to English lessons. The data were analyzed using SPSS software. The results showed a positive difference in grammar scores and in the beliefs of students towards the literary texts. Therefore, the findings in general, seem to convince that the inclusion of short stories to language teaching can boost the students’ grammar knowledge