"How can the use of autentic literature promote the develoment of reading literacy in English among eigth-graders in Norway?"

This thesis is based on a research conducted in a Norwegian school class of eighth-graders. The topic question is: how can the use of authentic literature promote the development of reading literacy in English among eighth-graders in Norway? The aim of the thesis was to explore the benefits of reading authentic literature in the English language classroom. The research was conducted in a Norwegian eighth-grade classroom. The case study included 9 informants in addition to the English teacher, and the empirical material was collected from classroom observations, semi-structured interviews, and the informants’ interactive chat logs. The English teacher carried out areading project in the classroom according to my guidance. The lesson included a reading session, activities related to the text, and discussions among the students, at last the informants participated in an interactive chat activity immediately after the reading session was completed. When the reading session and the reading activities had ended, I conducted the interviews. I selected the text The Star(1951), from Alasdair Gray’s rich variety of short stories. The short story is included in the text collection Short Stories for Creative Language Classrooms(1993) by Collie and Slater. This is a text mainly aimed at English speaking adolescents. The students’ age, their cognitive levels, the length of the text as well as the plot, were elements I considered when I chose this particular reading material. My field work generated much information which I processed and analysed in order to answer my research question. The findings showed that authentic literature creates curiosity, enhances reading literacy, and promotes a certain learning outcome for young Norwegian learners of English. I could deduce these evidences based on the utterances the nine student informants and the teacher informant gave in the study, in addition to the empirical material the observation part yielded. Although these texts are not facilitated and adjusted to fit learners of English as a second language, I still conclude that such texts are valuable for reading in the foreign language classroom if the teaching design is adapted to reach young Norwegian students.The theoretical foundation for the thesis is strongly connected to the personal relation between the reader and the text, and the role of the reader is emphasized. I have also stressed the importance of introducing suitable reading material, and I have found out that the teaching design matters. The learning outcome by reading extensive literature was traced in all categories of my findings