Teaching English Language through Literary Texts

No one can deny the fact that literature and language are closely related. Using literature as a tool to teach language is gaining acceptance as well as popularity in the present time. Brumfit and Carter already emphasized the role of literature as “an ally of language”. This use is not limited to teach basic language skills (i.e. reading, writing, listening and speaking only. It also improves vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation. Asking the students to translate literary texts into their mother tongue also helps a lot. Translation also helps in enhancing the lexical, syntactic, semantic, pragmatic and stylistic knowledge of the target language. Literary texts of the target language were read and translated, used as examples of good writing and “illustrations of the grammatical rules”