Teaching English Through Literature

This paper aims at emphasizing the use of literature as a popular technique for teaching both basiclanguage skills (i.e. reading, writing, listening and speaking) and language areas (i.e. vocabulary,grammar and pronunciation) in our times. Reasons for using literary texts in foreign language classroomand main criteria for selecting suitable literary texts in foreign language classes are stressed so as tomake the reader familiar with the underlying reasons and criteria for language teachers’ using andselecting literary texts. Moreover, literature and the teaching of language skills, benefits of differentgenres of literature (i.e. poetry, short fiction, drama and novel) to language teaching and some problemsencountered by language teachers within the area of teaching English through literature (i.e. lack ofpreparation in the area of literature teaching in TESL / TEFL programs, absence of clear-cut objectivesdefining the role of literature in ESL / EFL, language teachers’ not having the background and trainingin literature, lack of pedagogically-designed appropriate materials that can be used by language teachersin a classroom context) are taken into account.