Chapter I: Introduction
I.1.Rationale
Nowadays, in this industrial world, a person who wants to be successful needs to have a
profound knowledge. Thus, much time is spent on learning to widen and deepen the
understanding about culture, science, technology as well as social skills. It is not easy if he
just stays at home and fills himself up with thousands of books as they are only theory, in
order to get practical experiences he has to communicate, in other words, he has to know
others and make himself known by others. This can be done only if he speaks the language
that they can understand. The solution is he has to learn English.
People learn English in different ways, they try their best to master the language skills
and as teachers, we try our best to help them attain their goals. Many teachers have spent
much time on finding the ways to improve listening skills while the others focus their research
on developing students’ speaking skills, etc. Being teachers of English we do want to take
part in the teaching method improvement process.
The fact in Hai Phong University is that the students have to cope with many difficulties
when learning the language especially reading. Most of them think that reading well means
they have to know every word in the text and do the exercises correctly, so they spend most of
the time looking up new words and doing exercises. However, it is proved that effective
reading means there is an interaction between the reader and the text. More specifically, the
students not only have to understand the text but also response to it, thus they can get to the
bottom of what they read. Fortunately, we had a chance to take part in a course called
“Literature in Language Teaching” delivered by Mr. Brad Baurain- an English teacher and
researcher. He helps us a lot to realize the values of using literary texts in language teaching.
After the course the superficial thoughts about literature disappeared and we know that
1
literary texts are now considered the valuable authentic material, which plays a very important
part in students’ cultural enrichment, language enrichment as well as personal involvement.
The author, therefore, decides to carry out a study on the integration of literary text in
language teaching in order to improve students’ reading comprehension skills.
I.2.Aims
The focus of this study is on the specific use of literature in language teaching, it aims at:

Chapter II: Literature Review: presents an overview of what is literature, its values in
language teaching and how literature relates to reading.
Chapter III: Methodology: studies the reason for choosing research methodology and
the description of the setting, subject and instrument for collecting data.
Chapter IV: Data analysis and Results: provides data description and analysis with
findings.
Chapter V: Conclusion and Recommendation: suggests teaching techniques and
conclusion.
Chapter II: Literature Review
The emphasis of this chapter is mainly on exploring some of the issues relevant to the
use of literature in language teaching in general and introducing the advantages of short story
and poem in ESL classroom in particular. The links between literature and reading are also
3
mentioned. However, as there are many different theories explain literature and the use of it in
classroom, the ideas generated in this chapter will not help to pinpoint an only right or correct
way to understand what literature is and its roles in improving language acquisition.
II.1. Literature
II.1.1. Definition
Defining literature is not an easy task; different people approach it in their own ways.
There are some definitions made by a group of teachers from all over the world. These
definitions are introduced by Lazar, 1993:
 Literature is ‘feelings’ and ‘thoughts’ in black and white.
 Literature is the use of language to evoke a personal response in the reader or
listener.
 Literature is the world of fantasy, horror, feelings, visions…put into words
 Literature means …to meet a lot of people, to know other different points of view,
ideas, thoughts, minds…to know ourselves better.
These definitions seem not scientific enough so the following is three of many
definitions defined scientifically by researchers:
“Literature could be said to be a sort of disciplined technique for arousing certain

5
Eg: Grey were the geese and green was the grazing
 Double or multiple meaning of a word
Eg: Just because we’re deaf, it doesn’t mean we’ve nothing between our ears.
 Poeticism: poetic lexis
Eg: His breast of chicken with tarragon and girolles goes back to the classic French …
 Mixing of styles/registers
Eg: I had expected the usual insertion in the papers: “I, formerly known, called,
addressed as…”
II.1.4. Literature and language teaching
II.1.4.1. Why use literature in language classroom.
The use of literature in language teaching had been ignored since people treated it as a
mean of relaxation, they just read for fun. The main goal of ESL teachers is to teach the
grammar of the language, literature, due to its structural complexity and its unique use of
language, does very little to contribute to this goal. However, recently there was a strong
reawakening of interest in literature and language teaching. Literary texts are now considered
the valuable authentic material, which plays a very important part in students’ cultural
enrichment, language enrichment as well as personal involvement.
Literature – valuable authentic material
Literature on the one hand provides texts of different genres like novels, short stories,
poems and plays, which mainly say something about human life. On the other hand, it offers
culture and life styles all around the world and more than that it “transcends the time and
culture to speak directly to a reader of a different country at a different period of time” (Collie
& Slater, 1987). More importantly, while the other texts seem losing their relevance with the
passing of time, hardly does literature. Till now, most British like Shakespeare’s plays as
6
much as Vietnamese like Truyen Kieu by Nguyen Du though none of the authors are alive
and all the events happened a long time ago.
Literature is not written for a specific purpose of teaching. It means that, when reading
literary texts the learners are not supposed to learn grammar rules but the way to response to

beginning to the end. Collie & Slater (1987) pointed out that at this time “what individual
words or phrases may mean becomes less important than pursuing the development of the
story”. In other words, they are absorbed into the book and eager to find out what happens
next. It is true that people are really curious, thus if the students are well motivated they’ll be
willing to take part in the journey of exploring the unknown language territory. Obviously,
this will create the very positive effects on the process of language learning.
II.1.4.2. Literature in the ESL classroom
Due to a long period using Translation Teaching Method in language classroom, there
was negative attitude toward the teaching of literature in foreign language classroom as it was
considered far removed from everyday communication and it does not contribute to ESL
students’ practical goal of achieving linguistic proficiency. However, it is proved that the
interaction of language and literature can lead to numerous advantages in language teaching
and learning. It helps increase all language skills, it is the link toward the culture, it gives one
awareness and human insight and guides students toward their own creativity. Thus, it
obviously is an effective tool in learning a foreign language.
8
II.1.4.2.1. Poetry in the ESL classroom
Whenever the word poetry is mentioned there appears a hesitation on the face of both
teachers and learners as:
 The language in the poem is quite difficult (metaphoric and complex).
 “Beauty is harder to analyze than truth”; “the whole poem or story says something
that none of its words say or can say”; “what a lyric poem ‘states’ cannot be found in any of
its sentences”; “a lyric tells its story primarily in terms of a single emotional experiences”
(J.Adler & Doren,1972).
So in order to understand a poem fully and be able to interpret its inner meanings,
students need a good knowledge of language and a fine experience of life.
However: “the entry into a poem, under the guidance of appropriate teaching, brings
about the kind of participation that almost no other text can produce” (Hess, 2003). For her,
when we read, understand and interpret a poem we learn language through the expansion of
our experience with a larger human reality. Poem can arouse the students’ strong feeling and

II.2. Reading comprehension
II.2.1. Reading comprehension and its roles in language learning.
Goodman (1971) defined reading as “a psycholinguistic process by which the reader,
reconstructs, as best as he can, a message which has been encoded by a writer as a graphic display”
10
In the teaching and learning of reading it is proved that reading comprehension plays a
key role as it enhances the students’ skills in extracting the required information from a
written text as efficiently as possible. According to Swam (1975) “a student is good at
comprehension when he can read accurately and efficiently so as to get the maximum
information of a text”.
In addition, Richard and Thomas (1987) noted “reading comprehension is best described
as an understanding between the author and the reader”. It means that reading comprehension
is the process that the readers, as they read, can not only figure out the “graphic display” of
the text but also understand the hidden meaning implied by the writer.
II.2.2.The reader and the text
The reading process is currently seen as an interaction between the reader and the text.
The reading of a text is not just to get the information but also to response to what is written.
But it was implied that the meaning of a text can never be fixed or frozen because different
readers of the same text make sense of it in their own way and there is no correct routine. It
depends much on the historical period in which the reader is living, his social position and
religious beliefs. For Rosenblatt (1987), the interaction between the readers and the text is “an
event in time involving a specific reader and a specific text at a specific time and place, if any
of these are changed, there is a different event”.
Thus, having an appropriate relationship with the text depends much on the reader’s
language proficiency, motivation and interest, the cohesive and the structural qualities of the
text; and the readers’ understanding about the topic. The readers have to base on their
background knowledge, the clues given by the author and the situational context to work out
the meaning hidden behind the text. So, the more knowledge of the world the readers have the
more accurate are their inferences and judgments; and naturally the closer they get to the text.
11

 Reading literature requires imagination which can help develop the prediction skills.
 Analyzing features such as point of view helps develop the skills of reading between
the lines.
 Discussing about themes helps develop the skills of reading beyond the lines.
According to Brumfit (1986) “reading is the most autonomous and individualizable
ability in language work, and literature is a rich and widely – appealing source of material for
reading”. For him, if reading is to be viewed as an integrated process, the teaching of reading
must do more than simply exercise reading in the target language. With literature, the students
are not asked to translate the text exactly but in order to understand the text they are required
to discuss questions which force them to see the text as a coherent piece of discourse. It in
turn helps develop the interaction between the readers and the text.
II.3.2. Efferent reading and aesthetic reading
There is no one way to deal with a text in the reading classroom. This part focuses on
differentiating the two methods: efferent reading and aesthetic reading. According to
Rosenblatt (1978) efferent reading is reading in which the reader is concerned with what she
will carry away whereas in aesthetic reading the reader’s primary concern is with what
happens during the actual reading. The purpose of the former is using the text to gain
information while that of the later is exploring the language usage through the relevance to the
experience. Thus, to readers in aesthetic reading the enjoyment is attained by interacting with
13
the text, they often relate their world of experience to the text. After reading they might be
asked whether something similar have ever happened to them. As a result, they get involve in
the text and interact with the text by sharing their feelings or experience. Furthermore, if a
reader in efferent reading is supposed to carry the information away, he, in aesthetic reading
often makes judgments about the characters or giving his opinion if he was the character. This
activity helps him understand the text thoroughly or in other words, he can get to the bottom
of the event.
It is true that literature to some extents is a key to motivate the students to read. Besides
providing an ideal vehicle for illustrating language use, it also offers a mean of introducing
cultural assumptions. But with the desire to promote truly aesthetic reading, the using of

In the English Department, students spend the first two years studying general English
which focuses on the four language skills. At this stage, most of students’ time is for
practicing the language skills in class under the guidance of teachers. If they pass the tests at
the end of this stage, they will spend the last two years on subjects like Semantic, Grammar,
Phonetic, Methodology, Translation, and so on. At this second stage, students have to use the
language skills they have mastered to read a lot of materials and most of class time devotes to
discussion and presentation.
15
III.2.The subjects
This study was carried out with the participation of 40 full time students who are
learning at the English Dept. of Hai Phong University.
As mentioned in the premise, although literature is very interesting and literary texts are
really helpful when integrated to develop language skills, they are still not popularly used in
Viet Nam, especially in Hai Phong University where the translation approach still dominates
the teaching methodology. Except one teacher in the staff who is teaching English literature,
others have almost no idea about using literature in language teaching especially the four
skills. That is the reason why the author does not include the teachers in this study and she
really wants to make a new path way in language teaching in general and in reading
comprehension teaching in particular.
The students under investigation were in their second term of the second year. They are
between 19 and 22 including both male and female students whose background knowledge is
almost of the same level. They had all passed the test of the first term and their language level
is between the upper-intermediate and advance.
Students have English class every weekday and they have five hours for reading skills
per week. Within each class, normally 45 minutes long, they learn and practice reading skills
such as skimming, scanning, reading for main ideas or for specific information, etc. The
reading materials mostly are taken from course books like: Think First Certificate, Reading 2,
IELT Reading, Insight and Ideas, etc. Some are downloaded from the Internet or taken from
newspapers.
III.3.Data collection instruments

Short stories 82.5% - easy to read and understand
- interesting, relaxing and time saving
Novel 57.5% - romantic, interesting and adventurous
- famous, rich content
- long, thus take time
Poetry 62.5% - interesting & romantic
- imaginative, short
- hidden meanings, strange words so difficult to understand.
Drama 7,5% - very difficult to understand
- far from real life, boring, not natural
- lots of slang words
Short stories seem to be the most favorite kind of literary text with 82.5% of choice. It is
because among the four genres, short stories, beside their interesting content and reasonable
length, are suitable for the students’ language level. In contrast, drama can attract very few
students to read with only 7.5%. According to the majority of students, drama is strange to
them; moreover, they are often very long with words that hardly appear in real life.
Poetry comes after short stories with 62.5% students’ choice. Although most of students
state that poetry is really interesting and romantic, they all agree that understanding a poem is
really difficult. They need to be sensitive, imaginative and creative to discover the hidden
meaning of the poem or let their mind fly with the pictures made of words.
Students also like reading novel (57.5%) due to its rich content. The only reason that
prevents students to go to the bookshelf to take a novel is that novel is too long, reading novel
18
is said to be luxurious with students who always complain about lacking time for so many
things.
From the figures we can infer that it is reasonable to use short stories and poetry in
language classroom in general and in reading classroom in particular. The burden now is on
the teacher’s shoulders as the choice of texts and the techniques be applied in class play a very
important part in attracting and involving students in the lesson.
IV.1.2. (Table 2) Aspects that cause difficulties when reading literature (Q2)

Social issues (crime, politic,…) 15%
Mystery 52%
Others - Cultures, students’ life
- Science, adventure
The data shown in table 3 indicates that using literary texts of the students’ preference is
likely to be more successful than using texts nonselective.
Most students like literary texts about personal relationship (77%) while social issues
are rejected (only 15%). It is easy to understand why students like reading about love,
friendship… more than crimes, politics…; as in the youth’s mind nothing is more beautiful
and attractive than love or relationship between friends. They like texts which express their
thinking and their ideal dreams whereas literary texts about social issues are often boring and
out of their thoughts.
Next to the personal relationship is the topic about nature and animal with 62% of
students interested in. Topics like the mysterious and people attract quite an equal percentage
of students: 52%. Some other topics that students add to the list are cultures, students’ life,
science and adventures.
IV.2.The effects of short story and poem in teaching reading comprehension.
IV.2.1. (Table 1) Things students find most difficult when reading short stories and
poem (Q1).
Unclear theme 48%
Vocabulary 73%
Language 75%
Cultural background 28%
Others - implied meaning
- metaphor and simile
20
Comparing table 2 in 4.1.2 and table 1 in 4.2.1 it can be concluded that students’
difficulties in reading literature generally and reading short story and poem particularly are
caused by vocabulary (73%) and the language styles (75%). This explains why most students
tend to read literature for fun rather than for improving language skills. Looking up unfamiliar

or like to do, which is very useful for the teacher to improve her teaching method. Following
is the result and findings.
• Activity 1: Guessing vocabularies in the context.
The chart shows that though guessing words in context is considered a very good
activity and teacher should encourage students to do this in reading class, 10% of respondents
regard it a waste of time. It indicates that students have their own way to learn new words,
and it may not be effective if teacher carelessly applied it subjectively. Only 18% of the
students like guessing words in the context provided by the teacher and then create a context
themselves to remember the words. This is a good idea; however teachers have to control the
time properly. Some of the students reveal that they work more eagerly when words are put
into interesting contexts, especially those related to their life. This finding encourages
teachers to be creative in preparing contexts for students.
• Activity 2: predicting the plot of the story or poem
22
Predicting the plot of a story or poem before reading is an activity that helps students to
be more creative. Most students (75%) agree with this and think it is interesting and helpful,
some even consider it as an activity to make them get fascinated in the story and understand
the story more easily. Only 10% find this activity of no use as they think predicting can
distract them from the real story. Other 15% state that they do not care about the prediction,
they still read the story whether they can predict the plot or not.
The finding suggests that teachers should conduct this activity in class as it is really
good to raise students’ motivation.
• Activity 3: Answering comprehension question
From the chart, we can see that students have different ideas about this activity. 64%
think that it is good because it helps students know how deep they understand the story.
However, 8% consider it boring and useless and 18% think it is of little use. According to
these, the comprehension questions are often very easy and students do not have to think
much to find out the answers. Another 10% prefer other methods of checking comprehension
23
like acting or reordering pictures which relate to the content of the story. Some others like

eager with creating a new story or a new poem basing on the feeling inspirited by what they
have read.
25