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 literary texts are now considered the
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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
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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
emotion”- Iris Murdoch, 1978.

 Double or multiple meaning of a word
Eg: Just because we’re deaf, it doesn’t mean we’ve nothing between our ears.
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 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 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.
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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
what they read. As literature is often written for the native speakers, there are many different

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.
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:
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 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
provoke their positive reaction to what they read. The whole poem is a picture made of words,
so if the teacher exploits it appropriately he/she could involve the students into many activities

reconstructs, as best as he can, a message which has been encoded by a writer as a graphic display”
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”.
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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.
II.2.3. Students’ difficulties with reading
Students probably have far more difficulties with reading than most teaching staff are
aware of. Within the limitation of the study the author just focuses on the difficulties with
cultural and background knowledge, which relates to the use of literature in reading.
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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 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
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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
literature should be approached not efferently, but in a manner which establishes a personal and
aesthetic interaction between a reader and a text.
Chapter III: Methodology.
The study aims at measuring the hypothesis that how effective the integration of short
story and poem into reading comprehension class is, so the quantitative research method is

skills they have mastered to read a lot of materials and most of class time devotes to discussion
and presentation.
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
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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
There are two questionnaires; one investigates the attitude of students toward the literary
texts in general and the other aims at finding out the effects of using short stories and poems in
teaching and learning reading in particular. In the first questionnaire three questions are given,
of which Q1 is to get the rank of different types of literature according to students’ preference.
Q2 focuses on the aspects that cause difficulties in reading literary texts and the purpose of Q3