It frequently comes to my mind the time I was preparing to sit B2 and C2 level exams, back in the 90s, and my English teacher set us homework to read some pages from books she brought to class and were not coursebooks. They were literature books some too difficult, some too boring to read but they were different from the curriculum ones. Young adults and adults in English Foreign Language teaching are a demanding target group in acquiring the L2 skills. Teenagers from around 14 years old tend to lose interest in studying and lack motivation. Similarly, adults find trouble concentrating and assimilating the L2 especially vocabulary. As we have already explored and identified the importance of literature in EFL, let’s see together how literature can help this specific learner group based on these characteristics:
Need for goal orientation: they need to know why reading is taking place, so the teacher as instructor should clearly state the goal of reading in each case: to learn vocabulary, to talk about a specific topic, to get ideas for a project or to cultivate critical thinking.
Variety of topics and genres: they tend to get easily bored with topics and writing styles. So given the opportunity to read different topics as well as genres may interest them. Classic fiction, science fiction, adventures, detective stories, love stories, comic strips can all please and appeal to them.
Literature and technology: digital and multimedia textsfacilitate reading practices and can be used by learners but with some teacher guidance so as to stay within the educational scope and learning goal. Watching an animated story or a movie based on fiction is always interesting and better off if they are accompanied by games!
Chance for interaction and communication: teenage and adult learners want to communicate messages and exchange views on different topics to agree and disagree with each other. Reading can definitely be used as such especially with carefully designed drills to reinforce argumentative talk. Some might even want to dramatize what they have read!
Need to be independent and avoid embarrassment: when instructed how to read on their own, learners will not fear to make mistakes or not understand something exactly as it is written. Teenagers and adults hate making mistakes and feeling awkward. Independence in learning and reading specifically will free them up. They will feel safe and eager to learn.
Motivation, engagement and enthusiasm: since boredom and short- term memory is frequent in this group, reading with a goal will keep learners engaged in learning, active and enthusiastic about what they are doing.
Free voluntary reading as Krashen (1997) mentions can help a learner build vocabulary, feel pleasure and advance the oral competence. HOW? The teacher can:
- provide access to a wider variety of books.
- Provide easier access to books.
- Provide guidance.
- Tell acquirers about the benefits of reading.
- Deprogram acquirers in the sense that they need to be instructed to get the gist from the context and not look up all the unknown words they come up or be discouraged by that. (https://sdkrashen.com/content/articles/1997_take_adv_of_the_power_of_reading.pdf)
Surely an action plan on the part of the teacher is needed.
- Choose texts suited to the level of the learners so they are not disheartened.
- Set realistic timeline for this, prepare a cozy and friendly environment for reading and choose an interesting topic. Pre - reading activities and post - reading activities carefully designed by the teacher can help to this.
- Also, the instruction for the proper use of a dictionary when reading without concerning too much about looking up every single unknown word in text is necessary and precious.
- Finally, some form of assessment either orally in group discussion or written in questionnaire can give valuable feedbackto all members of the class.
I can see now that when I was a teenage student, and my teacher gave us literature works as homework we were often confused and unwilling to read them because probably, they were boring stuff or above level but most of all because we were not given the reason why to do that and what the goal was. It was actually a matter of age preferences and characteristics that needed to have been catered for.
