Teaching English using Novels

Abstract: In teaching English as a foreign language, the novel plays a vital role in developing
and enhancing the language skills because in the novel the full range and variety of the English language
is displayed with concrete examples of writing skill in action. A novel can be a stimulating resource for
activities for language learners without necessarily involving them in a dedicated analysis of a highly
literary criticism nature.

In teaching English as a foreign language, the novel has played a vital role in developing and enhancing
the language skills, because: In the novel the full range and variety of the English language is
displayed, with concrete examples of writing skills in action (for example, the sequencing of ideas). A
rich context for grammatical and lexical items is provided, as well as a large resource of prompts for
oral work (Hurst, 1989-1990: 68). For students, a novel has two objectives. First, it can create
interest in studying it carefully and attentively. Second, the novel is the main source for providing them
with various vocabulary items and with practical grammatical structures. Moreover, it may implicitly
enhance the pronunciation of English particularly when it is read loudly in the classroom or at home. In
addition, the two skills, reading and writing are consolidated actively through studying the English novel.
So, studying the novel helps students to organize their ideas and participate in discussing different
subjects properly and seriously. It builds up the base for acquiring and developing the four English
language skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing

Using a novel in an English language classroom provides a rich source of pedagogic activities. If a novel
carefully selected so as to link in with students’ interest, it may provide unique opportunities for
educational and linguistic development. A good novel addresses itself to complex situations and adult
dilemmas. It engages students intellectually, emotionally and linguistically, and as such it can provide
the basis for a motivating variety of classroom activities. But using a novel also creates particular
problems for both teachers and students which can be divided into practical problems and literary
problems.

Practical problems:

The practical problems which students face in dealing with a novel are length of a novel, vocabulary,
difficulty in understanding cultural background of a novel etc.

Length: Lengthy novels cause the loss of concentration of the students. Such novels take a long time to
reach the end. Teachers have to depend on homework reading rather than classroom activities for
completing a lengthy novel. Clearly it is important in choosing a novel for classroom use that the novel is
short enough to be satisfactorily handled in the classroom time allocated. This implies that novel chosen
should be able to be comfortably integrated in the amount of time available per week but should also be
within the students’ grasp, in terms of their linguistic , intellectual and emotional capabilities. The text
should be sufficiently challenging without being so difficult as to be demotivating. Depending on the
number of students and their linguistic and literary competence, the teacher will need to decide
whether classroom time or homework time should be spent on the novel.
Vocabulary: Experience has shown that even very advanced learners become discouraged if they have to
stop frequently to look up the meanings of new words in the dictionary. Students should be able to
extend their vocabulary while reading without feeling the need to look up the meaning of every word on
the page. It is best to choose a text where students will not feel overwhelmed by unfamiliar language.
Two strategies can be useful in helping students with any vocabulary they don’t know. The first is to
encourage students to read for gist rather than detail. A second strategy for helping students with
vocabulary is to give students some kinds of glossary to use while reading.

Difficulty in understanding the cultural background :A major difficulty for students reading a novel is that
its cultural background may seem inaccessible to them, and may also interfere with theirunderstanding
of crucial elements within the text.it isbest to deal with some of these difficulties before the students
even begin reading the novel. When considering cultural background, it is important to include not only
the historical, political, and economic facts which may form the background to the novel, but also the
complicated set of social and literary values underlying it.

Literary Problems:

The kinds of difficulties our students face in responding to the novel as a literary work with particular
distinguishing characteristics are called literary problems. Such problems and the solutions to overcome
these difficulties are discussed below.

Understanding the story:Students may face difficulty in understanding the novel if this involves
reconstructing a chronological and logical sequence of events from an often confused series of
flashbacks. Students are required to summarize every chapter and to reconstruct events in chronological
sequence even if they are jumbled in the text.

The aim here is to encourage learners to extrapolate essential elements from the plot to order them
according to their importance.

Understanding the characters: For the language learner, understanding the characters in the novel
implies assigning certain traits or features to them. Students quite often require guidance on this,
because they may not always have a satisfactory stock of adjectives for the job. The following tasks are
intended to extend the students’descriptive vocabulary, to get them to apply it to characters in the
novel,and to get them to use it more creatively in their own writing.

Examples:

Here are some adjectives which can be used to describe different characters. If you don’t know the
meaning of them, look them up in a dictionary.

1. In groups, go through the first three chapters of The Great Gatsby and try to see which of these
adjectives can be applied to whichcharacters. To do so, you need to check whether any of
theseadjectives, or a synonym for them, is actually used to describe acharacter or whether the
behaviour of a character indicates particularqualities.
2. Write a short description of somebody you know well. Describe his or her physical appearance
and indicate what kind of person he or she is, both by using descriptive adjectives and describing
behaviour.
Understanding narrative point of view :Particularly with novels which tell their story from the
perspective of a first person narrator, students should be alerted as to how events and their significance
are filtered through a particular point of view.

The language of the novel :To understand the language of the novel is one of the crucial literary
problems for the language learners.In attempting to make the language of the novel more accessible to
students and increase their awareness of how it communicates mood and theme two main activities
should be followed.. The first of these is close textual/stylistic analysis. Students are encouraged to
analyse an extract from the novel to identify how specific lexical and grammatical features produce

particular stylistic effects. The second type of activity is more ‘global’ in that it focuses on how lexical
clusters recur throughout the text to create a web of associations.

Conclusion

The tasks suggested here are intended as a basis for classroom discovery. Once students show some
competence in the kinds of skills the exercises demand, students and teachers might engage in more
elaborate activities- for example, writing short essays on the novel’s main themes, discussing comments
made by different critics about the work, or even comparing the novel with similar genres in the
students’ own language.

Benefits teaching English trough Novels

Implicit meaning provided with literary text invites learners to go beyond the text

1. cultural knowledge
2. language enrichment
3. sensitivity to language
4. inferential understanding
5. perception of social status

use of novels in EFL/ESL Classrooms

1. stimulates students’ imagination/creativity

Difficulties and risk of teaching English trough novels

1. Before 1970s, language teaching was dominated by structural methods.

The study of the conversational discourse through novel aims to contribute to speaking skills which will
be reinforced by activities such as:

1. classroom discussions
2. role-playing
3. dramatization
4. improvisation