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Date Posted: 07:35:13 04/11/07 Wed
Author: Guilherme Castro Jr
Subject: Re: Task One Group Four
In reply to: Adriana 's message, "Task One Group Four" on 06:07:54 04/08/07 Sun


Literature is one of the most important tools teachers can use to teach a language. It provides the student a strong contact with the culture and the way of thinking that exists around a language. In a literary work you have a moment of the language frozen, ready to be studied, analysed and comprehended. At first sight you cannot see all that on the paper; its not just to read, but to read in a proper way. So, students must learn how to read. The role of the teacher is to teach students how to read it critically, for this is the way to use literature to teach a language. Teaching critical reading on literature in class increases students interest, improves their thinking and better their discussion and writing skills. In this essay, I will use three critical approaches on reading literature to exemplify that.
Once the major trend in literary studies, formalist criticism is still used nowadays, for it provides a very simple way of reading a text critically. It is simple because all you must know to read that text in this approach is inside the text. As we will see later on, some approaches are concerned with extrinsic elements of a text. Formalist criticism is concerned with the intrinsic elements of a text. It is focused on the more formal elements on a literary work. Here, language, structure, tone are important aspects. This approach sees literature as pure art. It is a close reading, that calls the attentions strictly to the formal aspects of the language. This approach is more used to read poetry, because of the "brevity" that "allows for detailed analysis of nearly all its words and how they achieve their effects" (Meyer, Bedford Introduction to Literature, p. 2098). But it is also used to analyse fiction and drama as well.
Another very useful approach to critical reading is the Biographical approach. Here you have extrinsic elements that makes difference on analysing the text. As the name shows us, the biographical approach uses the authorīs life facts to achieve a better understanding of the work. "Events in a work might follow actual events in a writerīs life just as characters might be based on people known by the author" (idem, p. 2097). It is the kind of information that broadens our understanding of a work. To use this tool one must be careful, for if it is not well used, it could complicate a reading. A student should use it parcimoniously. Yet, when the reader knows well either the work than the authorīs life, this is a good way of reading a text critically.
The last, but not least way of reading critically it will be exemplified here is: the psychological approach. Here, again, extrinsic elements, existing insiden but also beyond the text, enters the interpretation. Sigmund Freudīs ideas are important ones on this approach, since some of them are very acute interpretations of the way humans behave. In this kind of reading, psychological concepts are used to analyse a text. It is an approach concerned with the idea of an unconscious state of mind -"those impulses, desires, and feelings that a person is unaware of but that influence emotions and behavior" (ibdem, p.2100). Here you have concepts like "Oedipus Complex", "Electra Complex" and others, from Freudīs and others theories, contributing to the analysis (a term that fits well here!) of a liteary work.
These three approaches are only few of the various possibilities of critical reading approaches. These approaches contribute for a better understanding a student can achieve of a text and, consequently, a better understanding of the language. It catches the studentīs attention more strongly, increasing the studentīs commitment and interest in the process of learning a language. For example, if a student is very attached to arts, using the formalist approach will certainly provoke a growing interest of him. The same way, if a student likes to know the biographies of famous persons, analysing their works concomitantly using their life facts will make the student more attemptive to the value of literature. And if Freud is some studentīs here, lets use it to teach him literature and language! And you have many other approaches: historical, canonical, marxist, cultural, gender, etc, a full range of useful tools to teach language through the critical reading of literature.

Guilherme Castro Jr.

Bibliography: The Bedford Introduction to Literature. Michal Meyer. Bedford/St. Martinīs 2002.

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