Prose Fiction in Language Teaching

Abstract

Literature is language in use and is generally seen to play a vital role in language teaching. Literary texts provide us with much aesthetic, intellectual and emotional pleasure in that the writer often seeks to delineate their vision of human experience through a creative, emotive use of language. In essence literature serves to enhance the students’ language competence. This paper examines the relationships between language and literature. This is demonstrated with several prose texts with a view to show their pedagogical relevance to students’ language needs. In the conclusion, it is emphasized that the link between language and literature which had been ignored in the past should now be exploited for the development of students’ performances in the target language.