3rd International Conference on Higher Education Advances, HEAd’17

Universitat Politècnica de València, València, 2017

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4995/HEAd17.2017.4960
Short Story in an ESL Freshman English Course: Bridging the
Gap between language and literature
Avcı Vile, Deniz Ezgi
School of Languages, Istanbul Sehir University, Turkey.

Abstract
In recent years, the place of literature in language teaching has regained its
impetus and the prominent role it plays in promoting linguistic, cultural,
intellectual and academic benefits has been acknowledged. Nevertheless, the
place of literature in language teaching context in Turkey is still approached
to be an outside source to be assigned as extensive reading rather than to be
a classroom worthy material to be utilized in class. This article describes a
literature lesson at a Freshman English level and outlines the steps to be
taken to implement language based activities to promote ‘language
awareness’ and to foster ‘meaning construction’ and ‘cultural awareness’ in
a process based classroom setting. The steps also show that ESL Freshman
students have much to gain from literature when the text is explored through
language based activities without losing the literary nature of literature.
Keywords: Literature; Short story; English as a Second Language; Once
Upon a Time; Freshman English; Turkey

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 91

Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València
 Short story in an ESL Freshman English Course: Bridging the gap between language and literature

1. Introduction
Following a paradigm shift in the 1980s, many theoretical arguments have been made for
the implementation of literary texts in ELT/ESL context (Brumfit and Carter 1986; Maley
and Duff, 1990; Carter and McRae, 1996; Gilroy andParkinson, 1997; Hall, 2005). Literary
texts initiate personal response and imagination, enable readers to make connections
through experiences, develop awareness for different perspectives and multiple levels of
meanings (McKay,1984, Carter and Michael, 1991, Appleman, 2009,). McRae (1991
/1997) in Literature with a small ‘l’ calls this shift, ‘the fifth skill’ and puts forth that the
development of the fifth skill, the skill of ‘ thinking in English’, is mostly neglected in
second language acquisition. This is due in part to the broad use of referential texts and ‘the
fifth skill’ could be incorporated through the use of representational, imaginative texts in
the ELT context.
The implementation of literary or representational texts in the ELT/ESL context by means
of language-based approaches gives learners a rare opportunity in which they can react,
respond, question and construct meaning by putting pieces together in a predictable world
of English classroom where finding the right information and transferring it gets an applaud
until the next ‘wrong’answer. Carter (1996) advocates language based approaches to be
‘essentially integrative’ and sees the publication of ‘ Reading Between the Lines (1984) by
McRae and Boardman as the milestone in the integration of language and literary study
because they propose approaches to literary texts from lower to higher levels contrary to the
conventional belief that only advanced level learners should be engaged with literary texts.
Gajdusek (1988) points out that it is prominent to have higher levels of reading and writing
but not enough to survive in academic settings; thus, when presented with language based
and student centered approaches, literary texts can facilitate improvement in the skills of
higher thinking abilities and in particular ‘the fifth skill: thinking in English requisite to
survive in academic contexts, especially at the tertiary level..
Approaching Literature with a small ‘l’ requires a shift in methodology. The common
misconception that literary texts could be used as an ‘instrument to teach language
structures or specific vocabulary for language manipulation’ is prone to have a detrimental
impact on learners (Carter and Long 1991, p. 2). If a text is approached this way, it is likely
that the communicative impetus will simply be lost because of the devotion to mechanical
aspects of the language as ‘The content becomes subordinate to the mechanics’ (McRae
1991 /1997, p.5). Another misconception which could turn the class into a traditional
information transfer language class is teachers’ imposition that ‘the background to the
work, the author and particular literary conventions’ need to be presented when literature is
in play (Collie and Slater, S. 1999, p. 6). Instead of focusing on the ‘knowledge about
literature’, ‘knowledge of literature and language’ should be ‘the ultimate aim where

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learners are provided with some analytical tools with which they can find a way into the
text’ (Carter and Long 1991, p. 4) and thus construct meaning through student-centered
language-based activities while promoting communicative competence and enhance
language learning. With this broad rationale in mind this, it is the aim of this paper to
outline the guidelines for the activities designed teaching a short story in a Freshman
English ESL context. The two broad questions to be addressed are: what kind of classroom
activities may contribute to ‘language awareness’ and could be implemented to promote
‘meaning construction’ and ‘cultural awareness’ ?

2. The Place of Literature in ESL

Widdowson (1983) in an interview in ELT journal explains the differentiating feature of
literature which underpins the preliminary basis for implementing literary texts in ELT
context: ‘… it is representative of a new reality’ and one has to find evidence in the process
of making sense, which is not required when reading ‘conventional discourse’. Gajdusek
(1988) concurs that in literary texts ‘ … primary purpose is not just to convey information,
but to involve the reader in direct experience…’ and ‘ the techniques for contextualization,
for explicitly providing background and signaling relationships-clues to meaning-are
different; … they are more consistently implicit than explicit’ (p.229). Thus, on the
learner’s side, reading literature is a procedural task where the evidence needs to be put
together to decipher the context and construct meaning rather than following the
frameworks of conventional reading process. McRae (1996) expounds a similar view when
differentiating between the referential and representational materials. In the latter ’ the rules
are questioned, played around with, and put to different uses as part of that ongoing process
of language acquisition’ (p.17). For McRae, representational materials provide ‘knowledge
about language’ and allow for the ‘necessity of imaginative engagement’ which are
paramount in the language awareness process, constructing the bridge between native and
target language when a learner goes beyond the application of rules and seeing language
learning as an exercise (ibid.).
Apart from the discourse related aspects of literary texts, linguistic features; ‘variety of
language’ and differentiating features of language used in literary texts are other aspects
where learners can build language awareness and start questioning. Short and Candlin
(1989) propose that ‘Contrary to much received opinion, it is difficult to make a linguistic
distinction between literature and other kinds of language’ (p. 201) because any particular
deviant feature of language could also exist in a corpus of non-literary texts (Short, 1986).
Lazar (1993) sees the variety of language and style in literary texts to be an induction

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 Short story in an ESL Freshman English Course: Bridging the gap between language and literature

to build language awareness through investigation where learners ‘become aware of

specific stylistic effects’ and this helps them to interpret what is achieved through departing
a form and discover the underlying meaning’ (p.19). Therefore, language variety in literary
texts is argued to trigger ‘questioning’ and ‘making intelligent guesses’ thus initiating the
construction of meaning (Lazar, 1993, Parkinson and Thomas, 2000). Still, the teacher
needs to select the level and targeted skill appropriate texts especially in the lower levels.
On a broader scale, literature just like other representational texts is ‘authentic’ material,
which is not molded for the specific purpose of language teaching. Language learners are
exposed to language intended for native speakers and become familiarized to different
meaning construction, linguistic uses and conventions (Collie, J and Slater, S. 1999). It
provides personal involvement, personal growth and a motivational reinforcement pushing
the learner to go beyond the boundaries of the mechanical aspects of language learning
when the text is not approached ‘efferently’ but in a manner that forms an ‘aesthetic
interaction between the reader and the text’ (McKay, 1984, p.192). The language learner’s
discovery that language is not only a rule-based system but also a socio-semantic system
creates different demands on the learner as information transfer would not suffice to
construct meaning and learners are required to apply their knowledge of the world, life
experiences and imagination in this new context making inferences and interpretations,
building hypothesis while looking for evidence to support them. McRae (1996) states that
‘as soon as language begins to mean, it begins to expand its meaning, to make demands on
its users… and questions of interpretation, of shades of meaning, of reaction and response’
follows (p.19). ‘Language’ itself requires ‘a more representational approach to teaching and
learning ’ (ibid.) and this is when it ‘begins to mean’, thus, the earlier a leaner is exposed to
such materials, the earlier it ceases to be a ruled-based system and becomes ‘language’.

3. Background to Class Implementation

Most language learners at Istanbul Sehir University receive a one-year English Preparatory
School instruction and are required to pass the IELTS with an overall score of 5.5 to be able
to move to freshman year. During one-year English Preparatory School instruction, learners
mostly encounter representational or literary texts tailored for the specific purpose of
language teaching in their textbooks and graded readers as extensive readings at the
discretion of the teachers. The Freshman English Program curriculum aims at equipping
students not only with higher level of English skills but also developing higher order
thinking skills to be able to cope with the academic requirements. With this aim in mind,
classroom materials designed in a content-based syllabus include a blend of literary texts;

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short stories and novels, representational texts; speeches,editorials and referential texts;
academic texts. Under one of the themes, learners study two short stories ‘Once Upon a
Time’ by Nadine Godimer and ‘ Doll’s House’ by Katrine Mansfield in a two- week period,
the instruction of the former being the focus of this paper.

‘Once Upon a Time’ by Nadie Gordimer consists of two parts; a non-fictional opening and
a fictional part resembling a fairy tale. The initial part is a first person narrative and
explains why the narrator changes her/his mind and decides to write a children’s story after
going through an experience thinking someone; ( here ‘the other’) has broken into her/his
house. The second part depicts the increasing fear of a white family placed in a gated
community in the suburbs as the riots take place in the city. The fear of ‘the other’ and the
need to keep them away leads the family to put up fences and walls which eventually ends
up killing their little boy as he plays in the razor wires up on the walls. It touches upon the
issues of fear of ‘the other’, discrimination, social classes, social hierarchy and a severe
criticism of the remnants and collective memory of the Apartheid era.

3. Implementation in Class

3.1 Lesson 1
The ‘activity’ is ‘where students actively participate in making the text mean’ (Carter 1996,
p. 3). Actively processing the text is different from completing tasks to ‘comprehend’ it. In
this lesson, learners engage with the text through constructing meaning following a
language-based approach, by means of ‘open ended high order questions’, a ‘targeted cloze
procedure’ and ‘the movement of the text’. Questioning’ is a text-processing activity
commonly used in language classes; however majority of questions involve ‘the lowest
level of mental capacity’ which ‘goes against the most fundamental characteristics of texts
as linguistic events’ (Van Peer, 1989, p. 276). Carter and Long (1991) advocate the
use of ‘ “high-order, open questions” involving the learner's own responses, inferences,
knowledge and experience of the world’ to generate meaning. These questions ‘rarely have
a right answer’ (p.36) what will be used in this and the following lessons to involve
learners’ own responses. The second activity directs the learners’ attention to the change of
style and the language in the beginning of the story. The last two lines of ‘one line
paragraphs’ were designed as a ‘cloze-text activity’, which aims at ‘ confronting learners
with texts that are open in the material sense of the world and have them reconstruct the
text… on the basis of cohesion’ (Van Pier, 1989, p. 281). With the last activity, learners
trace the movement in the text and underline some of the verbs in paragraphs five and
seven. This might give the learners a confidence in understanding how the text works and

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 Short story in an ESL Freshman English Course: Bridging the gap between language and literature

following ‘I’ in ‘present and past’, start constructing meaning on the change of attitude and
‘point of view’ through syntax and lexis recognition and awareness. If we look at the first
section of the story, questions such as ‘What can you tell about ‘I’ ?, ‘Do you think ‘I’ is a
male or a female?’, ‘Think of some adjectives to describe ‘I’. Which of the following
adjectives … (McRae and Vethamani, 1999) ‘Why do you think the word “ought” is in the
quotation marks? What do you think this tells us about how ‘I’ feel?’, ‘Do you think ‘I’ is
right to feel/ think this way?’ aim at involving learners’ own responses, knowledge and
experience of the world which would trigger a higher level of cognitive skills and help
construct meaning regarding the point of view of ‘I’. In the beginning of the story, one -
line paragraphs are central to understanding the underlying premise of the story. Learners
are asked to fill in two blanks reconstructing the question and the answer posed in the story
by ‘I’ Comparisons of the reconstructed and the original text will facilitate another
discussion on the choices of the words and ‘point of view’ and help elicit the theme of
‘fear’ analyzing the following contrasts: ‘question & answer’, ‘subconscious & conscious
level’, ‘a voice & a sound’. This activity instigates ‘questioning’ and ‘making intelligent
guesses’ thus initiating the construction of meaning (Lazar 1993, Parkinson and Thomas,
2000).
In ‘Once Upon a Time’, verbs move from past, past continuous and to present in recurring
order in the first section and learners trace this movement and make a list of the verbs in
past and present. Questions such as ‘Are these verbs mostly negative or positive? Are any
of the verbs that you don’t know are positive or negative?’, ‘How does ‘I’ feel about the
past and about the present?’, ‘Would it be different if we eliminated the sentences in
‘present tense’?’ would be a starting point to work on the first binary in the text: ‘past and
present’. Comparison of some of the verbs in past ‘ murdered, guarded, strangled,
dismissed, threatened’ with the ones in present ‘surrounds, trembles, detaches, falls, shifts’
could open up a new dimension on the idea of ‘point of view’ and the change in ‘point of
view’ from past to present. The lesson ends with a prediction activity: ‘What do you think
this bed story will be about?’ which leads learners to make intelligent guesses elaborating
more on the movement in ‘point of view’.

3.2 Lesson 2
Lesson two starts with the question ‘How is this section similar to the first one?’ And how
is it different?’. Here some of the features of literary texts such as ‘setting, plot and
characters’ would be elicited through the comparison with the nonfictional opening of the
story. The differences and the ideas learners propose through this comparison will be
revisited at the end of the story. In the prereading activity, a basic comprehension question:
‘How many people are mentioned in this passage?’ followed by ‘high order-open

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questions’ (Carter and Long 1991) such as ‘ What can you tell about where they live?’
‘'What does this tell us about the people in the story?’ would help form a context of
meaning, a lack of which would lead to difficulties in understanding the text and therefore
should be established in the beginning of the text. Picking out ‘binaries or contrasts’
follows the pre-reading activity. Using ‘binaries or contrasts’ as a first activity gives
learners a starting point and an opportunity to say something about the text focusing on
what they know rather than what they don’t know and helps develop confidence in reading
as well as constructing meaning through implicit ‘relationships-clues’. (Gajdusek 1988, p.
229). This activity would provide the ‘necessity of imaginative engagement’ (McRae, 1996,
p.17); delving into the new world created in the story that would foster the ‘exploration and
discovery of key concepts required’ to compensate for the lack of explicit contextualization.
(Gajdusek, 1988, p. 231). If we return to the story, learners only focus on the first paragraph
initially and pick out the binaries related to the concepts of ‘danger and security’ making a
list of words associated with these concepts under each heading. The next activity moves
them forward to identify other contrasts in the text in terms of ‘People, Places, Mood,
Positive and Negative’ and directing students to identify the main contrasts in the story.
Binaries in relation to people also lead to a more detailed analysis on the
concept of ‘point of view’. Questions such as ‘What adjectives are used for…?’, ‘Who do
you think chose the adjectives?’ instigate questioning on the ‘choice of adjectives’ and
would guide students to a better analysis of the characters’ and /or the author’s point of
view. (McRae and Vethamani 1999) The choice of adjectives for the maid and the gardener
with adverbs ‘ absolutely trustworthy’, ‘highly recommended’ and for the husband’s
mother ‘wise old’ witch would be connected to the concept of ‘point and view’ and lead to
questioning why no adjectives are used to describe the main characters: the husband and the
wife. Focusing on the maid and the idea of ‘advice’ in the story, learners would trace the
changes in the family’s life and would answer if they sympathize with the husband or wife
or with someone else in the story. The lesson ends with the questions ‘Do you think the
husband and the wife and their little boy are safe now?’ and ‘What do you think will
happen next?’ allowing the learners to reconstruct the text; the ending of the story in pairs
or groups and reporting to the class how they would finish the story.

3.3 Lesson 3
The last lesson focuses on the issues raised in the story and requires the learners to answer
‘what the story might have meant’ to create cultural awareness and a recognition in the
universality of the issues making references to their own lives. The pre-Reading task is
designed to elicit the stylistic features in the story resembling a fairy tale story. Students
discuss in groups and pick the most appropriate title for the story and justify their reasons

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referring to evidences in the story ‘making intelligent guesses’ thus initiating the
construction of meaning (Lazar 1993, Parkinson and Thomas, 2000). After the students are
presented the real title ‘Once Upon a Time’, they continue working in groups and pinpoint
some of the features in this story that are similar to a fairy tale and propose their personal
responses on why the author might have chosen this title and particular style of storytelling.
Drawing a mental picture of these particular societies (the society ‘I’ and the other
characters live in) and their comparisons follow the initial activity and this aims at
encouraging students to postulate some hypothesis on the author and her point of view and
weather it is different than ‘I’ ‘s point of view. Through some ‘high order-open questions’
(Carter and Long, 1991), students are directed to question ‘who is responsible’ for what
happened to the little boy, whether their sympathy for any characters have changed,
whether it is a recent story, in which country this story might have taken place and if the
society they live in is any different. These kind of questions ‘make demands’ on language
users and interpretation, of shades of meaning, of reaction and response’ follows (McRae,
1996, p. 19). In the last activity learners are presented with a list of ‘moral lessons’ that this
story might contain; they are asked to pick the most appropriate one or if they don’t agree
with the morals presented, construct their own morals justifying their reasons. This last
activity should lead to a class discussion, as the learners defend their own reconstruction of
the story in one sentence and decide which of the following issues seems to be central to the
meaning of the story: fear of ‘the other’, discrimination, social classes, social hierarchy.

4. Conclusion
Implementing literary texts in the ESL /EFL context, in our case; in an ESL Freshman
English Program could facilitate improvement in the skills of higher thinking abilities, a
lack of which puts overwhelming demands on the learners in academic contexts.
Introduction to literary texts by means of student-centered and language-based activities
would reinforce promoting communicative competence, as students need to ‘find a way into
the text’ (Carter and Long, 1991, p. 4) in a context where comprehension would not suffice
and the approach to language as a rule-based system need to shift into ‘language’ through
meaning construction. In the instruction of the short story ‘Once Upon a Time’ by Nadine
Gordimer, varied language based activities are designed to introduce the concept of ‘point
of view’ and create an awareness towards the function of the text; thus, create cultural
awareness on some of the universal issues depicted in the story. Regardless of the historical
context or place, students are guided towards using their knowledge of the world and need
to engage with the text in an imaginative way, react, respond and ‘make the text mean’.

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