Litinclass - "Literature in the Foreign Language Class" is an international research network created to explore and share ideas on bringing literature back into the language classroom.
Bringing literature back into the classroom is not an attempt to go back in time. Rather, knowledge of literary texts helps students become better language learners, and provides them with skills that are increasingle necessary in the contemporary globalised world.
Research and policy documents consulted support the proposal of the following classification of the primary benefits of bringing literature into the language class:
- Literature enhances foreign language learning: research has shown that when appropriate student-centred exercises on literature are put into practive in the language classroom, students make more progress in their language learning.
- Authentic materials increase student engagement with language learning
- It provokes discussion of difficult ethical issues: literature presents the students with human relationships, challenges and dilmemas to be explored and analysed.
- It links with internationalisation, fosters intercultural awareness and provides reflection on diverity and inclusion.
- It develops important employabilty skills: as the job market becomes more and more internationalised, students need to be prepared to engage with different cultural contexts.
Co-founded by Ana Bela Almeida and Dr Idoya Puig (Manchester Metropolitan University), this project has been running since 2015 with demonstrable outcomes, including a University of Liverpool Learning and Teaching Award and a co-authoured publication in Research-publising.net ("Enhancing employablity skills by bringing literature back into the foreign language class: the Litinclass website").
More recently, final year students had the chance to speak in Portuguese with writer Isabel Figueiredo, via messenger, in class. Isabela answered questions on A Gorda, her latest novel, whch the students have been reading this semester, and left an important message: "My writing's goal is to bring into question the ways we normally look at others".
A co-authored textbook on Literature in the Foreign Language Class is due for publication by Portuguese publisher Lidel in late 2019.
The Language Learning through Literature International Conference will be taking place at the University of Liverpool in June 2019. A call for papers will be circulated in due course. For further information please contact Ana Bela Almeida (anasial@liverpool.ac.uk).
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