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Literature means analysis.

Nowadays learning English is very fashionable and trendy. However, do we reflect on the way we carry out the teaching of specific topics within the teaching of this foreign language? For example, the way we deal with historical events through English literature has not been taken into account as it should be in order to promote not only long term learning but also a thoughtful attitude in students. I remember that as a student I spent a lot of time searching for information on history that I never really used it. As the years wore on and I kept on studying historical events, I began to ask myself, "Am I really learning?" I never felt I was learning that bunch of information, and after a week or two I just forgot it. Now I finally realized that teaching historical events through literature is an extremely helpful tool for the EFL classroom; due to the fact that it comes to make a change in the current way of EFL teaching practice and also because there are concrete ways to introduce this topic in the EFL classroom.
This essay will describe what I have seen and lived during the years spent on the educational system; in relation to the foreign language teaching. It will also propose some effective ways of introducing historical events to students and finally, I will come up with a conclusion based on all the elements highlighted.
Turning now to the in progress way of teaching English as a foreign language and including the way it deals with the introduction of history issues that are very relevant for our society. It is important to have a clear idea of how English classes are developed in our current reality. From my own experience as an English teacher trainee in different schools I have come to comprehend and be a witness of the present techniques to teach English as a foreign language. Teaching English as an international language has a clear purpose; the well-known “English opens doors” program deals with enabling students to be more in touch with the world in terms of job opportunities. That is why in schools English is taught in a way that students become only passive receptors of messages. Receptive skills are often the main focus of the class; listening and reading are put first over the productive skills such as speaking and writing. In that sense, important historical event are often left aside or covered in a meaningless way.
Now let’s move on to the applicability in the classroom. Reading poems as “September 1, 1939” by W.H Auden; has made me realize that literature can express a lot about a particular historical event such as World War II and what people felt towards that situation. Reading that poem allows the reader to be taken into the scenario in which it was written and inspired.
I think that when we talk about small children, illustrations play an important role. Illustrations are beautiful and easy to follow by little children and they represent a relevant visual aid that can be exploited afterwards. It is crucial to bear in mind that children have no interest in dates, names, treaties and so ever. They are more interesting in knowing more about characters, personalities and places. Moreover, biographies can be a wonderful instrument into history, because if children care about a particular history character then they want to know about wars, treaties, dates, kings and queens, and so on. Once a student has an interest in a famous person, then the child will want to know what was going on in the time in which that person lived. Therefore, we can take advantage of that interest and give students more information about the context.
On the other hand, if we face an almost or an already high school class we could bring more complex text to be openly discuss in the class. If I were to choose a text I would choose “The Waste Land” by T.S Eliot. I deeply believe this poem is a very empowering work since it represents to me a way of expressing a point of view towards such an important topic as government and the effect of it on society. Besides when reading it, it is possible to feel the intention of the author and, in a way it is possible to interact with the writer because of the reactions that make in the readers. Additionally, the text is timeless to me because, even though it was written long time ago it can be definitely applicable to current events and situations. Besides this poems portrays the situation that people lived after the war, people were facing a feeling of emptiness. All the important decisions were not made by themselves but by others. Additionally, there were no means for them to make a change into the style of life and society they faced. Furthermore, the structure of the poem has some metaphors, references, and allusions so in that way students will be learning about history and at the same time about literature and poem’s structure.
In short, using literature to teach history in EFL classes is a highly recommendable instrument since by doing so we can raise students’ awareness on the importance of historical events and in addition make history more meaningful and appealing for them. A sign of the positive effects of this proposal is that the interest among educators in using literature to teach history has risen. What is more, we as teachers need to be the enough smart to make the most of the use of literature inside our classrooms. Following that same line of thought, applying, discussing and going through those works in which a community defines itself through its history, culture, tastes and realities. We might include works mainly as artistic ones as well as music, movies, poems, pictures and anything that can provoke any feeling, sensation and reaction on our students.















Links

• http://articles.famouswhy.com/why_is_literature_important_in_our_lives_/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Waste_Land
• http://www.artic.edu/webspaces/510iftheshoefits/ljunkin.pdf

Outline

Outline : Teaching historcal events through literature in the EFL classroom

I. Introduction
a. Thesis
II. Current EFL teaching
III. Ways to introduce historical events through literature in EFL classroom
IV. Conclusion

Politics and Poetry.

W.H Auden wrote a poem called September 1, 1939. Why did he call his poem that way? He wrote this poem in the first days of World War II. When the invasion to Poland was taking place He was very critical when writing about the moment he was going through. All the lines of the poem referred to the complex situation that everyone was living. This poem was very important to me because it portrayed what W.H Auden had to say about war, so it really helped me to understand a little more what is was like to be in war times.

The poem started with this line “I sit in one of the dives” and it continued “uncertain and afraid” This two lines meant to me that the author was making use of his own voice to represent the feeling, reactions, fears, uncertainties that ordinary people went through towards war.

Moreover, the entire poem is a helpful tool for the speaker to address the lies he perceives transmitted by all types of government and law representatives. “And the lie of Authority whose buildings grope the sky: there is no such thing as the State” Here it seemed to me that the poet complained that the government fooled people by making them to “believe” that war was the best thing.

W.H Auden is very critical and down at times, although he gave some sorts of answers. “We must love one another or die” is an invitation to return to our human nature and to stop using mistakenly our influence and condition. This is very true, in the sense of human kind destroying ourselves. Illustrations of that are the Nuclear Bomb and terrorist attacks among others. This poem is definitely food for thought and it can be perfectly taught in a high school context.

Paulina's interpretation....

The Waste Land is well known as “one of the most important poems of the 20^th century”. From my point of view I consider it one of the controversial Elliot’s poems. Its complexity and structure has made it difficult to understand and analyze. The poem changes into two or more speakers as well the situations, location and time. However, even though it is a complex poem I have my own perspective of it. After reading The Waste Land I would say that it refers to a land that is isolated, empty and even dead. A land that is not suitable to use it. The land Elliot makes reference is an analogy of people’s live of the 20^th century. In this case is not a coincidence the poet had written about that obscurity that overwhelmed society. Through his characters, the British poet tries to portray a reality in which people's souls are empty, sad, but in deep they are dead as a consequence of their own history. To sum up, Elliot includes a sense of reality in his way of writing combining it with some tones of sarcasm, irony and coldness.

BY PAULINA VALDES

Reading Paulinas’s post about “The Waste Land” made me realize that T.S Elliot played a lot with the different voices of the various narrators of the poem. As well as Paulina, I think that this poem is fair representation of what the author thought about the society in which he was living. I agreed with her when she pointed out that this poem can be categorized as one of the most controversial poems ever. I consider this because it broke the mole somehow, highlighting and raising what society refused to express.

It is true that this piece of writing was not fictional at all. Actually, it was an excellent illustration of reality. He created female characters in the poem to make it more real and touching. Furthermore, it is clear that Marie, Lil, and the unnamed woman in it are sad. Different things have made them be like that, but they have that sadness in common.

Moreover, I share her point of view about T.S Elliot’s writing style. The author used irony, sarcasm and coldness to give the poem an unique way of expressing what he felt like to, but keeping intact the main message of it.

The Waste Land

The Waste Land by T.S Elitot is not an ordinary poem at all. It is very complex to read and quite long to be a poem. So, that is why I’ll do my best to write about my understanding of the poem.

From the very beginning of the poem with the subtitle “the burial of the dead”, I got the impression that it would be a very dark poem. This impression was even assured when I read the first line of the poem which is “APRIL is the cruellest month”. Then, as I kept reading I realized that in the first paragraph there are some contradictory concepts. A clear illustration of so, is snow and sunlight.
Let’ remember that this is a contemporary poem which was first publish in 1992, so it is highly important to take the context into account in order to make a more suitable understanding. World War I had just finished a few years before and this absolutely impacted on the whole society. It is known that eight million people die more or less during the period of time this war lasted. Therefore, men and women became disillusioned or hopeless about their own futures and the nature of humanity.

I think that Eliot tried to evoke and share that feeling of uncertainty. As if life can be vanished all of a sudden. I believe this is a complaining about the kind of lifestyle that 20th century brought. Well, there must be hundred of way of analyzing this poem. What I know for certain is that it needs to be read carefully and with time to think it over.

Real literature...

D.H Lawrence wrote “Odor of Chrysanthemums “and “Rocking-horse winner”. This novel writer represented one of the greatest figures in the 20th century. Even though people say that writers can be separated from the narrator of a novel, so what is being read should be taken from the voice of the narrator of a written work.

I guess this time that theory cannot be applied. I strongly believe that D.H Lawrence clearly influenced his writing by situations that happened directly to him. I mean, his writing is not something far from what people are to face through the course if their lives. Actually, this kind of writing really portrays what happens in real life.

In both short stories there are features of D.H Lawrence’s life. For example the fact that he was the son of a coal miner and “Odour of Chrysanthemums” presents the difficulties that the family of a miner, have to cope with. On the other hand, “The Rocking-horse winner” illustrates the friction of a marriage because of being always short of money; it’s known that Lawrence’s childhood was very poor.

I liked reading this sort of texts because they are very appealing to me; besides issues seen in the novels are very likely to be timeless. Despite the fact that time can pass by, there will be always some situations that might be repetitive through the development of human society.