Literature in TESL Programs: The Language and the Culture

As we begin to plan a course which offers an introduction to English literature to non-native speakers, we find that the need for a fresh approach makes us first begin to reconsider our justifications for teaching literature at all. Usually our presuppositions remain unquestioned because of the long tradition of such courses for native speakers. Even to pose the question of purpose may cause shocked responses, for is not the value of literature so self evident as to be beyond discussion? Yet for ESL students we must at least define our assumptions, the more so in that a sad amount of literature teaching (and dare I add literary scholarship) seems to maintain only a remote connection with that enobling of the human spirit which is supposed to be the justification of our early assaults on the fortress of Chaucer's medieval style, for example. There is a basic dichotomy in English studies in this country (as in England). We leam grammar until some ill-defined point of competence is reached. (F r e s hm a n composition classes are certain to be the last formal English language training a native speaker could receive.) Language studies are gradually phased out in