The use of Children’s Literature in Improving ESL Learners’ Reading Skills Systematic Literature Review (2019-2023)

This paper presents a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) of pertinent past studies about the use of Children's Literature in improving ESL learners' reading skills from the year 2019 to 2023. This SLR seeks to answer a research question; how does the use of children's literature improve ESL learners' reading skills? Seventeen studies have been systematically reviewed and included in this paper. The results portrayed that the use of children's literature in improving ESL learners' reading skills can be put into three aspects which are the improvement in comprehension skills, the improvement of reading fluency and proficiency, as well as promote enjoyment, engagement, and motivation in reading skills. The limitation of this paper is that there were a limited number of recent studies related to children's literature and ESL classrooms, especially in the Malaysian context. For further research recommendations, it is necessary for other researchers to conduct more research related to children's literature covering any other language skills.