Developing Language Skills and Building Characters through Literature

Abstract

Literature is a creative and imaginative work; it records human lives or experiences using a language as its medium. Literary works as a medium rather than a goal or an end in the language instruction will be revealed. There are four language skills to be developed in the process of language instruction. These four language skills are: listening, speaking, and reading as well as writing. This paper will elaborate the aspects: (a) some reasons and strategies for a language educator to utilize the literary works in language learning and teaching, (b) benefits of the various genres of literary works towards the language teaching, (c) using literary works in the teaching of reading and writing, (d) using literary works in teaching listening and speaking, (e) advantages of learning the literary works in nation character building, and (f) suggested activities of the literary work-based teaching language skills for character building.