The Appliance of Religious Literatures in the English Language Classrooms

Abstract

This article intends to show how literature may be used in language classes to develop student's knowledge in English. First, we examine the evolution of literature in the language classroom, then we give the account of some reasons that justify its use in language classes, of the role of reading in language development and of the way poetry is treated in the ESL (English as a Second Language) classroom. This paper aims to emphasise the use of literature as a popular tool to teach language skills (i.e. reading, writing, listening and speaking), language areas (i.e. vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation) as well as moral teachings, which is the necessity of the present time. Reason for using religious literary texts in foreign language classroom and main criteria for selecting suitable religious literary texts in foreign language classes are stressed so as to make the reader familiar with the underlying reasons and criteria for language teachers, using and selecting religious literary texts. Moreover, religious literature and teaching of language skills, benefits the different genres of religious literature (i.e. poetry, fiction and drama) and also gaining knowledge of a particular religion through language teaching but some problems had been observed by language teachers within the area of English through religious literature (i.e. lack of preparation in the area of literature teaching in TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language)/TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) programmes, absence of clarity in objectives defining the role of literature in ESL/EFL (English as a Foreign Language, language teachers not having the background, training and appropriate knowledge in religious literature, lack of pedagogically-designed teaching material that can be used by language teachers in a classroom.