The Role of Literature in Foreign Language Acquisition

Abstract

Literature plays essential role in foreign language acquisition. Each level of foreign language study requires inclusion of literary texts. Together with factual facts it develops a deeper awareness of the language use. Courses give indication of the complexity of various texts in terms of themes, characters or cultural difficulty. In early school years children get familiar with associations from role plays, drama, poetry and short stories that help them acquire idioms, colloquialisms and syntax adding to their general cognitive development. This method acquires enormous proportion of linguistic and literary information through higher education. At university schools other than Schools of Philology, learning English focuses not so much on the literary work from artistic point of view, as to the text conveying ideas that students familiarize with and build vocabulary. In upper levels of foreign language acquisition students increase their competence and confident to speak and present ideas in the foreign language. At advanced levels foreign learners put their imagination and research at work and many of them accomplish verbal advantage close to native speakers.