Abstract
The authors state why they believe that literature should play an important role in language learning, and why the time is ripe for a re-evaluation and refashioning of the way in which it is used by teachers and students. They describe some emerging reasons for including literature in language learning instruction, such as the help it provides for developing multiple literacies and thinking skills needed for the twenty first century such as creativity, critical thinking, and collaboration, and the fact that it gives students practice in experiential, responsive reading as opposed to ‘efferent reading’ which is concerned with processing factual information. Digital literature also provides exciting new opportunities for creating and responding to multimodal literary texts in ways which have not existed previously.
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Naji, J., Subramaniam, G., White, G. (2019). Why Is Literature Important for Language Learning?. In: New Approaches to Literature for Language Learning. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15256-7_1
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