Abstract
Use and Importance of Short Texts in Foreign Language Teaching
In our contemporary world, in which the boundaries have been demolished among the countries, the importance of a foreign language has been doubled as it was in the past. The universities have been accepting students from different geographies, tourism has had an important place in national economy and there have been a swift and great mobility in the world. The main target in language teaching is to develop the four skills- reading, writing, speaking and listening. To achieve this goal literature and as a product of it short texts – short story, fairy tale, fable, puzzle, diary etc. can be used as a learning tool for developing students’ language skills. Because, literature both helps students to understand the culture, the language, the folk of a country and makes them to achieve personal balance between emotion and reason. In language teaching there is a big role for the teacher. When preparing the texts, the teacher should base the target language. Because the students (particularly the ones- like Turkish, living far away from the target language) can only experience the use of target language through literary texts and so they can get information about the language, life style and culture of that country. In this study, we give information about the use of short literary texts in language teaching and investigate how they can help the students learning a foreign language by putting forward their pros and cons.
Keywords
Foreign Language Teaching, Language Teaching Methods, Literature, Culture, Short Texts
