CHILDREN LITERATURE

The Teaching of Children Literature

The Teaching of Children Literature

Introduction

This paper discuss about the children literature by using the theme of fiction in English curriculum. Fictional stories can encompass a great diversity of topics presenting ideas in an interesting variety of formats. Most children's literature experts agree on several identifiable genres or types of literature categories. Norton (1983) lists approximately fourteen different literary genres that are available for children of all ages. They include fairytales, picture books, poetry, theater, fantasy, fiction, biography, animal stories, science fiction, mystery, and folk tales which can be further divided into legends, fables, and myths. Ideally, the literature available to children would include a careful balance of genres to appeal to the different age levels, and interests of the children.

Discussion

When we think of the ways literature enriches our language, we think of literature as being an authentic material. Unmodified language, even if it is the language of children's books, is a good example of the complex language structures that language learners can come across outside the classroom. Cudd and Roberts (1993) stated that children who do not listen to or read books do not have exposure to the complex syntax found in written language and to the rich vocabulary that comprises literature. Without this exposure, children are not able to understand writers' syntactic constructions and, therefore, are not able to use appropriate constructions to convey meaning in their own writing. In the literature-rich classroom, students have opportunity “to draw upon a richer fund of language” (Cullinan, 1992, p. 426). As Cullinan pointed out, children use the language around them. If they come across interesting and rich language, they will use it later in their oral and written language production. Therefore, we need to provide an environment rich in the beautiful language of literature and make sure that language learners have a lot of opportunities to experiment with language.

Effects of literature on literacy development

Children start experiencing more enthusiasm and a greater tendency to read. Previous research results show more positive feelings and attitudes toward school, as well as improvement of reading and writing skills. In addition to improving reading and writing skills in general, literature presents an excellent source of vocabulary. In Beck and McKeown's (2001) research, students took advantage of the sophisticated words found in books by using them as a source of explicit vocabulary activities, which resulted in a significant increase in vocabulary. Chomsky (1972), Dole et al. (1995), Kuhn and Stahl (1998), and Dixon-Krauss (2002) described several studies that investigated the effect of text context on vocabulary development. They concluded that the vast majority of learned words did not come from direct instruction but were learned incidentally, by encountering them in the literary text. Elley (1989) stated that reading stories aloud to children is a significant source of vocabulary acquisition, and that teachers should include literature in their language instruction on a regular basis.

In many countries around the world, literature is highly valued. Literature plays a critical role in our life, often ...