OJUA2031 Literature and Culture in Language Education (5 cr)

This course explores different literary texts and genres for language education and introduces different tools and frameworks for understanding and working with literature. This course provides opportunities for participants to share and compare cultural stories, and to use different literary genres to explore experience. An important part of this course is the planning and development of units of work based on literary texts and the critical consideration of the affordances and challenges of story-based and narrative approaches to language education.

Competence development:

This course specifically promotes pedagogical competence through the critical examination and experimentation with literary genres and narrative forms to support language development, communicative and interactional competence through the developed ability to choose and use different language genres and forms, intellectual competence through the critical engagement with research on literature and narratives as part of language education, and ethical competence through the critical understanding and use of cultural stories as part of identity and language development, and aesthetic competence through the development and exploration of artistic forms and narrative spaces.

Upon completing of the course, students should be able to:

• critique different literary texts with a view to using them in educational contexts
• work with authentic materials to create lesson plans, activities and units of work
• recognize and work with different cultural expressions without relying on stereotypical notions
• reflect upon and development practice
• critically understand what literary texts can contribute to language education, as well as individual and community development

Are available in the Moodle learning platform for the course. Key course texts include:

Bland, J. (2013). Children's Literature and Learner Empowerment: Children and Teenagers in English Language Education. A&C Black.