This document summarizes an analysis of a chapter on teaching literature in the classroom. It includes a questionnaire with 14 questions about introducing literature and its benefits. Literature can develop communicative competence, intercultural awareness, and critical thinking. It exposes students to different genres and languages. Stories motivate students and help cognitive development. Literary devices like binaries, rhyme, and metaphor contribute to literacy. Literature fosters intercultural competence by presenting other worldviews. The document also includes a lesson plan on using the story "Places in My Neighborhood" to teach vocabulary and engage students.

1. PRACTICE II, DIDACTICS OF ELT and Practicum Primary School
level. Adjunto Regular a/c Prof. Estela N. Braun (2021).
Group: Yacopini Cristian, Ferreyra Valentina and Rubiano Daniela.
TP 7: THE MAGIC BAG PROJECT. PART B: PRACTICE. PRACTICAL N° 7-
The Magic Bag Project.
Deadline: October 18th 2021.
ANALYSIS OF CHAPTER 2: Teaching Literature in the Classroom: Fostering
Communicative Competence, Intercultural Awareness and Critical Thinking in
Young Learners, BY Griselda Beacon and Ana Maria Cendoya.
PART A: THEORY.
QUESTIONNAIRE:
1. Why is it important to introduce literature in the classroom?
The role of literature in the ELT classroom has been re-evaluated and
many teachers of foreign languages view literary texts as providing rich linguistic
input, a trigger for the development of intercultural competence, effective stimuli
for students to express themselves in other languages and a potential source of
learner motivation.
2. What sort of elements from Literature can we use apart from stories?
We can also use teaching sequences designed to work with poems and
songs that may help students develop communicative competence, intercultural
awareness and critical thinking.
3. What are John Mc Rae’s views on Literature?
John McRae (1994) states that there is a difference between literature with
capital L (the classical texts) and literature with small l, which refers to texts that

2. are not part of the traditional literary canon such as popular fiction, fables and
songs. As a result, the literature employed in ELT classrooms today is no longer
restricted to classical and canonical texts from certain countries such as the ones
coming from the UK and USA, but now teachers of foreign language include the
work of writers from a wide variety of countries and cultures which use different
kinds of Englishes.
4. Why is it important to include authors from a wide range of countries?
Including authors from a wide range of countries is essential to provide our
students an opportunity for the development of intercultural competence as it may
increase the foreign learner’s insight into the country’s cultural values through the
learning of its language.
5. What are Lazar’s views (1999)?
Lazar (1999) states that the use of literature leads to different kinds of
enrichment:
a. Literary texts offer a great variety of genres and expose learners to the
specific language used in each one of them.
b. Learners have access to poems, fables, folk and fairy tales, short stories
and/or plays and other forms of text that contribute to develop a familiarity
with a use of language. This familiarity with the language allows learners to
start understanding more abstract aspects of language such as metaphors,
images, allegories and personification, etc that work in the text.
● This approach to the literary text allows learners to make inferences and
to deduce meaning from context. This focus on meaning helps readers to
divert their attention from the mechanical aspects of the language system
to concentrate on what the text is about and what the learner infers or
interprets fostering creativity and imagination.
6. Why do the authors state that stories are multi-purposeful?
Stories are multi-purposeful since they motivate and engage learners and
also help children to develop their cognitive skills. In this sense, Ghosn (2002)

3. highlights the importance of stories as a pedagogical tool as they provide a
motivating, meaningful context for language learning since children are naturally
drawn to stories.
7. Why are narratives important from the perspective of cognitive
psychology?
Roche & Sadowsky (2003) state that the use of literature in the classroom
helps students to approach concepts in the form of stories which imprint
themselves naturally into their minds. Furthermore, the field of cognitive
psychology suggests that stories define who we are as well as build and preserve
a group’s sense of community.
8. What does Kieran Eagan’s cognitive tool kit consist of?
In his book An Imaginative Approach to Teaching, Kieran Eagan argues
that a solution to many of the current educational problems is to use and develop
a set of cognitive tools that helps to enhance students’ understanding and
literacy skills. Eagan states this set of cognitive tools (speak, write and think using
theoretic abstractions) are built up first by the contact with our community which
are essential to the stimulation and development of the imagination. As a matter
of fact, this author highlights the importance of including an imaginative approach
to education focused on the acquisition of the main cognitive tools since they
connect students’ imagination with the knowledge offered in the curriculum.
9. Which literary devices are present in stories, poems, chants and
songs?
Most of the tools mentioned by Eagan are literary devices present in
stories, poems, chants and songs. These literary devices are Story, Binary
Opposites, Humour, Gossip, Play, Rhythm and Pattern, Mental Imagery, Mystery,
Metaphor and Embryonic Roots of Literacy.
10.What is the importance of binary opposites?
Binary Opposites are essential as a way to categorize knowledge, the way
in which children organize the world according to the culture they belong to and
to the values of their community. To work with opposites suggests that teachers

4. develop activities that help children to identify these opposites and go beyond to
deconstruct the dichotomy presented in the binary. These activities are required
to foster intercultural competence since they help children to learn to accept other
cosmovisions.
11.What sort of literary devices contribute to the development of literacy
skills?
According to Egan, rhyme, rhythm and pattern are the sort of literary
devices that contribute to the development of literacy skills. They give
memorable, meaningful and attractive shape to content as they engage
imagination in learning patterns of language and all forms of knowledge. In this
sense, Egan highlights the role of Poetry as a very powerful resource to foster
literacy since it connects reading and writing. Furthermore, many of the literary
devices used in poems and stories contribute to the development of literacy skills
such as alliteration, repetition, assonance and onomatopoeia which support the
learning process of chunks of language, structures, words and their spelling.
12. What is the role of literature in the development of intercultural
competence? What is Thisted’s working definition of culture? What are
the curricular designs of our province state?
The role of literature in the development of intercultural competence is to
present students with other cosmovisions so they can expand their cultural capital
and knowledge of the world, so they can accept differences and diversity. Then,
Literature becomes a resourceful material to exploit the cultural elements that
allow students to develop empathy and put themselves in the position of the other
and see the world from that perspective. Regarding this matter, Griselda Beacon
and María Cendoya adhere to the Thisted’s definition of culture that sees culture
as a dynamic process of symbolic production that characterizes the
representation and practices of social groups.
http://www.lapampa.edu.ar:4040/repositorio/index.php/materiales/secunda
ria/basico/item/lengua-extranjera-ingles
13.How does Michael Byram define Interculturality? What can the
intercultural speaker do?

5. Michael Byram defines interculturality as the ability to effectively interact
with people from other cultures that we acknowledge as different from our own.
In this context, an intercultural speaker can mediate among diverse cultures and
negotiate between his/her own cultural representations and those of others by
making use of critical reflection.
14. How can a positive attitude towards Otherness be fostered?
Mychael Byram (2008) stresses some aspects to develop a positive
attitude towards Otherness:
A. Attitudes of curiosity and Openness
B. Willingness to suspend belief in one’s own meanings and behaviours, and
to analyse them from the point of view of others.
C. Learn to relativise, to interrogate our beliefs, to become sensitive and
tolerant to others.
● In this sense, and as I answered in previous points, Literature becomes a
resourceful material to exploit the cultural elements that allow students to
develop empathy and put themselves in the position of the other and see
the world from that perspective. It is the role of the teacher to take
advantage of that material and develop didactic sequences that help
learners make the best of that reading experience and use it in their
interaction with others.
Design a memorable Magic Bag Project for the pupils in your course at
school. Take pictures of their productions when you implement it.
You could also work with poems. Haiku patterns for children. Shapepoems.
Lesson Plan about Literature.
Topic: Places in my Neighborhood, by Shelly Lions.
Video: PLACES IN MY NEIGHBORHOOD| Read-aloud| Storytime for Kids
Students’profile: 5th year - Primary School.

6. Objectives
By the end of the two lessons students will be able to:
● Revise prior knowledge about places in the neighborhood and what they
can do there.
● Talk about their neighborhoods.
● Listen and understand the story with the help of the teacher.
● Answer questions orally.
● Enjoy stories in English.
● Retell the stories to their families with the help of the “magic bag”.
Skills to be emphasized: Listening, speaking and writing.
Structures: Vocabulary/lexical item: vocabulary of places, like school, fire
station, police station, bank, park, restaurant, bakery, cinema, post office, bus
stop, toy shop, sports centre, factory, shopping centre, library or book shop. They
are going to see questions like what is a neighborhood? and vocabulary related
to each place.
Procedure:
ROUTINE
The hello song that they sing: Hello children, hello children, how are you? Hello
teacher, hello teacher, how are you?.Then, what day is today? Today is…;
How do you feel? (I show them some flashcards as their teacher did).
Timing: 5 - 10 minutes.
Macro Skill: Speaking.
WARM UP:
Activity 1: Watch, listen and complete.
Part 1: Teacher will present the short story by showing students the picture of
the book. And then, they are going to listen to it.

7. Timing: 10 minutes
Type of interaction: Students individually, teacher-students.
Macro skills: Watching and listening.
Part 2: Students will complete some parts of the script of the book. Teacher will
give students a handout about the story.
Timing: 15 minutes
Type of interaction: Students individually, teacher-students.
Macro skills: Speaking, reading and writing.
Activity 2: Questions about the story.
Part 1: Teacher will give students some questions for them to answer.
Timing: 10 minutes
Type of interaction: Students individually-teacher students.
Macro skills: Speaking and writing
Part 2:
Teacher will give students a handout. This activity is to activate their memory.
They should make a circle to the places that are in the story.
Timing: 10 minutes
Type of interaction: Students individually-teacher students.
Macro skills: Reading and writing
Activity 3: “ Create your own neighborhood”.
In this activity, teachers ask students to create their own buildings. They can draw
the different places or even they can paste pictures of the places that are near
their houses.Then, they will show their productions to their classmates.
In this activity students can make use of different materials either pictures or
drawings. They can use posters, a sheet of paper, or whatever they prefer.
Timing: 40 minutes
Type of interaction: Students individually, teacher-students.
Macro skills: Speaking and writing.

8. Closing Up: Teachers will ask students to share the book with their families.
Finally, teachers pick up their bags and say goodbye.
Timing: 2- 5 minutes.