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Authors: Diana Ibarra Santacruz, Helda Alicia Hidalgo Dávila
Keywords: literature, context, cultural awareness, EFL/ESL
Abstract: The use of literary texts in the EFL classroom is generally oriented towards reading comprehension and the incidental learning of new vocabulary and structures, as it is a rich and practical source of input. However, the use of this type of texts is not limited to the mere analysis of the formal aspects of the language; instead, they can be exploited and used, on one hand, as a means to access the culture that the text carries with it and at the same time contrast it with the readers’ own context (Maley 1989a), and on the other, as a way to prompt critical thinking among learners (Gajdusek & van Dommelen, 1993, Ghosn, 2002, Van, 2009). In that sense, this case study focused on the implementation of literary texts in a group of second semester learners of an EFL teaching program as a source to spur the debate and analysis of the cultural, social and political aspects that the chosen text portrays. The study then determined the learners’ perceptions of this approach to in order to analyze how and in what areas they benefited from it.