Computer and Mobile-Assisted Focus on Literary Text for the Advanced EFL Classroom: A New-age Pedagogical Stylistics

Using a decidedly sturdy and vast body of evidence in theory and practice, Literature in Language Education (LLE) has argued compellingly in favor of taking literature-text to the classroom and direct explicit instruction of literary text to increase Literary Awareness (LitAw). The current study is a report of repeatedly successful past experience of taking literature to the advanced classroom involving BA students of English Language and Literature, a long portion of which can now be seen to have happened over the Covid-era online teaching everyone has been forced into. In this report of mobile and computer-assisted instruction of literary text, we give an account of how we have operationalized Sonia Zyngier’s five elements for LitAw, i.e. exposure, cross-linking, reference buildup, adjustment, and productivity, in this prolonged era of inevitable online instruction. Pedagogical Stylistics and LLE have been vociferous in calling for and indeed establishing beyond doubt the role and place of the literary text in making many psychological and proficiency gains in foreign language education, on time invested as well as resources. But the field, solid though its staked-out claim on theory and practice has been, is yet to propose an agenda and suggested steps in these dire times for pedagogy. Maybe, and understandably, LLE has been too reliant on the physical classroom and the teacher, but it is time for a new-age pedagogical Stylistics we all have to grow accustomed to, going with the bleaker assumption that times of pedagogical adversity like the Covid one will be always striking, on and off, whether we like it or not. Replications in different contexts and countries could also be placed on the agenda so as to verify whether students in other contexts can also become more sensitized to the language of literary texts if they undergo a similar programme.

کلیدواژه ها:

Literature in Language Education ، Computer and Mobile Assisted Focus on Literary Text ، Pedagogical Stylistics