Culturally-Effective Responsive Teaching in English Language Learners' Literature Classes

Abstract

Teaching literature has been regarded as crucial to the ability to use language. There has been an upsurge of interest in using literature in language learners' classrooms. In literacy classes, students bring their imagination, memories, thinking processes, morals, social values, historical knowledge, and prior knowledge to the text. They could extract meaning from texts as fully aware of the specificity of their cultural backgrounds and others through experiencing, exploring, hypothesizing, and synthesizing processes. The role of pedagogy drives the literary practice and leads to how knowledge is produced and how subject positions are constructed in historical, social, and political manners. This chapter raises some of the issues and debates related to using literature with language learners. It highlights some pedagogical strategies that could equip instructors with the tools to alleviate students' tension and elevate their human motives and psyches to make the learning constructive and dynamic.