Importance of Teaching Literature to Secondary School Students

Abstract

The aim of this study is to investigate the significant role of literature teaching on secondary school students who study English as a foreign language. The study consisted of (100) secondary school students’ .The experiment took place in Omdurman. The students were chosen from two Sudanese secondary schools in Omdurman for the academic year 2015/2016. (50) Students out of (100) studied literature for more than six years and the rest (50) students didn’t study any literary texts for the same period. A questionnaire was distributed to (30) English teachers, a student test was given to secondary school students and (10) English language directors were interviewed as well. A statistical analysis was carried out to find out the relation between literature teaching and its role in promoting the students’ performance. The data of the study were analyzed by using the statistical package for the social sciences (SPSS). The findings of the study indicated that, there is a positive, statistical significant relation between the study of literature and the standard of the students in English. On the other hand, the students who studied literature scored higher marks in the test that contained the same questions and took the same time for both students, compared with those students who didn’t study any literary text. That is to say, Literature teaching has a positive effect in the acquisition of English language. In light of these findings, it is recommended that, teachers of English language should adopt literature in their teaching so as to iv encourage students to improve their English language. Administrations of secondary schools should give more emphasis on the importance of literature learning through the training of English teachers in order to know how to teach literature efficiently. English curricula designers should alter curricula to take into consideration that literature should be included in syllabuses.