A Literature Model of Language Teaching?: A Polemical Question

Abstract

Picking up on the word "model" in the title, this paper examines the aspects of language that may be viewed as artistic. It makes a case that we need to think and act artistically as teachers in order to enrich the language and the pedagogy we use with our students and colleagues.

            After describing some of the ways literature and language people interact or do not interact, the paper sets out three ways of explaining how language is itself an art: in everyday life, in linguistics and in pedagogy. It then describes some ways that some of our current practices are against the values inherent in artistic practice, and offers some remedies for this imbalance in our ways of talking to each other and our students, and in the ways we conceive of our action in the classroom.

            The tone of this paper is conversational, as part of the argument is that we need to recognise and develop our artistic voices in English Language Teaching.