Practice and Effects of Integrating Literature and Cooperative Learning in ELT

Using literature in the language classroom has attracted a renewed interest in the ELT community in the past few decades. Major justifications for using literature with language learners include valuable authentic and motivating material, language and cultural enrichment, as well as personal growth and involvement. However, in Taiwanese higher education, the value of literature in ELT has not drawn much attention among teachers of University English courses. Literature is often considered too difficult or impractical for non-English majors, and thus reserved only for advanced literary courses for English majors. To help non-English-major students tap the power and potential of literature in English language learning, this study brings together literature and cooperative pedagogy to design a literature-focused cooperative language learning project, in which students work cooperatively in small groups, inside or outside the classroom, to complete a variety of cooperative language learning tasks appropriate to each stage of the reading of C. S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe . This project was applied to my one-year teaching of three groups of Taiwanese non-English majors, and practitioner research was conducted to investigate the practice and effects of such integration on student perceptions, motivation, learning processes and outcomes.