ABSTRACT
This study considers the role of literature in Chinese language teaching at higher education level, primarily in the UK context, but also in China; it is based on research findings from the US, the UK, and China. The study begins with an historical account of the changing status of literature in CFL as pedagogical fashions and the priorities of Chinese language courses have changed over the past 150 years, particularly with the increasing emphasis on the communicative application of language. We find that the progressive abandonment of literature in second language acquisition, that was common to all language teaching from around the 1960s, began to be questioned in studies from the 1980s, resulting in new approaches to using literature in European language teaching classrooms from the 1990s. However, these did not significantly impact on Chinese language teaching, and indeed in China in the 1990s the movement was in the opposite direction, against literature use. We consider the theoretical basis for including literature, look at what distinctive features it can bring to the language classroom and then offer some case studies in the use of literature, both general and specifically Chinese. The issues include the benefits of using authentic literary texts compared to the synthetic texts typically used in CLT textbooks, the criteria for choosing appropriate texts, the language level of the students concerned and the variety of teaching techniques that can be employed with literature. We find that experienced language teachers instinctively feel literature has valuable features that can help in developing higher-level communicative skills, particularly as a result of its rich cultural content and its sensitivity to connotative meaning and register. They are devising more communicative teaching methods using literature, which they find are welcomed by students.
