ELT through Short Story: Genre at Work

Abstract

Since ages, Literature has contributed a lot in the development of Human lives and civilization. Be it ancient society of pyramids or the modern technological era of space, Language and Literature have played vital role in building the human world better than it was ever before. Therefore every civilization gives due importance to teaching and learning language(s) in various ways in almost all the sectors. English being a linguafranka has influenced the present world a lot. In countries like USA, China, Australia and Canada, the number of students is day by day going up who are learning English as their second language for various purposes. It is a well known fact that India has become a nation which has maximum number of people who use English as their first or second language.
In India, Teaching English, therefore, has got widest platform and lots of research is taking place every year on various methods and theories on and about ways of teaching English. English as a second language can be taught in multiple ways but there are very few amongst them which give exact and expected result. This paper discusses about teaching English language through short story - one of the genres of literature.
Defining short story is not easy. As a teacher one ought to know the difference between the „story‟ / „short story‟ and „storytelling‟. Moreover, short story as a form can be better taught only if one knows what short story is not rather than what it is. Short story does have some similarities like other genres and therefore it is necessary to know how short story is different from other forms. The present research discusses the effective ways of teaching English through short story.