THE ROLE OF LITERATURE IN SECOND LANGUAGE TEACHING

Abstract

This work constitutes a concise sketch on the origin and development of foreign language teaching, offering a brief analysis on how language teaching has been conceived and understood throughout history, regarding not only its origins but also the most recent approaches and methods. Moreover, we will try to draw up the role that literature has had in different language teaching methodologies. In addition, this work seeks to justify the vast interest of the knowledge and the use of literature-based strategies while teaching and learning Spanish as a foreign language so that the speakers are able not only to demonstrate their linguistic level of a foreign language but also their social, cultural and historical understanding of the countries where Spanish is spoken.