What Is the Importance of Studying Literature PDF

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What Is the Importance of Studying Literature? Studying literature involves reading, discussing, thinking, and writing, helping students to improve in those areas. It also encourages students to think critically, specifically for the discussing and thinking components....

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What Is the Importance of Studying Literature?

By Staff WriterLast Updated Apr 13, 2020 7:52:38 AM ET

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Studying literature involves reading, discussing, thinking and writing, helping students to improve in those areas. It also encourages students to think critically, specifically for the discussing and thinking components.

Those people studying literature look at poems, plays, essays, stories and novels. Reading and learning about these helps people to sympathize with others and see how complex humans truly are. It aids in broadening a person's intellectual horizons and it stimulates a more active imagination. Literature explores different human beliefs, ideas and societies. This allows people to learn about where they came from and how past events work to shape the different cultures.

THE REASONS WHY A STUDENT SHOULD STUDY ENGLISH LITERATURE

English Literature Dictionary/Glossary for Students

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English literatureIn this day and age there seems to be a move towards secondary school subjects which have a strong link to a tertiary course of study. For that reason, some parents and some students feel that the compulsory study of English Literature, especially among the international syllabuses offered in the majority of Hong Kong’s International schools, is misguided and disadvantageous to students, particularly if they are second language learners of English. However, there are still good reasons for the study of English Literature.

Students who study only English Language, with its emphasis on reading and writing skills, sometimes fail to see the point of studying English literature, especially if they have no plans to study English or Translation at university. But English literature can introduce students to a range of aspects, not only of the English language but also of English culture.

There are aspects of English culture that are encapsulated by English literature. Of course, this is quite obvious when studying the works of Shakespeare or of writers, poets and playwrights of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It is, however, also true when studying other works of English literature. Students can learn about allusions and references to different aspects of English culture. They can also learn the context and meanings of famous quotes and phrases.

Studying Literature does not confine the students to the traditions of England but includes the possibility of introducing them to traditions which inform English Literature, such as the study of Ancient Greek drama, and to literature in other contexts, such as American literature. It also provides the students with an alternative to the pervasiveness of “television culture” with its immediacy and, often, its shallowness.

An enjoyment and appreciation of Literature will give students the ability to develop this into an interest in books and reading as they move away from their studies and into their adult lives. They will have the confidence to approach and tackle new forms of books and writing, since they were exposed to a range of literature during their school days.

When studying Literature, students can learn not only language aspects such as vocabulary items but also that language can be used for specific and aesthetic purposes. Familiarity with the concepts of beat, metre and rhythm can improve their own writing as students are able to appreciate and apply these ideas. Finally, the study of Literature can provide students with a fresh and creative angle with which to approach their studies in particular and their lives in general.

So the next time you are reading a newspaper article lamenting the lack of creativity and initiative in the local workforce, remember that in a small way the study of English Literature can help to add a refreshing and further dimension to a person’s life.

What would my child gain through the study of Literature?

When students study Literature, they learn to appreciate words and their power. They travel to other realms and times through the texts they read. They understand about their own culture and others’. They learn to empathise with characters, to feel their joys and pain. For example, one 15-year old student shared with me that when studying the short story, “The Shoes of My Sensei”, by Goh Sin Tub, he could put himself into the shoes of those who lived through World War II, and understand their suffering, and what it was like during that time.

Importantly, they learn to consider multiple perspectives and understand the complexity of human nature. Take, for example, George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Do we feel Napoleon is fully responsible for the miserable lives the animals lead? Aren’t the other animals responsible for their own plight too, having allowed Napoleon to tyrannise them? In Literature, as in life, things aren’t always so clear cut, in black and white. And therein lies the value of the subject – it prepares one for the ambiguities of life, to take uncertainties in one’s stride.

Moreover, in Literature, students develop a sense of individuality and creativity, as they develop their own opinions about issues in their texts. They also learn skills of persuasion – they need to convince others of their interpretations, and this builds their confidence.

Students learn skills of self-management as well. A 14-year old once told me he learnt that he needed to be resilient in the face of adversity, just like the main character in his Literature text. Another student shared this piece of advice: “If you’re in a bad situation, you may think there is only one solution; but in Literature you’re always looking at different ways of answering questions, and you can apply this in life as well, to find other solutions to problems.”

Literature develops in students enduring values, such as integrity, compassion, loyalty and responsibility. For example, in a text like Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, the main character chooses to sacrifice his own life rather than betray his friends and neighbours. When considering this character’s motivations, students discuss the value of integrity. They reflect on what it takes to be a man or woman who

commands the respect of the people around them even in difficult situations. The texts students explore give them multiple opportunities to discuss and reassess their own values and beliefs. These act as a compass in life as students grow up.

So how would this subject help my child in his/ her future aspirations?

The values and skills learnt through Literature will serve students well in taking up a range of professions. This includes, among others, diplomacy and foreign relations, hospitality and tourism, engineering, legal services, education, business and healthcare.

Literature also develops in students critical and creative thinking skills, and encourages students to draw links between global and local issues. It involves negotiating with others through collaboration and effective communication. These are essential in the 21st century, as increasingly more jobs become outmoded by the development of artificial intelligence. Those who wish to remain relevant would be the ones who can accomplish what machine thinking cannot, and Literature develops just such skills.

Should my child take up Full or Elective Literature? What is the difference?

In Full Literature, students study Prose, Poetry and Drama, while in Elective Literature, students study Prose and Poetry. Both Elective and Full Literature allow students to develop literary skills, but with Full Literature, students are exposed to more texts and spend more time deepening their literary knowledge, skills, and dispositions.

How can I support my child in his/ her study of Literature?

Talking about Literature is great way to bond with your child. Try one or more of the following:

Invite your child to share the stories he or she is reading in Literature.

Use your own life stories to connect with your child’s literary texts.

Discuss world issues over dinner and ask about the connections your child sees between these issues and his or her literary texts.

Ask questions that occur to you about the texts – asking questions is a wonderful way of learning about Literature and your questions could help spark your child’s interest in his or her texts.

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Importance Of Studying Literature

Why is the study of literature important? What skills do students learn through reading literature?

Why is the study of literature important? What skills do students learn through reading literature? What is gained from reading literature and evaluating it?

When we study literature, our horizons are broadened, because we can learn about and come to understand people who are different from us. Conversely, we might discover characters or poems that we really identify with—it can be really exciting and validating to discover that your exact thoughts and feelings have also been experienced by someone else. Because of these effects, literature encourages us to be sensitive to the whole spectrum of human experience and to consider this when making decisions in our day-to-day lives. Academically, studying literature also helps us to refine our own writing skills and expand our vocabularies.

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JANETLONGCERTIFIED EDUCATOR

Literature is also a form of time travel that helps put today in context. All those apocalyptic lamentations about how "things used to be so much better" are controverted in literature of the last generation, the last century, all the way back to Shakespeare and beyond. Conversely, reading about how people lived in the past can really make you appreciate what humanity is able to accomplish and endure. In the classics, you may read about political battles, domestic abuse, prejudice and civil rights, unwanted pregnancy, binge drinking on college campuses, gangs and juvenile crime, homelessness, nationwide economic crises caused by speculation--as Solomon wrote thousands of years ago, there is nothing new under the sun. History tells us what people did; literature tells us what they were thinking.

APPROVED BY ENOTES EDITORIAL TEAM

Posted on December 4, 2012 at 5:26 PM

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AMBER LAWLERCERTIFIED EDUCATOR

Literature is important because it teaches the universal human experience. Literature provides different meanings to different people or teach different lessons to the same person at different stages of their life. However, what they all books or poems have in common - and this is the talent of a great writer - is that they capture the universal human experience. Regardless of what you learn from a book or what meaning an individual elicits from it, literature unites the reader with the universe, because there on the page is a moment, emotion, idea that they have felt or suspected, but never been able to express. .

APPROVED BY ENOTES EDITORIAL TEAM

Posted on November 28, 2012 at 8:50 PM

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WILLIAM DELANEYCERTIFIED EDUCATOR

The study of literature has a civilizing effect on people. There is an extreme danger of education being used primarily to turn out engineers, lawyers, doctors, accountants, business men and business women and other professionals who are lacking in human feelings and who have been described as educated barbarians. The great Leo Tolstoy wrote a sadly neglected book titled What is Art in which he explained, among other things, the importance of all art to human society. Here is a critical excerpt which might induce some readers to look for the book itself. (See reference link below.)

As, thanks to man's capacity to express thoughts by words, every man may know all that has been done for him in the realms of thought by all humanity before his day, and can in the present, thanks to this capacity to understand the thoughts of others, become a sharer in their activity and can himself hand on to his contemporaries and descendants the thoughts he has assimilated from others, as well as those which have arisen within himself; so, thanks to man's capacity to be infected with the feelings of others by means of art, all that is being lived through by his contemporaries is accessible to him, as well as the feelings experienced by men thousands of years ago, and he has also the possibility of transmitting his own feelings to others.

If people lacked this capacity to receive the thoughts conceived by the men who preceded them and to pass on to others their own thoughts, men would be like wild beasts, or like Kaspar Hauser.

And if men lacked this other capacity of being infected by art, people might be almost more savage still, and, above all, more separated from, and more hostile to, one another.

And therefore the activity of art is a most important one, as important as the activity of speech itself and as generally diffused.

A lot of what is offered as art in our modern world is what Tolstoy called "counterfeit art." It is totally insincere and produced mainly for money. Some of the characteristics of counterfeit art are imitation, and striking and unusual effects. In popular music it can be seen that amplified noise and screaming are substitutes for genuine feeling. Much modern painting looks like nothing more than blatant hoaxes.

Exposure to genuine art in school could conceivably help students to discriminate between real and counterfeit art, includinig real and counterfeit creative literature. If young people do not get such exposure in school--where are they going to get it when they leave school?

APPROVED BY ENOTES EDITORIAL TEAM

Posted on November 25, 2012 at 3:37 PM

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AUGUST BILLINGSLEY, PH.D.CERTIFIED EDUCATOR

I agree with all of the above discussions; but I am especially gratified to read what spearfam has written: that literature enhances our capacity to empathize.

People talk about the intellectual values of literature: critical thinking, citing evidence and so on. But, I value literature most of all for its emotional and esthetic appeal.

Empathy is emotional; sympathy, intellectual. Literature evokes such human emotions as pity and terror (Aristotle), love and compassion (A.C.Bradley) and many other epistemic virtues (i.e., virtues that help us to know the world and make it better) like honor, bravery, honesty and integrity (Ramirez). But recently, Susan Zunshine has a written a book demonstrating how the human emotion of empathy is critical in our understanding and appreciation of the novel.

Think of any great novel: Pride and Prejudice, David Copperfield, Jude the Obscure, Lady Chatterley's Lover, Passage to India, Lincoln, The Namesake --in all of these excellent novels, we need empathy to fully appreciate them.

But where do we get empathy from? Consider the odds against empathy. Even in real life we empathize with others without actually experiencing what they exprience, a hard thing to do. How much more

difficult would it be for readers to empathize with a character who is not actually going through anything! It is all fiction!

Yet we do. Prof. Zunshine says we do this because as we read our intellectual act of reading, i.e., making meaning from the text, triggers our neuro-cells "in some form of mirror effect," same as we would do in real life. However, because the novelist employs one more thing that is usually not present in real life events -- esthetics --the emotional impactof novel events (pun intended) enhance our empathy. Thus, because of our empathy we are able to not only realize the characters' emotions, we even anticipate them, Examples of what I am saying are legion, I need not give any more here.

Zunshine's book, and spearfam's reference to literature teaching us empathy, triggered this response from me.

I am grateful for your indulgance.

APPROVED BY ENOTES EDITORIAL TEAM

Posted on November 4, 2012 at 3:09 AM

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CDIVESCERTIFIED EDUCATOR

Students gain a percpetion of ife, an insight into the meaning of so many things

It is this perception and insight that makes literature worthwhile. If an individual can go beyond his or her actual experiences into literary experiences to draw upon when navigating the world, she or he will have better abilities at navigating the world.

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Posted on November 3, 2012 at 4:31 PM

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CDIVESCERTIFIED EDUCATOR

I discuss this with my students, and I put it simply:

If you can understand why characters act the way they do, you can understand why people act the way they do. If you can analyze a character and situation, you can analyze any situation in life. If you can analyze a situation, you can make a better decision. Therefore studying literature is a study of life.

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Posted on November 3, 2012 at 4:29 PM

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RUTH WILLIAMSCERTIFIED EDUCATOR

Everyone makes great points. A concise summary of reasoning would be:

Studying literature is the only way some students will ever learn about other cultures and places. This expands their horizons.

It shows them how characters think, react, and problem solve.

The process students go through as they think and analyze literature builds their ability to be critical thinkers and problem solvers.

Sometime studying literature exposes them to words and ideas that reach into their souls and change them forever.

Thus, studying literature makes the world a better place.

APPROVED BY ENOTES EDITORIAL TEAM

Posted on October 17, 2012 at 7:38 PM

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PAULINE SHEEHANCERTIFIED EDUCATOR

This is a question that high school students consistently ask as they sit through another lesson on Shakespeare or Animal Farm and so on.

Literature is the amazing tool that all the previous posts have alluded to and it gives insight into the culture of others and of other times.

How though do we convince our high school learners of this? Only upon analysis and by making comparisons do they show an interest, it seems to me. By then, however, it is too late for some student sbecause they never paid attention in the first place. Teaching technique is obviously crucial - and that's another whole discussion on its own I think. I saw a discussion post from February 2010

time periods may change, but people and society basically stay the same. The same themes that were present in the past, are still true today, and will remain in the future.

The teacher pointed out how amazed her students were when she related The Scarlett Letter to an article from 2006 when a young woman putting her baby up for adoption