Gillian Lazar Chapter 1.2

Literature and Language Teaching: A Guide for Teachers and Trainers (Hardcover, 1993, 281 pages), Gillian Lazar is a Senior Lecturer at Middlesex University, London. Prior to that, she worked as a freelance teacher trainer, lexicographer and materials writer, and she has also worked as a teacher at the British Council, Athens and teacher / teacher trainer at International House, London. She has written materials for the BBC World Service and has contributed articles to magazines and journals, including the English Language Teaching Journal, TESOL Quarterly and English Teaching Professional. She is the author of Literature and Language Teaching: A Guide for Teachers and Trainers (1993), A Window on Literature (1999) and Meanings and Metaphors (2003).

In this chapter 1.2 – What is distinctive about languages of literatures? Gillian talk about the use of literature at classroom, and identifies the problem in the understanding of literature in the classroom. With some tasks the writer teaches how to learn and analyze texts and identify if is literature or not. She show as difficult indicate features about literature texts and explain that literature not only uses the discourse of metaphor and colloquial language, but that it has its own linguistic language.

In the task 6 and 7, the teacher introduce differents types of texts and languages and leads us to decide which of the seven texts are literary or not and showing a chart using the texts and linguistic feature. In the task 8 she describe “literary language is relative rather than absolute” (LAZAR, p. 23, 1993). It is possible for a reader to have interpretation skills, but rather to use his imagination and intuition to describe literary texts.

Therefore, literary language is relative to who is reading it, and may have different forms of interpretation, and can be used for learning purposes, both linguistically and for the English language.