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9 Different Methods and Strategies in Teaching English Literature [2024]

February 23, 2024
Lesson Planning

Introductory paragraph:

Imagine stepping into a classroom filled with eager students, ready to embark on a literary journey. As an English literature teacher, you have the power to ignite their passion for reading, analysis, and critical thinking. But how do you effectively teach English literature? In this article, we will explore nine different methods and strategies that will help you create an engaging and enriching learning experience for your students. From incorporating multimedia resources to fostering discussions and debates, we will provide you with practical tips and insights to make your English literature classes come alive.

Quick answer, quick tips and facts, background: the importance of teaching english literature, method 1: using a variety of texts, method 2: incorporating multimedia resources, method 3: encouraging critical analysis and interpretation, method 4: fostering discussions and debates, method 5: integrating writing assignments, method 6: providing opportunities for creative expression, method 7: utilizing technology tools, method 8: guiding literary analysis and essay writing, method 9: creating a supportive and inclusive classroom environment.

What are the methods and strategies in teaching literature?

Teaching literature requires a combination of methods and strategies to engage students and enhance their understanding and appreciation of literary works. Some effective methods include using a variety of texts, incorporating multimedia resources, encouraging critical analysis and interpretation, fostering discussions and debates, integrating writing assignments, providing opportunities for creative expression, utilizing technology tools, guiding literary analysis and essay writing, and creating a supportive and inclusive classroom environment.

Read more about “… What are the 5 Instructional Strategies in Teaching?”

What are the methods of teaching English and literature?

The methods of teaching English and literature encompass a range of strategies that promote reading comprehension, critical thinking, and communication skills. These methods include using a variety of texts, incorporating multimedia resources, encouraging critical analysis and interpretation, fostering discussions and debates, integrating writing assignments, providing opportunities for creative expression, utilizing technology tools, guiding literary analysis and essay writing, and creating a supportive and inclusive classroom environment.

Why are methods and techniques important in teaching literature?

Methods and techniques are important in teaching literature because they help engage students, deepen their understanding of texts, and develop their critical thinking and communication skills. By using a variety of methods and techniques, teachers can cater to different learning styles, create a dynamic learning environment, and foster a love for reading and learning.

What is the best teaching method for teaching English?

There is no one-size-fits-all answer to the best teaching method for teaching English. The most effective approach depends on various factors, including the students’ age, proficiency level, and learning styles. However, a combination of methods and strategies that incorporate a variety of texts, multimedia resources, critical analysis, discussions and debates, writing assignments, creative expression, technology tools, guided analysis, and a supportive classroom environment can create a well-rounded and engaging learning experience for students.

Read more about “10 Strategies for Writing in English: Tips from the Experts …”

Teaching English literature is a rewarding and impactful endeavor. By utilizing a combination of methods and strategies, you can create an engaging and enriching learning experience for your students. From using a variety of texts to incorporating multimedia resources, encouraging critical analysis and interpretation, fostering discussions and debates, integrating writing assignments, providing opportunities for creative expression, utilizing technology tools, guiding literary analysis and essay writing, and creating a supportive and inclusive classroom environment, you have the power to ignite a lifelong love for literature in your students. So go forth, embrace these strategies, and watch your English literature classes come alive!

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Marti is a seasoned educator and strategist with a passion for fostering inclusive learning environments and empowering students through tailored educational experiences. With her roots as a university tutor—a position she landed during her undergraduate years—Marti has always been driven by the joy of facilitating others' learning journeys.

Holding a Bachelor's degree in Communication alongside a degree in Social Work, she has mastered the art of empathetic communication, enabling her to connect with students on a profound level. Marti’s unique educational background allows her to incorporate holistic approaches into her teaching, addressing not just the academic, but also the emotional and social needs of her students.

Throughout her career, Marti has developed and implemented innovative teaching strategies that cater to diverse learning styles, believing firmly that education should be accessible and engaging for all. Her work on the Teacher Strategies site encapsulates her extensive experience and dedication to education, offering readers insights into effective teaching methods, classroom management techniques, and strategies for fostering inclusive and supportive learning environments.

As an advocate for lifelong learning, Marti continuously seeks to expand her knowledge and skills, ensuring her teaching methods are both evidence-based and cutting edge. Whether through her blog articles on Teacher Strategies or her direct engagement with students, Marti remains committed to enhancing educational outcomes and inspiring the next generation of learners and educators alike.

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20 Simple Strategies for Teaching Literature

Oct 13, 2022

What do you remember reading in high school? Maybe it’s Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet ? Or perhaps it’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Poe ? I’m guessing that whatever you remember, it was good literature and you enjoyed it because your teacher utilized various strategies for teaching literature. Literature that taught you something about yourself or about life or was just such a well-written story that it’s stuck with you. Literature that had so profound an effect that you still remember it years later.

And whether you remember or not, what likely seared these stories into your memory are the strategies you learned (and still use now) for reading! These are the strategies for teaching literature we want to make sure that our students learn, practice, and develop. We want them to have an experience of literature they will remember years later, so they will continue to read beyond their middle and high school years.

These strategies for teaching literature fall into three specific categories: before reading, during reading, and after reading . Each strategy will enhance students’ understanding and enjoyment of literature.

Read on for 20 strategies for teaching literature and literary analysis that are sure to help your student year after year and story after story.

Need help with Test Prep that includes strategies for teaching literature? Check out this FREE Pack of 3 Test Prep Activities to help students achieve success on standardized tests!

Table of Contents

6 Before-Reading Strategies for Teaching Literature:

In order to prepare to read any text, including a work of literature, it’s important to have some context to inform that reading.

Review the vocabulary or major terms – Create a list of vocabulary before reading that will take some guesswork out of reading for students. This can be done with a preview of sentences or sections and creating either a teacher-selected or student-selected list of vocabulary for review. Reviewing vocabulary before reading is a first strategy for teaching literature that will help students focus on other aspects of the story.
Glance at the textual features – Looking at titles, subtitles, pictures, structure, and text length can help with reading comprehension. Check out this set of graphic organizers to review the structural elements of any text .
Give questions to guide reading – To ensure understanding and focus while reading, provide questions that are based on specific skills or standards. Consider how these questions can help with the after-reading tasks that will be required.
Offer a focus for analysis – Give students a purpose for reading that focuses their analysis on setting, theme, plot, characterization, literary devices, purpose, central idea, etc. However, keep in mind that you cannot teach everything through every text; it’s simply too much to address with one text. Instead, this is an opportunity for differentiation and possible collaboration. To make that process easier, use these literary analysis activities for multiple texts .
Make connections – Have students focus on their text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world connections. An ideal way to do this is through thematic units; check out this post with examples of how, when, and why to use thematic units .
Activate Background Knowledge – This is an opportunity to tap into students’ knowledge in ways that can promote cross-curricular learning. A pre-reading KWL (know-want to know-learn) activity is a great option as an early strategy for teaching literature.

Want help with guided reading activities that incorporate strategies for teaching literature? Click below!

8 During-Reading Strategies for Teaching Literature:

Once students begin reading a text, there are several strategies for teaching literature that you can use to support students’ understanding and engagement!

Use Graphic Organizers with a specific focus – The key is to pick a specific focus that connects to the post-reading activity. This bundle for Langston Hughes’ “Thank you Ma’am” is packed with ideal activities.
Chunk the text/1-sentence summary – While reading, break the text into smaller parts (chunks) to help with differentiation, then ask students to summarize the chunk. Make it an added challenge by requiring the summary to be a single sentence! Get these graphic organizers to differentiate one-sentence summaries for your students.
Annotate – This is my favorite! Have students annotate a portion of a text for a specific purpose. An easy way to do this is using symbols or even highlighters or color-coded sticky notes to annotate. Pink could be connections, blue for tone/mood, etc. Remember to keep the focus narrow!
Think-Aloud – This can be an extension of traditional annotation. First, teachers must model the process of reading a chunk and examining key features. Then, this could be an assignment where students complete a think-aloud in order to evaluate oral communication.
Visualize based on the text – Another option is to have students create a visual based on the text. This is an excellent opportunity to dive into imagery in a text. Use these digital organizers to examine closely the specific imagery in any text and complete a written response. To make life even easier the activity comes with a step-by-step guide to answering a short response question and writing rubric options!
Create questions – Questions can be used for reading comprehension or Socratic Seminars. These questions can be supplied by the teacher or make it student-driven with them creating questions and providing answers too!
Think-Pair-Share – This strategy is best with a focus on a specific concept where students can consider their own thinking before sharing with a partner and the whole class. Keep in mind that this activity could be done silently or out loud. Doing it silently using chart paper and some color-coded markers (each student has a different color) could encourage the quieter students in the class to engage.
Offer leveled stories – One of the final strategies for teaching literature that can help with differentiation is to use different leveled stories for different students. This will help to build understanding and confidence as students move to higher-level texts.

Want a list of 13 Must-Read Short Stories for High School Students? Click below to read!

6 After-Reading Strategies for Teaching Literature:

When your students have finished reading here, are six ideas for them to showcase their understanding of the text and its big ideas.

Answer Comprehension Questions – This might seem basic, but many students struggle with comprehension, so getting this practice is helpful before tackling larger tasks. Focus on responses using 2-3 sentences or in a quiz format, like in this option for “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Poe .
Draw the Setting, Character, Conflict, Plot – The goal of this task is to ensure students work with textual evidence. Grab this graphic organizer pack for setting that helps students examine how the author uses textual evidence to create a setting for a specific purpose.
Summarize the text – This is another opportunity to have students use evidence from the text. Students can focus on the big ideas and use textual evidence as details for support. Read all about teaching and writing summaries at this post—> Summarizing Made Easy
Participate in a Socratic Seminar – Use student questions to direct the seminar in small groups or even the whole class. And use this set of peer feedback handouts to help students evaluate each other.
Use organizers/annotations for longer writing tasks – Get students to write paragraphs or an essay using a graphic organizer. This is particularly helpful to scaffold literary analysis for students in different grades or with different skill levels. It might be that students write an introduction and body paragraph or even an introduction with a couple (or more) of body paragraphs. To help with this process, use these Literary Analysis Essay Outline Activities focused on “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Poe .
Respond to the text – Students can create an image/artwork to represent the text. Canva for Educators is a great option for this! Responses could be done audibly through the recitation of a poem, like in this “Song of Myself” analysis and poetry-writing activity that could be connected to any text . Other options include the creation of a song, a short paragraph reflection, an article, an extension of the narrative/text, etc.

Click below to get some fun activities for “Song of Myself” that use effective strategies for teaching literature!

Why is practicing these strategies for teaching literature important?

The best part of these 20 strategies for teaching literature is that they continue to be relevant, particularly the higher level the text becomes. With repeated practice, students will gain comfort in each step and this will likely shift their reading habits so they continue to read, enjoy, and learn from good literature as lifelong readers!

Need more fun lessons and activities that incorporate Strategies for Teaching Literature? Check out my store Kristin Menke-Integrated ELA Test Prep !

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The Joys of Teaching Literature

Can you remember when you fell in love with reading? Was it a book that was read to you such as Where the Wild Things Are or The Snowy Day ? Was it a book you read to yourself such as The Great Gatsby or To Kill a Mockingbird ? Whatever the book may have been, think back to that moment when reading felt less like a requirement and more like a special prize just for you.

As a teacher, I always want to realign myself with my why : Why am I teaching? My why is that moment when a student falls in love with reading, whether that love comes from a series, a specific author, or just one simple book.

My love of reading

I can remember being obsessed with reading as a child. I could never get enough of it. I remember completing the entire series of The Boxcar Children and The Baby-Sitters Club. No one could tell me I was not part of The Baby-Sitters Club! In my mind, I was an official member.

As I got older, I became the high school student who preferred to spend my free time reading rather than hanging out with friends. I worked in a bookstore because, in my adolescent mind, that was the dream job. I ended up spending most of my paycheck there.

I was also the high school student who looked forward to the required readings. There wasn’t a book I was required to read that I didn’t love. Well...except Beowulf . I struggled with Beowulf for many reasons, mainly because it was difficult for me to comprehend. I spent so much time trying to comprehend what I was reading that I was left with little time to enjoy the actual art of storytelling.

Little did I know that would be my first encounter with one of the reasons students have a hard time finding the joy in reading. Many years later, as an adult studying to become an educator, I reflected on my encounter with Beowulf , and it was then that I realized even though it wasn’t enjoyable, I was able to overcome it and still find joy because I was already invested in the joy that comes from reading. The many years I’d spent enjoying other books gave me the power to continue to enjoy reading even though Beowulf wasn’t enjoyable for me at all. It was at that moment that I vowed that I would help my students capture that invested joy for reading as soon as they entered my classroom.

Finding and creating joy

So how do you find and create that joy for your students? There are so many ways it can be done: book talks, read-alouds, and author studies to name a few. Each of these techniques appeals to students differently. In my classroom, book talks are just that; we all read the same book and then just talk about it. There’s no task or assignment that needs to be completed, just good old fashion conversation. I learn so much about my students through these conversations, not only their understanding of the book but also insights into them as a reader.

Interactive read-alouds are another great way to build a love of reading. They allow me to steer and guide the conversation in an intentional and purposeful manner. I can get in much needed content and skill while also exciting my students about reading. My students enjoy the book without the worry of decoding or getting the right answer. They can listen to the story and analyze via discussion. I love the moment when the classroom is alive with a buzz about one single book and listening to students think out loud and question not only the characters in the book but also each other. That’s the joy!

Author studies are another great idea for creating a love for reading. Every year, I choose a few authors, and we spend about a week reading books by only that author. It’s great to see the students go to the school or public library and come back to show you the books they have checked out by that author. Another moment of joy occurs not only for me but also for the students when they all gather together to look at a book they found by that particular author or when they swap books with each other because they think their classmate might like the book that they read.

I often wish I could bottle up these moments and send them home with each student. I want every student who steps into my classroom to be able to leave with at least one joyful reading moment, a lasting memory when they can remember enjoying a piece of literature. I want them to remember that reading is more than just reading to answer questions about the text. It is also—dare I say— fun .

Adrienne Lynch is an elementary teacher in Tampa, FL. She has been in the classroom for 10 years. She graduated from the University of South Florida with a degree in elementary education. She is also certified in teaching students with exceptionalities and is endorsed in reading and English as a second language. Her passion is all things literacy and learning. She shares her experiences on Instagram @learningwithlynch.

This post is a companion piece to the July/August/September issue of Literacy Today , ILA’s member magazine, which focuses on the theme of Joy in Literacy Instruction.

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Teaching literary analysis in middle school.

My literary analysis resources have basically been seven or eight years in the making.

I don’t know about you, but when I first realized I needed to be teaching literary analysis to a bunch of twelve and thirteen year-olds, I didn’t even know where to begin.

I had been teaching upper elementary in the three years prior, and we had done some on-demand literary analysis reading responses, but really digging into a literary analysis essay overwhelmed me.

Truth be told, my teaching strengths at the time were primarily reading and math. I had always had to dig deep to find my writing teacher voice.

But, I was now a seventh and eighth grade ELA teacher who could no longer hope her students picked up some writing skills along the way.

So I did what any good teacher would do…. I Googled how to teach…

I think I Googled something like, “Examples of middle school literary analysis essays.”

Nothing showed up in Google.

Then I Googled, “How do you teach literary analysis essays?”

I was able to find an example of a college-level literary analysis essay…

… and that was about it.

Because I couldn’t really find what I was looking for, I began creating and practicing each step of the literary analysis essay before I taught it.

This also created a ton of exemplars for my students.

I broke down each area of a literary analysis essay into lessons, chunks, chart papers, reference materials, and writing examples.

In the beginning, it was to get my brain wrapped around things, but not surprisingly it was exactly what my students needed too.

I literally learned how to write a literary analysis essay in front of them.

I would type my rough drafts as they were working and I could stop them as I came to struggles.

My mini-lessons were based on challenges I was having and again, not surprisingly the same challenges they were having.

I could also make reference pages (like the ones in your freebie) as we went along in the unit, because I could see what terms and concepts they needed constant reminders and help with.

Want to know what happened?

My student’s ELA proficiency scores increased 45% in one year and almost 70% in just two years. Those are not typos.

>> CLICK HERE << to download the FREE Literary Analysis Reference Booklet.

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12 Strategies For Teaching Literature In The 21st-Century

From affording choice to anchoring year-long discussion of certain themes, here are strategies for teaching literature in the 21st century.

What Are The Best Strategies For Teaching Literature In The 21st Century?

by Terry Heick

How can you teach Shakespeare to students accustomed to tiny screens with brief flashes of communication that instantly fade away (both in meaning endurance and visible text)? Begin by focusing on meaning.

The context and need here are clear enough to jump right into the strategies.

1. Use combinations of media –classic and modern together, leveraging one against the other. Music, video streams, short videos (like TikTok), video games, plays, poems, film, posters, poems, essays, novels, podcasts, etc.

2. Have students analyze diverse media forms for their strengths and weaknesses–and involve both classic and digital forms.

3. Have students turn essays into videos into podcasts into letters into simply-coded games into poems into apps. (See also #7.)

4. Allow students to choose media while you choose themes and/or academic and/or quality standards.

5. When designing units, choose the media first , then the standards (yes, this likely goes against what you were taught–but give it a try).

6. Insist all student work ‘leaves the classroom’ and is published–then design units accordingly.

7. Use RAFT: Role, Audience, Format, and Topic/Tone/Theme. Then have them revise media in response to new roles, audiences, formats, or topics, tones, or themes. Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream Speech” in a new format (a video?), or to a new audience (modern hip-hop artists?), or with a new tone (angry?). Students experimenting here are experimenting with media design, which is exactly what authors do.

8. Use a thematic focus to design units, assessments, project-based learning–whatever activities students ‘touch.’ One of the hallmark characteristics of classic literature is that it endures. This is, in part, due to the timelessness of the human condition. Love lost, coming of age, overcoming obstacles, civil rights, identity, and more are all at the core of the greatest of literary works.

The ability to the texts to nail these conditions gives them their ability to endure, so teach through that. The author (e.g., Shakespeare) or media form (e.g., a play) may not seem relevant to a student–and that’s okay. The author chose that form based on prevailing local technology. Help them focus on what is being said and why–and how.

9. Use tools for digital text annotation on pdfs, note-sharing, and more to help students mark text, document questions and insights, and revisit thinking or collaborate with others during the reading of classic texts.

10. Create social media-based reading clubs. Establish a hashtag that anchors year-long discussion of certain themes , authors, text, or whatever other category/topic that makes sense for your curriculum.

11. Have students create and produce an ongoing podcast or YouTube channel on, as above, relevant themes, authors, texts, etc.

12. Connect the old with the new in authentic ways to center the knowledge demands of modern readers.

12 Strategies For Teaching Literature In The 21st Century

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9 Approaches to Teaching Literature

by Keith Bergstrom

If you ask a dozen teachers the best way to teach their favorite book, you're likely to get at least two dozen answers. That's what makes literature magical—the books we teach in our classrooms have so much depth to them that every time we approach them, we can explore a new angle and learn more.

To help inspire you to take a look at the books you're teaching in a new light, we've compiled nine of our favorite ways to approach a book.

1. Reading for Plot and Comprehension

This might not be the most exciting approach to reading, but comprehension is the first step toward any deeper understanding. When you approach any book as a class, it's always worth making sure that students are at least able to identify what happened in any passage before exploring the text at a deeper level. You'd be surprised at how many "Aha! moments" will happen for your students after spending just a few minutes discussing basic plot events.

For classes that are struggling with comprehension, reading in class, either aloud as a group or silently with an audio recording, can be very helpful.

Resources for helping students understand plot:

Teaching Units
Shakespeare Side by Sides
LitPlan Teacher Packs

2. Reading for Theme

While comprehension is a necessary first step, looking at the intent, purpose, or meaning of the book is also essential. One of the best places to start is the theme, or the central topic that a text covers. Every book that has one—not all do—develops its theme differently, so organizing your curriculum around books with similar themes can be a great way to tie it together. Try looking at the different treatments of the American Dream in A Raisin in the Sun and The Great Gatsby or examining coming-of-age themes in The Glass Castle and To Kill a Mockingbird .

Resources to help with reading for theme:

AP Literature Teaching Units

3. Reading for Author's Craft

One of the most rewarding ways to explore a book is through a close reading of the text to examine not only what the story means, but how the author communicates that meaning. Is the novel exciting? What makes it exciting? Why do we laugh where we do? How does the author manage to make the main character likable even though he or she has some serious flaws? A close reading is a deep investigation of the patterns in a book and of the techniques the author uses, from word choice and syntax to rhetorical devices and symbolism.

A great way to get started with this type of reading is to break down a poem, which is usually more densely packed than a novel, or take a look at a couple of key passages from a longer work. It takes more time to really dig into a book this way, but the rewards can be remarkable.

Resources for approaching author's craft:

4. Approaching Literary Theories

While it's common to think of literary theories as the realm of college or graduate students, you'd be surprised how powerful a lesson based on literary theory can be for high school students or reluctant readers who tend to tune out during more traditional studies of literature. Looking at a story from a feminist or archetypal angle or focusing on social class struggles within the text can make books come to life for many students.

Resources for teaching literary theory:

Multiple Critical Perspectives Guides

5. Using Bloom's Taxonomy

Benjamin Bloom, an educational theorist, developed models for understanding the ways that students learn. By using these models, you can help classes progress from a rudimentary understanding of the basic language being used all the way up to synthesizing multiple sources and developing their own original analysis of the text. If you're looking for ways to tie together a variety of approaches in a way that support different learning objectives, Bloom's model will help.

Resources to help with using Bloom's Taxonomy:

Levels of Understanding Guides

6. Response Journaling

Writing about literature doesn't always have to be a formal process in which the goal is the typical five-paragraph essay. With response journaling, students are encouraged to write about what they're reading and draw personal connections to their own lives. Whether they're describing how the book makes them feel, conveying how they'd react in a similar situation or recreating events from their own lives that are similar to those in a book, journaling can help. Journaling also encourages regular writing practice, helps students build personal connections to literature, and gives classes fun writing practice on a regular basis.

Resources to help with response journaling:

Response Journals

7. Reading for Vocabulary

Sure, a strong vocabulary can help reading comprehension, but active reading is also essential to building vocabulary. By using the books you're teaching in class as a source of vocabulary words, you can give your classes relevant words in authentic contexts and teach your students to use context clues to figure out the meanings on their own.

Resources for using literature to build vocabulary:

Vocabulary from Literature

8. Working with Groups

Reading often feels like a solitary activity, so getting students to work together on projects—whether it's completing a graphic organizer, putting together a skit, or developing a poster—will help them talk amongst themselves about what they're reading. They'll learn about other people's opinions on the books and help each other get the most out of what's being read.

Resources for working with groups:

Activity Packs

9. Reading for Fun

Never forget that every author who has ever put pen to paper did so for his or her book to be enjoyed. Sometimes it's worth just asking your students to curl up on the couch with a cup of cocoa and read a great story.

None of these methods are mutually exclusive, and the best teachers tend to use more than one through the course of a particular unit or throughout the year.

What methods of literature instruction work best in your classroom? Do you have a favorite that we missed? Let us know on Facebook !

From fostering a lifelong love of reading to expanding their worldview, literature has the power to transform your students for the better. Tackle the challenges of teaching literature with our huge collection of resources, from discounted paperbacks to focused lesson plans!

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The Importance of Teaching English Through The Use of Literature

One of the most effective ways to teach a foreign language is by using literature. In this article you will get a few tips on how to do it.

With the advancement of information technology, the teaching of a foreign language changes fast, not just for the tools we have at our disposal, but also for our perception of it.

Teaching English follows a more and more utilitarian path (people learn English mostly for job-related purposes) yet as educators, I think we should pursue a higher scope: teaching values to our students and help them to become better people, especially when we work with juniors.

Literature is full of good and bad examples that can help us to inspire our students while teaching English, and if you want to start digging this topic deeper, we produced a very interesting webinar about Getting Started with Teaching Literacy .

EFL Teachers mainly focus on the development of their students’ skills according to what society demands, and as a consequence, we are forgetting about literature. Yet if you think about the past, books are what inspired people: children used to play the 3 Mosqueteers and learned from a young age how to work in team, and Scientist started to work on inventing submarines and rockets to go to the Moon because they first read Jule Vernes’ novels.

Length of the text

It would be manageable for students as well as teachers to select text shorter length.

Literature can make the teaching of a language more fun. It helps us to talk about grammar and sentences with our students in an interactive way. We can talk about interesting topics, incourage our students to express their points of view and introduce controversial topics and more in depth topics, like Translations.

In this article, I am writing a small guide for you, on how to start introducing Literature to your classes. There are several steps that I think every teacher should keep in mind before starting to teach literature in order to add a sparkle in their classes, otherwise, learning about literature could be an overwhelming experience and have the opposite effect.

Select the right text

Selecting the right text for the students is the most important, yet most overlooked step.

The text should be engaging for the students, and this depends more on our class than on the Author. What 10 years olds find interesting is very different than what is interesting for 17 years olds, and again, adults have a completely different sensitivity than teenagers.

There is not a text that fits all the purposes. We will have to choose the right one according to our students.

A text that is too short might fail to involve the students, but one that is too long could be boring or difficult to follow. Also, keep in mind that everyone has a different approach to reading and the topic selected makes a big difference.

For example (and I am simplifying) if boys are attracted by gruesome adventures and girls like love stories, that means that one part of our students will be more engaged while another part will be bored.

There is not much we can do about that, but if the text is not too long, even the ones who don’t like it won’t mind it, because they will pfeel that it will end soon.

That being said, I find that the novel Frankenstein – The Modern Prometheus is always a safe choice and of secure success, because it has components that both boys and girls like, and it can be appreciated at any age.

Culture friendly text

There is no need for the text chosen to be a classic written by a British author. We can use any text that we find appropriate and engaging for our students, and that means that it can come from anywhere in the world and translated, it can be written by a living Author or thousands year old.

The context, though, is important.

For example, one of my favourite choices is One Thousand and One Nights , because it is a collection of very different stories, and although it has been developed during many centuries, it continues suscitating high interests among students.

Yet it brings a series of difficulties for the students and the teacher as well. The topics of the stories are not always friendly, and I don’t mean just the fact that in the past, people had other sensitivity in perceiving things like death and sex, but there are elements (wizards, fairies, demons, jobs, aspects of life) of an ancient culture that might be more difficult to explain to students from certain countries, compared to others, and will require an extra effort for the teacher.

Selecting the right story to talk about during the class is something very important in order to have the focus the attention of the students on what they understand, rather than in what they are not understanding.

Previously, (I am talking for Pakistan, where I am originally from, but this applies to the most of the countries) the traditional method of teaching followed by teachers of foreign or second language was to focus only on vocabulary, grammar rules, and paragraph development.

This method was boring and based on cramming. Students had acquired knowledge of different grammar rules but they were not able to use these rules in real situation.

Now, this system has changed, teachers are now exploring different methods to teach students effectively.

There are different theories related to learning a language through literature. Here I focus on the Socio-cultural theory of learning, because I feel is the most effective. Its main focus is on the learning of language in the context of culture.

The socio-cultural theory suggests that learning is something social. According to this theory, people learn different skills and follow certain practices within the community. The same can be applied to language learning: students can only learn a language properly if they are involved with the target culture.

Using translations and reductions

Literature should be a positive experience for our students. For this reason, I think we shouldn’t use the original works when we are reading an Author who lived long time ago.

The language is alive, and that means that the English Shakespeare used is another language compared to what English is now.

Reading the original Amleth would just be a torture for our students and a missed opportunity for us, while reading it in modern English, and maybe a simplified version done for students can give us immense opportunities to talk about the story, the motivation of the characters how relevant for modern society this work still is.

Language and culture

Sometimes it is not possible for teachers to arrange meetings for their students with native speakers to learn their culture. Teaching literature can help them to partly solve this issue.

As language and culture are intertwined, learning any language implies also learning about a new culture.

Literature is the reflection of life. Writers write about their society and culture in different literary pieces. Any piece of literature can help students to learn the culture of that very language. This will help students to take interest in the target language and they will be able to communicate accordingly in different situations. This will be elaborated on through different examples.

An example of how to use literature in English classes

A piece of literature is very helpful for learning English. If we look at the work of 19 TH century Novelist Thomas Hardy , in the novel The Mayor of Casterbridge , he has depicted the society of the 19 th century.

By reading this novel, our students will know an interesting story and at the same time learn about different aspects of society, the differences with the modern world and the problems that we still have.

The depiction of different characters like Michael Hencherd, Donald Farfrea and the character of a Lady Lucetta Templeman, can guide students in using the English language eloquently, as, these characters are designed to represent a specific class of people.

In a similar way, students find unexpected terminology and sentence structure that is more complex than the expressly made texts for English students. Students feel challenged and have a personal interest in understanding, therefore, they will commit more.

Learning idiomatic expressions through literature

Literature helps fixing vocabulary through the use of figurative images, and helps students to understand the meaning of idiomatic expressions.

For example, let’s take the Iliad an epic work supposedly composed by Greek poet Homer and translated in English in the 17 TH century by the poet-critic, John Dryden .

From that work comes the expression Achilles Heel , that means Weakness or Weak point in many languages.

Without knowing the story behind this expression, it would be difficult to remember it and use it correctly, and it would be soon forgotten.

Learning proverbs with literature

Proverbs are an interesting and fun way to learn a language and discover the culture behind it.

Most of the proverbs in a language come from popular wisdom or pieces of literature (dialogues and monologues) that became so popular that reached another level.

Through learning these proverbs, students can make their language more effective.

Christopher Marlowe

Hell is just a frame of mind
Fools that will laugh on earth, most weep in hell
What nourishes me destroys me

Charles Dickens

It was the best of time, it was the worse of time
What greater gift than the love of a cat

Lionel Trilling

On the teaching of modern literature.

First published as “On the Modern Element in Modern Literature.” Partisan Review , January-February 1961.

And since my own interests lead me to see literary situations as cultural situations, and cultural situations as great elaborate fights about moral issues, and moral issues as having something to do with gratuitously chosen images of personal being, and images of personal being as having something to do with literary style, I felt free to begin with what for me was a first concern, the animus of the author, the objects of his will, the things he wants or wants to have happen.

Online: Google Books - essay in The Moral Obligation to be Intelligent Boston University - Partisan Review archive - first published version (caveat: archival error)

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How to write a literary analysis essay | A step-by-step guide

How to Write a Literary Analysis Essay | A Step-by-Step Guide

Published on January 30, 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on August 14, 2023.

Literary analysis means closely studying a text, interpreting its meanings, and exploring why the author made certain choices. It can be applied to novels, short stories, plays, poems, or any other form of literary writing.

A literary analysis essay is not a rhetorical analysis , nor is it just a summary of the plot or a book review. Instead, it is a type of argumentative essay where you need to analyze elements such as the language, perspective, and structure of the text, and explain how the author uses literary devices to create effects and convey ideas.

Before beginning a literary analysis essay, it’s essential to carefully read the text and c ome up with a thesis statement to keep your essay focused. As you write, follow the standard structure of an academic essay :

An introduction that tells the reader what your essay will focus on.
A main body, divided into paragraphs , that builds an argument using evidence from the text.
A conclusion that clearly states the main point that you have shown with your analysis.

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Step 1: reading the text and identifying literary devices, step 2: coming up with a thesis, step 3: writing a title and introduction, step 4: writing the body of the essay, step 5: writing a conclusion, other interesting articles.

The first step is to carefully read the text(s) and take initial notes. As you read, pay attention to the things that are most intriguing, surprising, or even confusing in the writing—these are things you can dig into in your analysis.

Your goal in literary analysis is not simply to explain the events described in the text, but to analyze the writing itself and discuss how the text works on a deeper level. Primarily, you’re looking out for literary devices —textual elements that writers use to convey meaning and create effects. If you’re comparing and contrasting multiple texts, you can also look for connections between different texts.

To get started with your analysis, there are several key areas that you can focus on. As you analyze each aspect of the text, try to think about how they all relate to each other. You can use highlights or notes to keep track of important passages and quotes.

Language choices

Consider what style of language the author uses. Are the sentences short and simple or more complex and poetic?

What word choices stand out as interesting or unusual? Are words used figuratively to mean something other than their literal definition? Figurative language includes things like metaphor (e.g. “her eyes were oceans”) and simile (e.g. “her eyes were like oceans”).

Also keep an eye out for imagery in the text—recurring images that create a certain atmosphere or symbolize something important. Remember that language is used in literary texts to say more than it means on the surface.

Narrative voice

Ask yourself:

Who is telling the story?
How are they telling it?

Is it a first-person narrator (“I”) who is personally involved in the story, or a third-person narrator who tells us about the characters from a distance?

Consider the narrator’s perspective . Is the narrator omniscient (where they know everything about all the characters and events), or do they only have partial knowledge? Are they an unreliable narrator who we are not supposed to take at face value? Authors often hint that their narrator might be giving us a distorted or dishonest version of events.

The tone of the text is also worth considering. Is the story intended to be comic, tragic, or something else? Are usually serious topics treated as funny, or vice versa ? Is the story realistic or fantastical (or somewhere in between)?

Consider how the text is structured, and how the structure relates to the story being told.

Novels are often divided into chapters and parts.
Poems are divided into lines, stanzas, and sometime cantos.
Plays are divided into scenes and acts.

Think about why the author chose to divide the different parts of the text in the way they did.

There are also less formal structural elements to take into account. Does the story unfold in chronological order, or does it jump back and forth in time? Does it begin in medias res —in the middle of the action? Does the plot advance towards a clearly defined climax?

With poetry, consider how the rhyme and meter shape your understanding of the text and your impression of the tone. Try reading the poem aloud to get a sense of this.

In a play, you might consider how relationships between characters are built up through different scenes, and how the setting relates to the action. Watch out for dramatic irony , where the audience knows some detail that the characters don’t, creating a double meaning in their words, thoughts, or actions.

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Your thesis in a literary analysis essay is the point you want to make about the text. It’s the core argument that gives your essay direction and prevents it from just being a collection of random observations about a text.

If you’re given a prompt for your essay, your thesis must answer or relate to the prompt. For example:

Essay question example

Is Franz Kafka’s “Before the Law” a religious parable?

Your thesis statement should be an answer to this question—not a simple yes or no, but a statement of why this is or isn’t the case:

Thesis statement example

Franz Kafka’s “Before the Law” is not a religious parable, but a story about bureaucratic alienation.

Sometimes you’ll be given freedom to choose your own topic; in this case, you’ll have to come up with an original thesis. Consider what stood out to you in the text; ask yourself questions about the elements that interested you, and consider how you might answer them.

Your thesis should be something arguable—that is, something that you think is true about the text, but which is not a simple matter of fact. It must be complex enough to develop through evidence and arguments across the course of your essay.

Say you’re analyzing the novel Frankenstein . You could start by asking yourself:

Your initial answer might be a surface-level description:

The character Frankenstein is portrayed negatively in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein .

However, this statement is too simple to be an interesting thesis. After reading the text and analyzing its narrative voice and structure, you can develop the answer into a more nuanced and arguable thesis statement:

Mary Shelley uses shifting narrative perspectives to portray Frankenstein in an increasingly negative light as the novel goes on. While he initially appears to be a naive but sympathetic idealist, after the creature’s narrative Frankenstein begins to resemble—even in his own telling—the thoughtlessly cruel figure the creature represents him as.

Remember that you can revise your thesis statement throughout the writing process , so it doesn’t need to be perfectly formulated at this stage. The aim is to keep you focused as you analyze the text.

Finding textual evidence

To support your thesis statement, your essay will build an argument using textual evidence —specific parts of the text that demonstrate your point. This evidence is quoted and analyzed throughout your essay to explain your argument to the reader.

It can be useful to comb through the text in search of relevant quotations before you start writing. You might not end up using everything you find, and you may have to return to the text for more evidence as you write, but collecting textual evidence from the beginning will help you to structure your arguments and assess whether they’re convincing.

To start your literary analysis paper, you’ll need two things: a good title, and an introduction.

Your title should clearly indicate what your analysis will focus on. It usually contains the name of the author and text(s) you’re analyzing. Keep it as concise and engaging as possible.

A common approach to the title is to use a relevant quote from the text, followed by a colon and then the rest of your title.

If you struggle to come up with a good title at first, don’t worry—this will be easier once you’ve begun writing the essay and have a better sense of your arguments.

“Fearful symmetry” : The violence of creation in William Blake’s “The Tyger”

The introduction

The essay introduction provides a quick overview of where your argument is going. It should include your thesis statement and a summary of the essay’s structure.

A typical structure for an introduction is to begin with a general statement about the text and author, using this to lead into your thesis statement. You might refer to a commonly held idea about the text and show how your thesis will contradict it, or zoom in on a particular device you intend to focus on.

Then you can end with a brief indication of what’s coming up in the main body of the essay. This is called signposting. It will be more elaborate in longer essays, but in a short five-paragraph essay structure, it shouldn’t be more than one sentence.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is often read as a crude cautionary tale about the dangers of scientific advancement unrestrained by ethical considerations. In this reading, protagonist Victor Frankenstein is a stable representation of the callous ambition of modern science throughout the novel. This essay, however, argues that far from providing a stable image of the character, Shelley uses shifting narrative perspectives to portray Frankenstein in an increasingly negative light as the novel goes on. While he initially appears to be a naive but sympathetic idealist, after the creature’s narrative Frankenstein begins to resemble—even in his own telling—the thoughtlessly cruel figure the creature represents him as. This essay begins by exploring the positive portrayal of Frankenstein in the first volume, then moves on to the creature’s perception of him, and finally discusses the third volume’s narrative shift toward viewing Frankenstein as the creature views him.

Some students prefer to write the introduction later in the process, and it’s not a bad idea. After all, you’ll have a clearer idea of the overall shape of your arguments once you’ve begun writing them!

If you do write the introduction first, you should still return to it later to make sure it lines up with what you ended up writing, and edit as necessary.

The body of your essay is everything between the introduction and conclusion. It contains your arguments and the textual evidence that supports them.

Paragraph structure

A typical structure for a high school literary analysis essay consists of five paragraphs : the three paragraphs of the body, plus the introduction and conclusion.

Each paragraph in the main body should focus on one topic. In the five-paragraph model, try to divide your argument into three main areas of analysis, all linked to your thesis. Don’t try to include everything you can think of to say about the text—only analysis that drives your argument.

In longer essays, the same principle applies on a broader scale. For example, you might have two or three sections in your main body, each with multiple paragraphs. Within these sections, you still want to begin new paragraphs at logical moments—a turn in the argument or the introduction of a new idea.

Robert’s first encounter with Gil-Martin suggests something of his sinister power. Robert feels “a sort of invisible power that drew me towards him.” He identifies the moment of their meeting as “the beginning of a series of adventures which has puzzled myself, and will puzzle the world when I am no more in it” (p. 89). Gil-Martin’s “invisible power” seems to be at work even at this distance from the moment described; before continuing the story, Robert feels compelled to anticipate at length what readers will make of his narrative after his approaching death. With this interjection, Hogg emphasizes the fatal influence Gil-Martin exercises from his first appearance.

Topic sentences

To keep your points focused, it’s important to use a topic sentence at the beginning of each paragraph.

A good topic sentence allows a reader to see at a glance what the paragraph is about. It can introduce a new line of argument and connect or contrast it with the previous paragraph. Transition words like “however” or “moreover” are useful for creating smooth transitions:

… The story’s focus, therefore, is not upon the divine revelation that may be waiting beyond the door, but upon the mundane process of aging undergone by the man as he waits.

Nevertheless, the “radiance” that appears to stream from the door is typically treated as religious symbolism.

This topic sentence signals that the paragraph will address the question of religious symbolism, while the linking word “nevertheless” points out a contrast with the previous paragraph’s conclusion.

Using textual evidence

A key part of literary analysis is backing up your arguments with relevant evidence from the text. This involves introducing quotes from the text and explaining their significance to your point.

It’s important to contextualize quotes and explain why you’re using them; they should be properly introduced and analyzed, not treated as self-explanatory:

It isn’t always necessary to use a quote. Quoting is useful when you’re discussing the author’s language, but sometimes you’ll have to refer to plot points or structural elements that can’t be captured in a short quote.

In these cases, it’s more appropriate to paraphrase or summarize parts of the text—that is, to describe the relevant part in your own words:

The conclusion of your analysis shouldn’t introduce any new quotations or arguments. Instead, it’s about wrapping up the essay. Here, you summarize your key points and try to emphasize their significance to the reader.

A good way to approach this is to briefly summarize your key arguments, and then stress the conclusion they’ve led you to, highlighting the new perspective your thesis provides on the text as a whole:

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

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By tracing the depiction of Frankenstein through the novel’s three volumes, I have demonstrated how the narrative structure shifts our perception of the character. While the Frankenstein of the first volume is depicted as having innocent intentions, the second and third volumes—first in the creature’s accusatory voice, and then in his own voice—increasingly undermine him, causing him to appear alternately ridiculous and vindictive. Far from the one-dimensional villain he is often taken to be, the character of Frankenstein is compelling because of the dynamic narrative frame in which he is placed. In this frame, Frankenstein’s narrative self-presentation responds to the images of him we see from others’ perspectives. This conclusion sheds new light on the novel, foregrounding Shelley’s unique layering of narrative perspectives and its importance for the depiction of character.

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A Review of the Literature on Teacher Effectiveness and Student Outcomes

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First Online: 24 May 2019

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Nathan Burroughs 25 ,
Jacqueline Gardner 26 ,
Youngjun Lee 27 ,
Siwen Guo 28 ,
Israel Touitou 29 ,
Kimberly Jansen 30 &
William Schmidt 31

Part of the book series: IEA Research for Education ((IEAR,volume 6))

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Researchers agree that teachers are one of the most important school-based resources in determining students’ future academic success and lifetime outcomes, yet have simultaneously had difficulties in defining what teacher characteristics make for an effective teacher. This chapter reviews the large body of literature on measures of teacher effectiveness, underscoring the diversity of methods by which the general construct of “teacher quality” has been explored, including experience, professional knowledge, and opportunity to learn. Each of these concepts comprises a number of different dimensions and methods of operationalizing. Single-country research (and particularly research from the United States) is distinguished from genuinely comparative work. Despite a voluminous research literature on the question of teacher quality, evidence for the impact of teacher characteristics (experience and professional knowledge) on student outcomes remains quite limited. There is a smaller, but more robust set of findings for the effect of teacher support on opportunity to learn. Five measures may be associated with higher student achievement: teacher experience (measured by years of teaching), teacher professional knowledge (measured by education and self-reported preparation to teach mathematics), and teacher provision of opportunity to learn (measured by time on mathematics and content coverage). These factors provide the basis for a comparative cross-country model.

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Opportunity to learn
Teacher education
Teacher experience
Teacher quality
Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS)

2.1 Defining Teacher Effectiveness

Researchers agree that teachers are one of the most important school-based resources in determining students’ future academic success and lifetime outcomes (Chetty et al. 2014 ; Rivkin et al. 2005 ; Rockoff 2004 ). As a consequence, there has been a strong emphasis on improving teacher effectiveness as a means to enhancing student learning. Goe ( 2007 ), among others, defined teacher effectiveness in terms of growth in student learning, typically measured by student standardized assessment results. Chetty et al. ( 2014 ) found that students taught by highly effective teachers, as defined by the student growth percentile (SGPs) and value-added measures (VAMs), were more likely to attend college, earn more, live in higher-income neighborhoods, save more money for retirement, and were less likely to have children during their teenage years. This potential of a highly effective teacher to significantly enhance the lives of their students makes it essential that researchers and policymakers properly understand the factors that contribute to a teacher’s effectiveness. However, as we will discuss in more detail later in this report, studies have found mixed results regarding the relationships between specific teacher characteristics and student achievement (Wayne and Youngs 2003 ). In this chapter, we explore these findings, focusing on the three main categories of teacher effectiveness identified and examined in the research literature: namely, teacher experience, teacher knowledge, and teacher behavior. Here we emphasize that much of the existing body of research is based on studies from the United States, and so the applicability of such national research to other contexts remains open to discussion.

2.2 Teacher Experience

Teacher experience refers to the number of years that a teacher has worked as a classroom teacher. Many studies show a positive relationship between teacher experiences and student achievement (Wayne and Youngs 2003 ). For example, using data from 4000 teachers in North Carolina, researchers found that teacher experience was positively related to student achievement in both reading and mathematics (Clotfelter et al. 2006 ). Rice ( 2003 ) found that the relationship between teacher experience and student achievement was most pronounced for students at the secondary level. Additional work in schools in the United States by Wiswall ( 2013 ), Papay and Kraft ( 2015 ), and Ladd and Sorenson ( 2017 ), and a Dutch twin study by Gerritsen et al. ( 2014 ), also indicated that teacher experience had a cumulative effect on student outcomes.

Meanwhile, other studies have failed to identify consistent and statistically significant associations between student achievement and teacher experience (Blomeke et al. 2016 ; Gustaffsson and Nilson 2016 ; Hanushek and Luque 2003 ; Luschei and Chudgar 2011 ; Wilson and Floden 2003 ). Some research from the United States has indicated that experience matters very much early on in a teacher’s career, but that, in later years, there were little to no additional gains (Boyd et al. 2006 ; Rivkin et al. 2005 ; Staiger and Rockoff 2010 ). In the first few years of a teacher’s career, accruing more years of experience seems to be more strongly related to student achievement (Rice 2003 ). Rockoff ( 2004 ) found that, when comparing teacher effectiveness (understood as value-added) to student test scores in reading and mathematics, teacher experience was positively related to student mathematics achievement; however, such positive relationships leveled off after teachers had gained two years of teaching experience. Drawing on data collected from teachers of grades four to eight between 2000 and 2008 within a large urban school district in the United States, Papay and Kraft ( 2015 ) confirmed previous research on the benefits experience can add to a novice teacher’s career. They found that student outcomes increased most rapidly during their teachers’ first few years of employment. They also found some further student gains due to additional years of teaching experience beyond the first five years. The research of Pil and Leana ( 2009 ) adds additional nuance; they found that acquiring teacher experience at the same grade level over a number of years, not just teacher experience in general (i.e. at multiple grades), was positively related to student achievement.

2.3 Teacher Professional Knowledge

A teacher’s professional knowledge refers to their subject-matter knowledge, curricular knowledge, and pedagogical knowledge (Collinson 1999 ). This professional knowledge is influenced by the undergraduate degrees earned by a teacher, the college attended, graduate studies undertaken, and opportunities to engage with on-the job training, commonly referred to as professional development (Collinson 1999 ; Rice 2003 ; Wayne and Youngs 2003 ). After undertaking in-depth quantitative analyses of the United States’ 1993–1994 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) and National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) data sets, Darling-Hammond ( 2000 ) argued that measures of teacher preparation and certification were by far the strongest correlates of student achievement in reading and mathematics, after controlling for student poverty levels and language status.

As with experience, research on the impact of teacher advanced degrees, subject specializations, and certification has been inconclusive, with several studies (Aaronson et al. 2007 ; Blomeke et al. 2016 ; Hanushek and Luque 2003 ; Harris and Sass 2011 ; Luschei and Chudgar 2011 ) suggesting weak, inconsistent, or non-significant relationships with student achievement. However, several international studies comparing country means found that teacher degrees (Akiba et al. 2007 ; Gustaffsson and Nilson 2016 ; Montt 2011 ) were related to student outcomes, as did Woessman’s ( 2003 ) student-level study of multiple countries.

2.3.1 Undergraduate Education

In their meta-analysis of teacher effectiveness, Wayne and Youngs ( 2003 ) found three studies that showed some relationship between the quality of the undergraduate institution that a teacher attended and their future students’ success in standardized tests. In a thorough review of the research on teacher effectiveness attributes, Rice ( 2003 ) found that the selectivity of undergraduate institution and the teacher preparation program may be related to student achievement for students at the high school level and for high-poverty students.

In terms of teacher preparation programs, Boyd et al. ( 2009 ) found that overall these programs varied in their effectiveness. In their study of 31 teacher preparation programs designed to prepare teachers for the New York City School District, Boyd et al. ( 2009 ) drew from data based on document analyses, interviews, surveys of teacher preparation instructors, surveys of participants and graduates, and student value-added scores. They found that if a program was effective in preparing teachers to teach one subject, it tended to also have success in preparing teachers to teach other subjects as well. They also found that teacher preparation programs that focused on the practice of teaching and the classroom, and provided opportunities for teachers to study classroom practices, tended to prepare more effective teachers. Finally, they found that programs that included some sort of final project element (such as a personal research paper, or portfolio presentation) tended to prepare more effective teachers.

Beyond the institution a teacher attends, the coursework they choose to take within that program may also be related to their future students’ achievement. These associations vary by subject matter. A study by Rice ( 2003 ) indicated that, for teachers teaching at the secondary level, subject-specific coursework had a greater impact on their future students’ achievement. Similarly Goe ( 2007 ) found that, for mathematics, an increase in the amount of coursework undertaken by a trainee teacher was positively related to their future students’ achievement. By contrast, the meta-analysis completed by Wayne and Youngs ( 2003 ) found that, for history and English teachers, there was no evidence of a relationship between a teacher’s undergraduate coursework and their future students’ achievement in those subjects.

2.3.2 Graduate Education

In a review of 14 studies, Wilson and Floden ( 2003 ) were unable to identify consistent relationships between a teacher’s level of education and their students’ achievement. Similarly, in their review of data from 4000 teachers in North Carolina, Clotfelter et al. ( 2006 ) found that teachers who held a master’s degree were associated with lower student achievement. However, specifically in terms of mathematics instruction, teachers with higher degrees and who undertook more coursework during their education seem to be positively related to their students’ mathematics achievement (Goe 2007 ). Likewise, Harris and Sass ( 2011 ) found that there was a positive relationship between teachers who had obtained an advanced degree during their teaching career and their students’ achievement in middle school mathematics. They did not find any significant relationships between advanced degrees and student achievement in any other subject area. Further, using data from the United States’ Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS-K), Phillips ( 2010 ) found that subject-specific graduate degrees in elementary or early-childhood education were positively related to students’ reading achievement gains.

2.3.3 Certification Status

Another possible indicator of teacher effectiveness could be whether or not a teacher holds a teaching certificate. Much of this research has focused on the United States, which uses a variety of certification approaches, with lower grades usually having multi-subject general certifications and higher grades requiring certification in specific subjects. Wayne and Youngs ( 2003 ) found no clear relationship between US teachers’ certification status and their students’ achievement, with the exception of the subject area of mathematics, where students tended have higher test scores when their teachers had a standard mathematics certification. Rice ( 2003 ) also found that US teacher certification was related to high school mathematics achievement, and also found that there was some evidence of a relationship between certification status and student achievement in lower grades. Meanwhile, in their study of grade one students, Palardy and Rumberger ( 2008 ) also found evidence that students made greater gains in reading ability when taught by fully certified teachers.

In a longitudinal study using data from teachers teaching grades four and five and their students in the Houston School District in Texas, Darling-Hammond et al. ( 2005 ) found that those teachers who had completed training that resulted in a recognized teaching certificate were more effective that those who had no dedicated teaching qualifications. The study results suggested that teachers without recognized US certification or with non-standard certifications generally had negative effects on student achievement after controlling for student characteristics and prior achievement, as well as the teacher’s experience and degrees. The effects of teacher certification on student achievement were generally much stronger than the effects for teacher experience. Conversely, analyzing data from the ECLS-K, Phillips ( 2010 ) found that grade one students tended to have lower mathematics achievement gains when they had teachers with standard certification. In sum, the literature the influence of teacher certification remains deeply ambiguous.

2.3.4 Professional Development

Although work by Desimone et al. ( 2002 , 2013 ) suggested that professional development may influence the quality of instruction, most researchers found that teachers’ professional development experiences showed only limited associations with their effectiveness, although middle- and high-school mathematics teachers who undertook more content-focused training may be the exception (Blomeke et al. 2016 ; Harris and Sass 2011 ). In their meta-analysis of the effects of professional development on student achievement, Blank and De Las Alas ( 2009 ) found that 16 studies reported significant and positive relationships between professional development and student achievement. For mathematics, the average effect size of studies using a pre-post assessment design was 0.21 standard deviations.

Analyzing the data from six data sets, two from the Beginning Teacher Preparation Survey conducted in Connecticut and Tennessee, and four from the United States National Center for Education Statistics’ National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), Wallace ( 2009 ) used structural equation modeling to find that professional development had a very small, but occasionally statistically significant effect on student achievement. She found, for example, that for NAEP mathematics data from the year 2000, 1.2 additional hours of professional development per year were related to an increase in average student scores of 0.62 points, and for reading, an additional 1.1 h of professional development were related to an average increase in student scores of 0.24 points. Overall, Wallace ( 2009 ) identified professional development had moderate effects on teacher practice and some small effects on student achievement when mediated by teacher practice.

2.3.5 Teacher Content Knowledge

Of course, characteristics like experience and education may be imperfect proxies for teacher content knowledge; unfortunately, content knowledge is difficult to assess directly. However, there is a growing body of work suggesting that teacher content knowledge may associated with student learning. It should be noted that there is an important distinction between general content knowledge about a subject (CK) and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) specifically related to teaching that subject, each of which may be independently related to student outcomes (Baumert et al. 2010 ).

Studies from the United States (see for example, Chingos and Peterson 2011 ; Clotfelter et al. 2006 ; Constantine et al. 2009 ; Hill et al. 2005 ; Shuls and Trivitt 2015 ) have found some evidence that higher teacher cognitive skills in mathematics are associated with higher student scores. Positive associations between teacher content knowledge and student outcomes were also found in studies based in Germany (Baumert et al. 2010 ) and Peru (Metzler and Woessman 2012 ), and in a comparative study using Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) data undertaken by Hanushek et al. ( 2018 ). These findings are not universal, however, other studies from the United States (Blazar 2015 ; Garet et al. 2016 ; Rockoff et al. 2011 ) failed to find a statistically significant association between teacher content knowledge and student learning.

The studies we have discussed all used some direct measure of teacher content knowledge. An alternative method of assessing mathematics teacher content knowledge is self-reported teacher preparation to teach mathematics topics. Both TIMSS and IEA’s Teacher Education and Development Study in Mathematics (TEDS-M, conducted in 2007–2008) have included many questions, asking teachers to report on their preparedness to teach particular topics. Although Luschei and Chudgar ( 2011 ) and Gustafsson and Nilson ( 2016 ) found that these items had a weak direct relationship to student achievement across countries, other studies have suggested that readiness is related to instructional quality (Blomeke et al. 2016 ), as well as content knowledge and content preparation (Schmidt et al. 2017 ), suggesting that instructional quality may have an indirect effect on student learning.

2.4 Teacher Behaviors and Opportunity to Learn

Although the impact of teacher characteristics (experience, education, and preparedness to teach) on student outcomes remains an open question, there is much a much more consistent relationship between student achievement and teacher behaviors (instructional time and instructional content), especially behaviors related instructional content. Analyzing TIMSS, Schmidt et al. ( 2001 ) found an association between classroom opportunity to learn (OTL), interpreted narrowly as student exposure to instructional content, and student achievement. In a later study using student-level PISA data, Schmidt et al. ( 2015 ) identified a robust relationship between OTL and mathematics literacy across 62 different educational systems. The importance of instructional content has been recognized by national policymakers, and has helped motivate standards-based reform in an effort to improve student achievement, such as the Common Core in the United States (Common Core Standards Initiative 2018 ). However, we found that there was little research on whether teacher instructional content that aligned with national standards had improved student learning; the only study that we were able to identify found that such alignment had only very weak associations with student mathematics scores (Polikoff and Porter 2014 ). Student-reported data indicates that instructional time (understood as classroom time on a particular subject) does seem to be related to mathematics achievement (Cattaneo et al. 2016 ; Jerrim et al. 2017 ; Lavy 2015 ; Rivkin and Schiman 2015 ; Woessman 2003 ).

2.5 Conclusion

This review of the literature simply brushes the surface of the exceptional body of work on the relationship between student achievement and teacher characteristics and behaviors. Whether analyzing US-based, international, or the (limited) number of comparative studies, the associations between easily measurable teacher characteristics, like experience and education, and student outcomes in mathematics, remains debatable. In contrast, there is more evidence to support the impact of teacher behaviors, such as instructional content and time on task, on student achievement. Our goal was to incorporate all these factors into a comparative model across countries, with the aim of determining what an international cross-national study like TIMSS could reveal about the influence of teachers on student outcomes in mathematics. The analysis that follows draws on the existing body of literature on teacher effectiveness, which identified key teacher factors that may be associated with higher student achievement: teacher experience, teacher professional knowledge (measured by education and self-reported preparation to teach mathematics), and teacher provision of opportunity to learn (time on mathematics and content coverage).

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Burroughs, N. et al. (2019). A Review of the Literature on Teacher Effectiveness and Student Outcomes. In: Teaching for Excellence and Equity. IEA Research for Education, vol 6. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16151-4_2

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Literature Review

From the thoughts and tips shared by experts, the author believes that there are strategies that language and literature teachers can employ in their respective classrooms. It is through this article that professional experiences and perspectives are narrated and explored for the purpose of informing and sharing invaluable insights, practices, and perspectives. Language and literature teachers should employ a range of instructional strategies in presenting lessons and conducting pedagogical tasks. When they are aware of the needs and diversity of their learners, they are able to formulate better learning objectives.

Practices and Strategies

Verner (2018) stated that in teaching literature, always start where students come from. Sparking the interest of students will engage them. It is wise for the teacher to assign reading materials to his students for them to be prepared the activities in the next class. This may mean providing learners with fables, songs, comic books, and other exciting materials to read. The teacher can also use updated magazines, letters, diaries, and journals in the reading class. Once learners feel they are comfortable with the materials assigned by the teacher, they can move on to writing tasks. This process does not need to be very fast. It is advisable for students to take the tasks slowly until they develop the enthusiasm and confidence to participate actively. Verner (2018) also believes that the teacher has to explain the objectives behind selections and materials included in the discussions.

Not all students will appreciate or understand why literary selections are taught in the class, especially if these students do not study humanities or English. However, different people have their own subjective reasons for studying or reading literature. Some readers use it as a tool for communication. Some may read to get information, while others read for entertainment. This is because the author believes that people are diverse in many aspects.

Widdowson (1975) explained that literary texts are unique because in literature the what and how of a text are inseparable. People communicate their thoughts, feelings, and aspirations through what they write and read. Readers can converse (in a way) with the author’s thoughts through the process of reading. He further underscored that understanding how literature communicates involves understanding its what and how . This shows that literary texts cannot be easily paraphrased and there is no single interpretation of the content. Widdowson (1975) opined that in teaching literature, it is imperative for students to understand how the selections communicate thoughts or messages and should try to relate to the content. Literary appreciation can take place when learners comprehend the texts they read. Rosenblatt (1978, as cited in Celce-Murcia, 2014) defined literary texts through the readers who interact and interpret them. She maintained that the common way to distinguish literary works is through examination of the texts.

Kramsch (1993) on the other hand, pointed out that grammatical form plays a significant role on how readers understand and interact with the literary texts. She added that a reader has a variety of choices for conveying a message. The choice of grammatical form enables both author and audience to define the old and new information based on contexts and situations they perceive. Similarly, Carter (1996) believed that a language-based approach to teaching literature is learner-centered, activity-based, and process-oriented. He maintained that classroom tasks are invaluable and helpful because they can stimulate learners to interpret the texts by engaging them in the process of meaning making. Celce-Murcia (2014) connected and underlined the importance of characterization in teaching literary texts by defining it as the process of assessing the characters based on what they say and do. It also involves how the author of the text describes the characters. Taking this into account, to spark student participation, the teacher may begin by asking them to describe the characters using adjectives. They can also gather pictures that depict the actions and images of the characters.

Other perspectives. insights, and practices

Suitability in teaching literature is marked by the needs, interests, cultural background, and language level of the classroom learners. As was explained by Collie and Slater (2001), the literature instructor needs to be flexible and creative when arousing the interests and attention of the learners. They further stated that if learners feel that the selections are meaningful and relevant, they will surely take time to read them. Interest, relevance, and appeal are essential in the teaching of literature. Difficulty concerning language level in many instances proved to be a hinderance in learning literature. On the other hand, Widdowson (1975) stressed the important role of literature in learners achieving awareness of social realities as they go outside the classrooms. He further explained that literature helps students develop understanding of their experiences, and how their observations can help them become better individuals.

For Carter (1996), literature serves various purposes which can involve students in making creative presentations such as advertisements, jokes, newspaper headlines, and puns. He pointed out that in using literary texts, learners are expressing their own discourses and thoughts which can encourage them to create ideas and act spontaneously. Meanwhile, Burton (1982) believed in the importance of using spontaneous conversations to check the learners’ comprehension while they are evaluated on how well they have learned the concepts and values in the literary texts. Maley and Duff (1989) offered strategies in developing the writing skills of the learners. They stressed the effectiveness of composing poems as they gather ideas and explore vocabulary items that can help them improve writing skills. The cited materials that offer invaluable insights and concepts which language and literature instructors can use in the actual teaching where they are confronted by issues, challenges, and transitions.

In view of the cited materials, the current author synthesized major points about the teaching of literature. According to the studies cited, there are many strategies that can be used to facilitate a more effective instruction in the literary class. For Verner (2018), meaningful and engaging materials such as fables, songs, comic books, letters, diaries, and journals are helpful. Verner (2018) added that the teacher needs to explain learning objectives to the class as well as the reasons such materials and selections are included for discussions.

Widdowson (1975) emphasized the importance of comprehension of learners for them to be able to participate and respond to the activities and lessons provided in the classroom. He further stated that literary appreciation will only be possible if students understand the messages and contents of the selections. Rosenblatt (1978, as cited in Celce-Murcia, 2014) believed that only through analysis of the texts that students can understand and appreciate literature. Kramsch (1993) on the other hand, underscored the need to develop the grammatical competence of learners for them to understand the lesson and perform in the class. Carter (1996) believed that a language-based approach in literature instruction is activity-based, process-oriented, and learner-centered. He added that classroom tasks can help learners engage in meaning making. Celce-Murcia et al. (2014) connected the importance of characterization in teaching literary texts by defining it as the process of evaluating and describing characters based on their thoughts and actions. Meanwhile, Collie, and Slater (2001) maintained the importance of interest, relevance, and appeal in the teaching of literature. They also believed that literature teachers have to be patient, flexible, and creative in designing lessons and materials for their students.

In summary, experts and theorists have highlighted the most effective strategies and concepts they used in their own classrooms. These perspectives and strategies are very helpful to all literature teachers in the sense that they can compare and test all strategies while they are considering the diversities and needs of the learners.

Reflections from the Author’s Classroom Experiences

Varieties of specific activities and tasks are offered and explained here by the author so that readers of this article can easily reflect, and apply the tips and strategies being tested and employed by the author himself. Instructors need to incorporate such activities so that they can facilitate the learning process and create opportunities in the literature classroom. If all learners participate in the tasks and perceive all the objectives and importance of the activities and lessons, they will be able to develop literary appreciation and social awareness. The purpose of this thoughtful narration is to highlight various strategies and tasks used by the researcher in teaching literature in the classroom. The author focused mainly on the procedures, planning, strategies, and outcomes which he experienced in many fruitful years of teaching literature. Being a literature and language teacher for more than a decade brought him to the view that teaching literature is both challenging and rewarding. There were times in the past that he had to attend workshops, seminars, fora and the like so that he could get a picture of pedagogies and insights. But as he went through a meaningful and colorful journey, he was able to achieve timely and relevant methodologies in teaching literature.

Considering that Catholic schools in the Philippines encourage teachers to infuse discussions and lessons with the impartation of values and religion, the author decided to include one selection reflecting prayer and faith in God. It is noted that other readers and teachers may decide what kind of material and context to be explored in the class depending on the location, setting, and beliefs. In many of our schools the affective domain in which emotions and values are taught is very important and teachers are required to include relevant selections and texts. For this reason, the author attempts to create engaging and transformative environments for his ESL and EFL learners in the literary classroom. One of the most engaging selections of the many literary pieces he has utilized in the past is “The Universal Prayer” by Alexander Pope [Appendix 1]. It must be noted that the poem was mandated to be taught in the subject Literary Masterpieces . In this poem, there are numerous lessons about life which could enhance the reader’s relationship with God. In preparing his students for the topic, the author asked them to write their own personal prayer.

Most of his students were between 19 and 21 years old and were fluent in English and eloquent in expressing themselves. One of the reasons this selection was chosen was to develop appreciation of literature among learners, develop mindfulness, emphasize humility and forgiveness. Being a progressive university, the school implements English as a medium of instruction, so technically, students are required to communicate in English. It is a practice in the school to start and end the class with a short prayer; hence, students were not surprised when they were given an assignment to write a personal prayer.

Considering the diversity of his students, the author decided to employ differentiated instruction. It must be noted that multiple intelligence and contextualized teaching were also touched on in the series of activities he conducted. Next, let’s examine how did this strategy worked.

The assignment was given to the students to prepare them and condition their thoughts. The author instructed his students to write their prayers at home where there was solemnity and serenity. In that way, they could really meditate and reflect thoughtfully. In the following session, the class read the poem aloud in small groups. The instructor taught them the correct expressions, intonation, pronunciation, and so on. After this task, they sat together to discuss the selection with thoughtful and reflective brainstorming. Then, they were asked to illustrate the tone and message of the poem in the form of posters. The members chose a writer, who collected and wrote the ideas; a moderator who organized the thoughts and directed the members; a team leader who served as the speaker of the team; and finally the individual (other) members who thoughtfully shared their views. He could gleamingly recall the moment when this literary piece was tackled in the class. Students were all participative and prudent in analyzing, exploring, and synthesizing the ideas culled from the class. All were bonded by the objectives they had set, and indeed there was a healthy atmosphere in the class.

In line with the tasks the author provided in the class, there were valid and reasonable scoring rubrics which he presented prior to the implementation. In the evaluation phase he gave the class three insightful reflection questions such as (1) How could prayer bring you closer to God; (2) Why do people pray?, and (3) Why are their prayers not answered? As expected, students became emotional in dealing with the last two questions because they found them relatable and experiential. With this activity, members of the class got the chance to interact with one another, express their own thoughts, and most of all, take the opportunity to navigate their past and cultivate their experiences and engage in introspection. Since the strategies were learner-centered and outcomes-based, they effectively measured and assessed the qualities of the learners. In other words, learners were able to perform in the class by being exposed to various activities and tasks implemented by the teacher. The teacher was convinced he was able to carry out his learning goals appropriately. Both before and after the implementation of an activity or presentation of the lesson, the reflexive teacher has to ask himself/herself if the activities carried out were effective or not. The members of the class mirror the performance of the teacher and the impact of the tasks and goals designed by the latter.

The first narration was on poetry and the second was prose, a short story. One of the thoughtful selections the author treasured was God Sees the Truth but Waits authored by Leo Tolstoy [Appendix 2]. It must be mentioned that an adapted version of the story was utilized. Prior to delivery of this topic/lesson, the author first examined the dominant attitude of the learners, in other words he found out a little bit about his students’ personalities and preferences, as well as their experiences. The lesson itself was scheduled for the fifth week of the term, and most likely, he already knew his students very well. In this school, it is a common practice that teachers require their students to submit an index card where their personal and demographic profile is provided. It includes basic information about the learners such as their name, address, age, hobbies, interests, and so on. An open-ended question is also included such as, Why did you choose this course? What are your goals in life?

From this point of reference, the author was able to reflect on the most appropriate strategies to use in the discussion of the literary piece and accompanying tasks. It is common among language and literature teachers provide the class with various activities to reinforce and enrich their vocabulary skills. In this case, he asked his students, who were grouped into teams of seven members, to choose five words or vocabulary items from the selection which were presented using PowerPoint. Another warm-up activity is a quiz in the class. This makes use of multiple choice and word association techniques in which students simply try to find the meanings of the words through the choices illustrated.

To make the discussion of the story more specific and comprehensible, the author intentionally wrote three reflective questions on small sheets of paper. (1) Why did God allow the crime and culprit to go unpunished for 26 years? (2) If you were Aksionov would you forgive Semyonich? Why or why not?; and (3) What truths in life could you get from the story? Later these sheets were given to each group for them to ponder on and brainstorm extensively. The rationale for the brainstorming session was to let students engage in an exchange of ideas where members of the groups can share and express their points of view and share their personal experiences and observations. In the discussion phase, the teacher involved the entire class through a graphic organizer which was called “Big Questions” and “Star Diagram” [Appendix 3]. Here, students were asked to answer wh- questions or information questions. Since students had already read the story beforehand, they were able to fill out the graphic organizers with related information in the context of the story. The instructor was fascinated and amazed as members of each group expressed their answers. Through this task, he could see the brilliant ideas springing from the individual members of the class.

The author did not forget to process and include the reflective questions he had earlier assigned to the group. Those questions guided the learners to cultivate deeper ideas and further explore about the message and content of the selection. Furthermore, the said questions gauged the critical thinking skills of the students as they tried to recall important details from the story and at the same time remember details. In the final output, they made was a poster in which a quotation was personally constructed by the members of the group in relation to the message of the story. In the discussion of the text, the teacher asked the class to point out important elements of the story and to identify different symbols, literary devices, and sensory images they analyzed and discovered while they were reading the material

Reflections on the teaching of literary pieces

In teaching prose and poetry, the reflective teacher has to find resources that will fit the students’ needs, diversities, capacities, and experiences. True to the saying that “there is no one perfect method”, the literature teacher has to explore other strategies and practices that are appropriate and relevant to the students. In the age of digital learning, the teacher has to be innovative by using the relevant and timely tools for the teaching of the literary pieces. All learners deserve to experience quality and holistic instruction supported and nurtured by meaningful pedagogical tasks and assessment tools. Since differentiated tasks are pointed out in this article, the literature teacher can provide many fruitful and engaging tasks and activities relevant to the capacity and individualities of the students. The resources can be considered but should be examined well. Experienced teachers advise other classroom teachers about using authentic materials in which learners can easily relate and feel the meanings of what they feel. Those who are new in the teaching field may listen to stories and attend workshops to improve themselves. Learners always want to experience and witness something new in the literature class; hence, they will participate if they clearly perceive the instructional objectives set by the literature teacher.

The teacher has to move away from traditional methods and teaching styles. The author has concluded that art of questioning plays a vital role in harnessing and nurturing the minds of the students in the literary class. Linked to this concept is whole-class discussion where learners can get the chance to participate in the class through leading questions. If the teacher knows how to filter responses and he/she is aware of the levels of learning under Bloom’s Taxonomy, then he/she will be in the logical and reasonable ground in designing questions that will catch the learners’ attention and at the same time will develop their critical and analytical thinking skills. The Taxonomy gave the language teacher ideas on how he could design learning tasks and activities. He aligned his objectives and lessons to the existing skills or competencies indicated by the taxonomy. More importantly, the teacher motivated the students to engage in critical thinking while they produced output. It served as a framework to follow in all undertakings or endeavors. Being aware of the skills and competencies indicated by Bloom’s taxonomy can help the teacher describe and assess the specific level of learning the student has to achieve. From lower-order-thinking skills to higher-order-thinking skills, the teacher has a complete guide in providing relevant and timely tasks to the learners. Adhering to the taxonomy can help the language and literature teacher design and evaluate quality learning outcomes of his/her students. These outcomes are strong and there is striking evidence of learning taking place in the class.

The author believes that flexible and reflective teachers need to note the various strategies to effectively guide and enhance the literary skills of their students. Nowadays, the teacher has to be resourceful and flexible to provide learner-centered tasks and activities in which students can maximize their potentials and cultivate their skills. “Literature is life” as they say, so in this case, we, as literature teachers have to make our students feel that they experience life under our supervision and instruction. Students have to feel they are engaged in meaningful and thoughtful reflective journey. As they do this, literature teachers do their own introspection to make their principles, perspectives, and strategies grow. Through careful planning, they can create lesson plans for the successful presentation of literary texts and contexts, helping our students develop an appreciation of literature, cultural awareness, and a cultivation of values. He knows teachers are unique beings with their own ways of handling and directing learners who have different needs and ideas. Through daily interaction with their students, they can modify strategies and realign their objectives. The best teachers are those who are receptive to changes and innovations, but teachers should not forget to align their objectives to the vision, mission, and objectives of their school. They should continue to upgrade their skills in order to improve personally and professionally. Indeed, teaching literature is an endless journey where teachers can meet people from all walks of life and their own readings can take them to many places on earth. Their dreams, goals, and aspirations as builders of the future come into existence through teachings and insights.

One of the useful lesson plan formats was adapted from TEFLEN Training College (n.d.). It details all the steps which the teacher can apply in teaching reading and literature. In this lesson plan, the components are:

warm-up where the teacher provides a review of the past lesson;
introduction/skimming where the teacher provides short tasks to lead the students to the lesson or topic;
scanning where students go directly to the handouts or modules;
vocabulary presentation where the learners unlock difficulties;
critical awareness is the stage where intellectual questions are discussed and explained;
and the last part is evaluation and homework where the learners do pedagogical tasks that serve as continuing framework of their learning experience.

Perspectives and Plans for the Future

The author suggests that literature and language teachers should not be stuck with limited resources and traditional approaches of instruction. If these teachers are open to professional advancement and reflective practices, they can provide more engaging and effective pedagogical tasks and assessments to learners. In the future, the readers and instructors will reinvent and retool themselves so as to meet the varied expectations and needs of the students. They can use many approaches and strategies that have been tested and validated by fellow teachers, and can also do peer consultation to get reliable feedback from colleagues. The journey of a literature teacher does not end in the four walls of the classroom. The teachers can always impart and share their knowledge through research and publication, and this is the path they could take. They can engage with their students by providing them the best lessons and activities to improve their horizons and decisions in life.

Conclusions and Reflections

Creative language and literature teachers can easily blend other strategies and methods to facilitate quality instruction for target learners who would like to improve their competencies and appreciate the values and insights provided by the literary pieces. The author has enumerated the common strategies being employed in his own classroom which he finds effective and suitable to diverse learners in any settings or context. Differentiated instruction is an appropriate strategy which involves different tasks catering to the needs, experiences, and uniqueness of the learners

The author offers advice to language and literature teachers in the classroom settings. It is advisable for the language teachers to frame critical-thinking tasks for students to be involved in, so they can discover their own skills and potentials. An example of this is dividing the class groups with an equal number of members in each. For each one, the teacher will assign pantomime presentation, poetry development, debate, poster-slogan, and interpretative dance. With a clear rubric, the language teacher can inform and remind the target learners how they can best perform following the suggested criteria which the rubric explains. All activities should be interactive and engaging since learners do not want to get bored when they are in the classroom.

On the whole, the language and literature teacher can combine any of the methodologies and strategies which he thinks are appropriate and effective in literature instruction. Considering the age, diversity, belief, attitude, gender, and readiness of the learners is highly essential in the sense that these factors are determining points or bases for successful learning outcomes.

Burton, D. (1982). Conversation pieces. In R. Carter & D. Burton (Eds.), Literary texts and language study (pp. 86-111). Edward Arnold.

Carter, R. (1996). Look both ways before crossing: Developments in the language and literature classroom. In R. Carter & J. McRae (Eds), Language, literature and the learner (pp. 1-16). Addison-Wesley Longman.

Collie, J., & Slater, S. (2001). Literature in the language classroom: A resource book of ideas and activities . Cambridge University Press.

Celce-Murcia, M., Brinton, D. M., & Snow, M. A. (2014). Teaching English as a second or foreign language (4th ed.). Heinle Cengage Learning.

Kramsch, C. (1993). Context and culture in language teaching . Oxford University Press.

Maley, A., & Duff, A. (1989). The inward ear: Poetry in the language classroom . Cambridge University Press.

Pope, Alexander. (1738). The universal prayer . Retrieved from https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50590/the-universal-prayer

TEFLEN Training College. (n.d.). Travel and teach . Retrieved June 12, 2019 from https://teflen.com.au

Tolstoy, Leo, (2020, May 4). God sees the truth, but waits [Extended summary]. eNote s. www.enotes.com/topics/god-sees-the-truth-but-waits#summary-summary

Verner, S. (n.d.). Today a reader, tomorrow a leader: Strategies for teaching literature in the ESL classroom. https://busyteacher.org/6504-strategies-teaching-literature-esl-classroom.html

Widdowson, H. G. (1975). Stylistics and the teaching of literature . Longman.

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MEXTESOL Journal, vol, 44, núm. 3, 2020, es una publicación cuadrimestral editada por la Asociación Mexicana de Maestros de Inglés, MEXTESOL, A.C., Versalles 15, Int. 301, Col. Juárez, Delegación Cuauhtémoc, C.P. 06600 Mexico, D.F., Mexico, Tel. (55) 55 66 87 49, [email protected]. Editor responsable: Jo Ann Miller Jabbusch. Reserva de Derechos al uso Exclusivo No. 04-2015-092112295900-203, ISSN: 2395-9908, ambos otorgados por el Instituto Nacional de Derecho del Autor. Responsable de la última actualización de este número: Asociación Mexicana de Maestros de Inglés, MEXTESOL, A.C. JoAnn Miller, Versalles 15, Int. 301, Col. Juárez, Delegación Cuauhtémoc, C.P. 06600 Mexico, D.F., Mexico. Fecha de última modificación: 31/08/2015. Las opiniones expresadas por los autores no necesariamente reflejan la postura del editor de la publicación. Se autoriza la reproducción total o parcial de los textos aquí publicados siempre y cuando se cite la fuente completa y la dirección electrónica de la publicación. MEXTESOL Journal, vol, 44, no. 3, 2020, is a quarterly publication edited by Asociación Mexicana de Maestros de Inglés, MEXTESOL, A.C., Versalles 15, Int. 301, Col. Juárez, Delegación Cuauhtémoc, C.P. 06600 Mexico, D.F., Mexico, Tel. (55) 55 66 87 49, [email protected]. Editor-in-Chief: Jo Ann Miller Jabbusch. Exclusive rights are reserved (No. 04-2015-092112295900-203, ISSN: 2395-9908), both given by the Instituto Nacional de Derecho del Autor. JoAnn Miller, Asociación Mexicana de Maestros de Inglés, MEXTESOL, A.C., Versalles 15, Int. 301, Col. Juárez, Delegación Cuauhtémoc, C.P. 06600 Mexico, D.F., Mexico is responsible for the most recent publication. Date of last modification: 31/08/2015. The opinions expressed by the authors do not necessarily reflect those of the publication. Total or partial reproduction of the texts published here is authorized if and only if the complete reference is cited including the URL of the publication.

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A LEVEL ENGLISH LITERATURE essay questions "Twelfth Night"

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A Review of the Literature on Teacher Effectiveness and Student Outcomes

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2.1 Defining Teacher Effectiveness

2.2 Teacher Experience

2.3 Teacher Professional Knowledge

2.3.1 Undergraduate Education

2.3.2 Graduate Education

2.3.3 Certification Status

2.3.4 Professional Development

2.3.5 Teacher Content Knowledge