English-American Literature resonates until today even though their roots dates back hundred years ago. One of their significant highlights is language. As we can observe, the mastery of the language by the writers developed over time, leading them to create and promote literary techniques in storytelling, such as stream of consciousness. Another development is being more definitive in addressing an issue in a text. Early writers incorporated issues in their writings, such as political issues in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and A Tale of Two Cities. Through time, many writers still do it, which can be perceived as their attempt to capture illustratively the human conditions of their time.
For the role of English-American Literature, we can infer that is revolves around culture preservation. Through texts like Captured by Opechancanough, Pride and Prejudice, Beowulf, and The Canterbury Tales, we can observe how these texts represent the cultural backgrounds from their origin countries. Not only that, English-American Literature has the duty of delivering historically rich selections that will allow readers from around the world to experience the American dream, prude, and so on. Using these Literatures, we cannot just experience how it is to be an American or English, but also, we can observe and evaluate the human experiences depicted on these texts assisting us to better ourselves and to know more of our historical and cultural roots.
The job of an English teacher is to evangelize strategically the representative texts for English and American Literatures so that the students will not only see it as a boring subject rather an engaging one. Just like other Literature classes, the students might only see English-American Literature as a subject where you will read a lot of texts, answer comprehension questions and write papers about it. This is one challenge for the English teacher; hence, they must attempt to build a personal connection between the texts and the students so that the understanding and appreciation for English-American Literature will be propagated.
The propagation of such masterpieces to 21st century students lies between the students and teachers. For the students, they must be able to find something within themselves so that they can, somehow, relate to the text; thus, text-to-self connection will be achieved. For the teachers, as the facilitators of learning, they must be able to devise techniques to build text-to-world and text-to-text connections for the students. These textual connections will aid both students and teachers to flourish the treasures given by English-American Literature.
The development and role of English-American Literature are to help refine the mastery of the language and deliver historical and cultural appreciation. The general job of an English teacher in propagating texts from this Literature is to devise plans to bring various connections of the text towards the students so that they relate to it despite the generation gap delivering them to see the texts as their guide to master the language, seeker of historical and cultural backgrounds or companion to better themselves.
Tags: studying literature, importance of literature, literature in society, relevance of literature, personal growth, professional growth, modern times, lifethinkler
Author: Christian Loid Valenzuela
