Literature Made Easy

Teaching literature, specially English, to non native speakers is not an easy job. On the other hand, without the exposure to the literature, students’ English level can not be enhanced. This is a dilemma faced by almost every Pakistani parent and teacher. Surely there is an urgent need of some type of solutions for the predicament.

Some people do come with some solutions like writing a classical literature in easy English. This thing do make story little easier to understand but takes out all the essence of the classic literature. One more thing is that mostly this activity is done with prose and the poetry is totally neglected. Whereas giving easy versions to read can not enhance students’ English level.

Now the question arises: how we can solve this paradox? It is said if there is a will, there is a way. NCE Research Department took up the task of presenting English Literature to Pakistani students in a most friendly manner. First of all it was decided that in any condition the original language will not be changed. It was also decided that we will find the common solution for both poetry and prose.

Firstly, with thorough research and keen observation of non native speakers of English (Pakistani students with bilingual and multilingual culture) we reached some conclusions. Above all we observe that the number one problem is difficult vocabulary and from here we took a very important step. At the first stage we selected and categorized prose and poetry important for particular grade. After this the highlighted work was given to the team of experts whose job was not only to find a meaning of words according to the context but also to express the meaning in the easiest of the language. Definitely that was a hectic task but was done successfully, relevant picture where required was also given. These meanings are given under the boxes, printed at the bottom of every single page and for the first time numbering system has been used. Every difficult word has its own number by the help of which any student can find its meaning very easily. Hats off to our composers, that was really a tiresome job.

After passing the vocabulary hurdle, the next task was to convey the theme or concepts of the literature. In poetry this challenge was overcome by writing preludes. This was again a difficult task. First the theme of the poetry was dug out then the piece of interesting prose, based on the same theme, was written.

In literature, as well as in poetry interesting activities are given after every poem or chapter to make students active learners.

One more thing; all the poets’ biographies (whose work has been selected) are written in such a way that they will prove helpful in understanding the work of the poet.